You may not have noticed, but there has been a quiet revolution happening. And indeed it isn’t the kind you would notice, if only as a vague tingling that something is different. It is happening in the screens we all stare at for hours a day, on our desks and in our pockets.

Websites, apps, and even physical devices are all getting flatter.

Gone are the days of buttons that actually look like buttons, the cheap casino feel of Game Center on iOS, and the tacky notebook-like stitching of the calendar app. In are… words that are maybe buttons? And whitespace. So much whitespace.

Like many others in the UX world, this was a jarring transition for me, not to mention the users out there who don’t have the vocabulary to say just what’s wrong.

But I’m not here to harp on the usability problems of flat design. What I want to do is offer some suggestions for how UX professionals can embrace the (seemingly here to stay) trend of flat design.

1. Make most everything pressable (touchable). If you look at the stock iOS apps, you’ll notice that in many of them, a ridiculous amount of the interface is touchable, with the exception of what is obvious white space. In the absence of other obvious cues that interface elements are pressable, this almost seems a necessity to encourage users to explore and learn what presses do.

2. Reserve colored text for pressable elements. While the colored-text-as-button thing that seems to be one of the hallmarks of flat UI isn’t intuitive for users, iOS has quickly been setting the standard and training users to expect this. Almost by definition this means you must conform to a minimalist aesthetic for a majority of the UI, which I would consider a feature, not a bug.

3. No non-standard navigation. This is another encouraging trend that I think is the hallmark of good flat UI. More and more users are being trained to expect the same forms of navigation in all apps, and design influencers like Apple are taking the lead by conforming to nearly the same navigation style in most apps on a platform (i.e. bottom tab bars on iOS for Phone, Clock, App Store, etc…)

4. Gestures as UI. One of my favorite iPhone apps, Dark Sky (a weather app), constantly bounces the frame to let me know some interesting information is just a swipe away. Gestures are an untapped source for good UX, but for good reason: most aren’t intuitive for users and must be remembered (a negative heuristic). But flat UI forces us to reconsider the use of gestures as UI. The biggest hurdle is still standardizing gestures as UI: what should a swipe do? a multi finger touch? etc… Animations are one way, what are some others?

5. And last but not least: liberal use of platform standard design elements. This one isn’t exactly new, but flat UI has made it more of an imperative than ever before. By using the standard design elements given to you by the platform you’re building for, you not only reduce your own workload, but you also make your interface more usable by giving users a familiar design. Far from being a creative straightjacket, I’ve found that standard interface elements are a godsend by letting our team focus on building the non-standard parts of our app, rather than reinventing the wheel.

It remains to be seen whether flat UI will become a standard in the design world, but at least for the foreseeable future it’s here to stay. Instead of fighting it, why not embrace it?