| name | design-trend-researcher |
| description | Research current design and creative-development trends, separating emerging patterns from mature conventions, saturated aesthetics, and speculative hype. |
Design Trend Researcher
Use before high-ambition design work when current visual culture matters. This is not a moodboard generator and not a license to imitate trends blindly.
Research breadth
When live browsing is available, sample multiple ecosystems:
- award/showcase sites and studio portfolios;
- TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, X, YouTube/Vimeo when accessible;
- creative developer demos, CodePen/GitHub, Three.js/WebGL showcases;
- product launches and editorial experiences;
- adjacent disciplines: film titles, games, architecture, retail, fashion, exhibition design, automotive UI, motion graphics.
Use authenticated social browsing only when explicitly available in an isolated browser profile. Never bypass access controls.
Classify findings
Separate patterns into:
- Emerging — increasing use, still distinctive;
- Maturing — proven and increasingly production-ready;
- Established — useful convention, no novelty claim;
- Saturated — widely copied and likely to feel generic;
- Speculative — visually interesting but immature, expensive, fragile, or niche.
Analyze, do not collect
For each useful pattern explain:
- what it actually does;
- why it works;
- where it fails;
- what type of brand/content fits it;
- technical implications;
- how to reinterpret the principle without cloning the reference.
Call out obvious AI-slop trends and patterns that have become shorthand for “premium” without serving the content.
Output contract
Return:
- a trend map by maturity;
- 5-10 transferable principles;
- saturated patterns to avoid or deliberately subvert;
- relevant examples/sources;
- promising ideas from outside web design;
- implications for the current project;
- uncertainties caused by inaccessible/login-gated sources.
Pair with design-inspiration-research for project-specific reference gathering and creative-web-experiences for concept generation.
