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Comment by isqueiros | Hacker News Reader

> Build a one-page site for a neighbourhood coffee shop: opening hours, the address, a short menu and a photo. Nothing on it changes unless I edit it myself.

If that's the entire prompt, it's quite depressing how much alike these all look. I appreciate some of the details from the Opus 5 version, but I can't help but strongly feel the AI vibes emanating from that design.

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Without more knowledge about the technical aspect, it could be a good thing that they're all so similar. If you tell humans to go from their kitchen to their bedroom, they all stand up and walk the same way. Nobody decides to crab walk. Maybe you'd have to cripple the model in some way to do that.

On the other hand, if you want something different with LLMs, all it takes is a few more words of creative flair in the prompt.

This is an interesting point. But even then everyone has their own style. Some might walk with a bit of a swagger, some with a limp, some might have to get in a wheelchair to go over. Would model temperature be another knob to turn beyond a more creative prompt?

The models are giving you very average, middle of the road responses. The average human gait doesn't have swagger, limps, or extensive accessibility needs. If you want the swagger, you need to steer it that way.

> with a limp

> wheelchair

You really took "cripple the model" to heart!

That wasn't my intention and I sincerely did not mean any offense.

I don't think they took offense; more likely what they meant was "limping" and "wheelchair" aren't considered normal ways to get around, because there's an abnormal condition that led to said ways of movement. Similarly LLMs with similar capabilities operating in a normal way should produce relatively similar output.

I trialed Claude for a sorely needed redesign on my website. I was quite impressed with the results, but decided to hang fire on deploying it. Cue my surprise when I just found the same design applied to a coffee shop!

The similarities are beyond coincidence, to the point I'll be scrapping Claude's version of the redesign.

When I set up my local AI server I tried different harnesses and one prompt was to build a site for a consultancy in my domain. Not long after an actual agency I know had a website redesign and it was the exact same thing I got from my local model and the Hermes agent with the web design skill.

I think this is exactly what we should expect. LLMs are engineered to produce the most likely output given the training data. When you give it a generic design task, you're going to get a distillation of design cliches and tropes from the past decade.

It’s always been interesting to see how similar output is across ostensibly very different models. I remember testing short story writing in the early days and having the models all choose the same niche topic across e.g GPT, Llama, Phi, Claude, etc

Reminds me of the Bootstrap era. I can't count the amount of websites with a centered header navigation, slightly rounded accent color buttons, hero section that was mostly text, and some "fun quirk" in the background, either geometric shapes or squiggles or something.

I think websites have always looked mostly alike. It's sorta always been a thing. Reminds me of "Corporate Memphis" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis)

It's alright though, because some people are OK with middle of the road (Wordpress, Boostrap, Squarespace templates, now AI). And others are willing to either pay a developer to get involved or put in the extra effort to differentiate themselves.

A user, even without much design background, could ask the AI in a follow up prompt to change a few key parameters like overall color and differentiate it more. Even taking a sample image from a design magazine or blog and saying "incorporate some of the design elements here" would probably work great to diverge it.

I found it pretty interesting. To me, the GPT Sol and Luna ones are the nicest, which is not what I was expecting. Font choice goes a long way. The Opus ones are acceptable, but still disappointing. The rest are hideous.

Don't blame LLMs if the zeitgeist for coffee shop websites is sepia tones and a Papyrus-like font.

My university's Principles of WebDev course 10 years ago had a similar assignment and the results all ended up looking like that too.

I was thinking the same thing, but I suspect there was something more to it. Check out this sentence from the page.

>Our default skills also include some UI design guidance, mainly to avoid known gotchas (e.g., the now-dreaded purple AI slop) and get the model to reason about the visual identity appropriate for the user’s ask. But beyond that, each model is free to go build what it thinks we’ll want.

It's also kind of pointless. Why does a coffee shop need a website anyway? Nobody is saying, "man I would love to go to this coffee shop but I can't find their website".

If all you want is "opening hours, the address, a short menu and a photo" there are easier and cheaper ways to do that.

> Nobody is saying, "man I would love to go to this coffee shop but I can't find their website".

Me, I'm saying that, and I've skipped going to coffee shops and restaurants because they don't have a website, just a fucking Facebook page. I don't use Meta products and can't see their page if I'm not logged into an account I don't have, so I do what the business owner intended: I go fuck myself and get coffee somewhere else.

But... why do you want to look up a coffee shop online before going there? Honestly have never heard anyone say this in my life before

To see the hours, get a sense of the menu. There are many matcha shops by me for instance and my wife likes to check the specials before choosing which one to go to.

Doesn't most of this show up on google anyway?

It sounds like you know everything about the internet and people's preferences, why ask?

You seem to ask rhetorical questions that are not related to the topic and are just personal attacks, why?

Where do you think Google and co. source that data from? Having an actual, searchable, up to date menu is, just for a11y and accuracy far more valuable than someone’s poorly lit, low res upload of an photo taken from the menu circa 2019, just to name one advantage. Have found data from restaurants without their own webpages on Maps utterly inaccurate, even suggesting some that have been shut down for months to where there is clear value. Then there is restaurants closing for holidays, illness, etc. and the ability to make reservations without calling. Whether these need their own over an Astro template is another topic, but having a webpage at all is incredibly valuable.

If you are a business, you can set up google's business feature and provide the data and high-quality images. That is basic digital presence hygeine. If a shop is refusing to do that, they will definitely not care about a website

Sure, but you then only are on Google Maps, Search and other services by them. Have your own website and be indexed by everyone from Kagi, over Bing to DDG.

Many times information there isn’t up to date

But... why do you want to look up a coffee shop on google?

Just a few days ago I looked up a small coffee shop on Google maps which claimed it was closed, but their own website had different opening hours showing it was open. It's a seasonal business and Google had old data. Businesses should own their own communication and not be dependent on big tech companies.

It amazes me how close minded people have gotten. Do you really have that hard of a time believing there is a use case for a human looking up information on a coffee shop, on the internet? Oh, and god forbid the shop owner actually wants to provide it!

Why does anyone look up anything before going there? Maybe no one should have a website, everyone should go check everything out themselves in person like the telegraph hasn't been invented.

No, we should look up everything before we go anywhere. Everyone should have their own website and constantly update and maintain it everyday even though most of your customers never visit and just use google which can be set up without having to spend and maintain on a website which many chose to do.

And why is it so wrong to go to a place to drink coffee without researching it in the first place?

When I travel I have limited time, and if e.g. the coffee shop doesn't have the hallmarks of good coffee, I will save my time and find one that does

So you compare by visiting every website of each coffee shop? And that saves you time?

Why are you trying to put words in my mouth about visiting every coffee shops website etc? You look at possible places and choose the one(s) that appeal.

Since all coffee stores are not the same, I look at the website of the coffee shop I am considering visiting, and either I choose it or I don't.

Why does your brain instantly go to "whats the cheapest and easiest way to do things", instead of "whats creative, fun, interactive, usable, accessible, etc...".

This is the reason the world is slowly becoming a boring ass place and the internet basically consists of 3 websites that are all trying to suck your soul dry.

If I ran a business, a website that stands out from the crowd and provides a good experience would be in my top 3 things to do.

Rather a real website rather than a Facebook page.

I also want to know how celiac friendly they are. Coffee itself is pretty safe, but if I'm in the mood for a treat then I'd like to know if they have anything gluten free

And believe it or not, pre-ground coffee has a risk of gluten cross contamination. That's not a problem with most coffee shops though as long as I get an espresso instead of drip coffee

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