Digital design is becoming more and more centered on the human, the customer, the person. It’s focusing less and less on the craft as an end in itself (the code, graphics, information architecture, navigation).
If you track terms such as “information architecture”, “user interface” and “usability” in Google Trends between 2004 and 2015 you will notice a significant decline. During the same period you will notice a significant rise in searches for terms like “user experience” and “customer experience”.
This should all be kept in context. There are far more searches for “web design” than for any of the above terms. (Web design has typically been more focused on graphics and coding.) However, web design searches are in severe decline. Back in 2004, there were 99 times more searches for web design than for customer experience. By 2015, this had dropped dramatically to 8 times more.
