In today’s digital world where information is aplenty and attention spans are limited, companies are constantly looking for new ways to engage with consumers. From the first interaction to the remainder of the customer journey, rich graphical user interfaces (UI), and interactive user experiences (UX) play a critical role in shaping each step.

While this may seem like a relatively new concept, it's just the beginning. Six industry experts were asked their opinion on the top embedded UI/UX trends and this is what they said.

Hint: It’s not watchOS or Wear OS

There’s a wearable war in our future and it won’t be the most powerful that wins. Alongside explosive growth in the overall industry, we’re seeing greater stratification in market share between wearable OS and hardware types. While Apple’s watchOS dominates today, others are gaining ground by taking advantage of highly efficient, lower-cost platforms that continually level up the features that consumers value most: Battery life and user experience (UX).

In 1990, the FDA published a report, Device Recalls: A Study of Quality Problems, that revealed 44 percent of medical device recalls were due to design issues and one-third of those were due to a faulty user interface (UI). The resulting uproar led to the US swiftly passing the Safe Medical Devices Act. This regulation has been in place for over thirty years now, so surely medical UI problems are a thing of the past, right?

When building an embedded system there are many choices you will face when deciding the correct GUI hardware and software combinations to best get your product to market. On top of vendor features, this year's semiconductor shortage has disrupted supply chains for everything from phones to cars, and forced embedded GUI product teams to rethink their supply chain strategy.

Smartphones changed the way we interact with technology, making smart technology commonplace in everything from Fitbits to freezers. More recently, a perfect storm of innovation in microchips, software development, and energy efficiency has set the stage for the next important era in computing’s history: wearables.