SaaS - Software-as-a-service is now a mainstream business. SaaS products can require extremely different UI according to their use cases, but many SaaS products contain more analytics and data representations.These products require clean and simple design which doesn’t inherit the complexity of the product. But how can you make a simple design delightful and more user friendly? Today we live in a very competitive world. How can you make your SaaS products stand out a bit more? That's where we need some design styles.

There are so many new trends and styles these days. It’s difficult to choose from so many styles for your next SaaS product. All these trends and styles add something new to product UI but it doesn’t mean that any one of these will go easily with your product. All these trends and design styles have their pros and cons and we should be very careful about adding them to a SaaS product.

1. Glass Morphism

Glass morphism is gaining popularity nowadays. From Mac OS big sur to windows 11, we can see the use cases of glass morphism everywhere. They add a slick and glassy look to the product and also maintain accessibility and usability.

SaaS products mainly contain more text than usual, this requirement of Sass Products makes these products a bit boring but glassmorphism can solve this problem as the text can be clearly visible on a glassy background. This glassy background also lets text stand out a bit more. Glass Morphism usually looks good on a vibrant color background. That's why Apple and Windows presented a decent background as a default one. Also applications using this style usually don't look perfect when they go full screen so keep that in mind.

2. Neumorphism

Neumorphism has been the most popular trend among designers though it's faded a bit now. It adds more depth to the UI with shadows and has a soft UI texture. It's a very consistent design technique as it uses a monochromatic way of representing things.

SaaS products often use many charts for data representation. It can be helpful to show charts very effectively as this adds more depth to the design. So the charts can seem more alive than ever. But this design style also has some accessibility issues. As the element visibility depends on the screen brightness. The elements in Neumorphism add depth by using box shadows, if the brightness of the screen is fairly much then these elements are clearly visible but if the brightness is very low then it can cause some issues in the visibility of the element.

3. Blur Gradients background

Gradient has been a trend for many years now. Gradient background to gradient text, there are many use cases of gredients in the design. Now we can see one more use case of gradients in the blur gredients background trend. These are mostly some random shapes having gradients on them with a layer blur effect.

SaaS products usually seek uniqueness. This will be a perfect element for adding uniqueness in the products, but we have to be more careful about adding text on them as the contrast of the text color and these backgrounds can cause readability issues in the product. Don't forget to use color contrast tools while using these.

4. Microinteractions

Microinteractions are subtle animations, but they make the product more realistic. They bring the product into life by adding delightful interactions. They let users see the results of their action and grab their attention and make them want to use the product again. In short, they are the most powerful weapons of UX.

PS: I’m a fan of microinteractions.

If I say honestly there are no cons of microinteractions but yet it depends on its uses. Using too much microinteractions and animations in a product can annoy users and also it can make them confused and frustrated. So here the less is better.

5. Dark Mode

Dark has been the most loved design style of all time. Many people use dark mode as an option with light mode in their applications. Also, there are some applications which only use dark mode. Usually developers and designers love dark mode as this reduces the stress on eyes.

Dark mode uses less saturated colors and some unique combination of dark shades, that’s why the color seems more alive in the dark mode but there is one issue with dark mode i.e. text can not be properly visible with less brightness on screen. This can happen because of color contrast also, otherwise if it’s used correctly then there is no problem in accessibility in dark mode.

Conclusion

In this article I presented 5 design styles from the perspective of SaaS products but there are many other design styles such as claymorphism, 3D etc, and they all have their pros and cons but it also depends on the use cases - how we are using specific design style in our product. All we have to do is just keep the pros and cons in mind. At last design is all about user experience and should be user centric. So let’s make it enjoyable for them with these styles.