Patterns of Card UI Design

Organizing cards in containers to drive insights and actions

Card-based User Interface (Card UI) is the new hotness. Recent announcements from Google around the unification of their user interfaces across mobile and web using Material Design show that that the big players are firmly behind this new UI trend. It seems like when you are more than 50 million users, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc, you are using some sort of Card-based UI/UX in your app.

Aside from looking like pieces of card-sized tactile “material”, is there more to designing a good Card UI that delivers insights and drives actions? Christopher Tse, a technology/designer, has looked into the many card-based applications, and has discovered a common set of design patterns in how cards are constructed and assembled. He also cataloged the patterns shared between different types of containers, from those focused on storytelling to those facilitating discovery.

In this follow-up presentation to his popular “Stacking the Card Deck” talk, Chris delves deeper to the implication of Card UI design for the practicing UX professional. This new Card UI have the potential to bridge the divide between native app and responsive web design. UX practitioners that wish to set the trends and establish the conventions should invest time to understand what has been done thus us and how we can evolve this emerging field of Card UI design together.