I suspect the author is correct that many of these ideas will (continue to) trend during 2014. It would be interesting to know of anyone who’s done actual test

I suspect the author is correct that many of these ideas will (continue to) trend during 2014. It would be interesting to know of anyone who’s done actual testing to see how effective or otherwise these ideas really are, whether that’s something technical like A/B testing on conversion rates or simply collecting feedback from a range of users about how much they enjoyed using a site. For example, I’ve seen a few striking presentations recently that illustrated a long-form article with not just static graphics but also animated diagrams and even short video clips of interviews (#11 in the list of trends). Obviously someone put a lot of time into designing those pages, and to me the results were much more engaging than a wall of text. On the other hand, I wonder how well these Pinterest-style tiled layouts (#16) really work. I personally find them difficult to scan, as there is often no sense of hierarchy or leading me through the information in a useful order. All my instincts as a web designer say this is probably bad for usability, but I have no data to back this up.