Homogenous might be awesome. I miss predictable UIs.
We used to have everything having personality but being consistent as far as UX goes.
Now everything looks like tax forms and the UX is all over the place.
Sometimes, I'll manage to find the brand with the new colours and logo. But often even then, I can't find the specific product from that brand. They've changed it so much I can't tell which version I picked before. Which makes me look for something more like what I used to have.
Good job "standing out" guys. I'd say literally maybe 1/3 of the time, I've just literally lost products. I don't know the name, just how it looks.
Whenever I said “this is a website, not an app” I would get confused looks from designers.
UX people fight some of the BS, but “looking pretty” usually wins over “being useful”.
If older software was more consistent, it's only because the OS didn't provide nearly the same degree of customization options that HTML and CSS provide developers today. Not because of some pride in consistency.
Still, to me, good design is intuitive. I look at the thing, and I know how to use it. If it looks great and distinctive, even better. But most outlandishly distinctive design I've (consciously?) found is terrible.
Obviously, these short sentences hide a lot:
- To know how to use things, I must have prior experience. But different users have different prior experiences and acquired design patterns (i.e. interaction patterns)
- My knowledge of the domain is also different from that of other users.
- The way I interact with the system is affected by many factors (e.g. accessibility related concerns, zoom, etc.)
- Intuition is not magic. It comes after training as well. Good design is discoverable. Extraordinary design reinforces its own patterns seamlessly, so that I learn it without even knowing I'm learning (see: hidden tutorials in game design). I also include here the incredible attributes of good design that far predate computer-related design (e.g. how an icon should be recognizable just by its silhouette, or how apps "invisibly" teach us what each color or even section of the screen means).
- My incentive to learn (sometimes "tolerate") the design depends on many variables. Some of these include the design's "taste", yes. Others depend on how much my boss/client is paying me to "use this shit".
I wouldn't say I want a world where everything looks the same, but I certainly want one where everything works the same, and some geniuses once in a while add something new to my list of known (and loved) design patterns. I am not anti-design-experiments, but I will take a predictable UI that looks like windows 98 everyday over some "distinctive" shit that breaks all manner of expected behaviors (from keyboard shortcuts, to colors, to button placement, to relative sizing, to........)
If it's an interface and not an art object, then the design is secondary to the function of said interface.
Good hammer is a good hammer, not a "distinctive" hammer.
Someone IS designing all this, they just aren't optimizing for what you wish they were.
If I’m slamming the brake pedal in a car, I want consistency.
Too much software in the latter thinks it’s part of the former.