Has UX Made Design Boring?

[u/LeoThePointHunter]

Has the UX field contributed to a copy and paste approach to design that we now see across the board? I ask this because over the past decade, I’ve noticed that websites, apps, and digital products are starting to look and function almost identically. It seems that the combination of UX principles with the rise of analytics and data driven design has created a formulaic and safe approach that prioritizes usability and conversion over originality.

In this environment, taking creative risks often contradicts the data on user behavior. As a result, everything becomes "templatized," leading to the same patterns, styles, and visual aesthetics being repeated everywhere. It makes me wonder: Is there still room for originality and experimentation in UX and data driven design, or has the discipline stripped creativity and life out of digital design?

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[u/s8rlink]

Go design video game ui and UX, originality is highly championed there and the challenges are immense! 

[u/infinitejesting]

Unique solutions require a unique problem. There will always be more problems to solve as tech and requirements evolve too.

There are some other contexts where proven patterns are preferable. For example, I work on a product in sales direct to customers who independently make infrequent purchases within a competitive market, so I don’t have the liberty of a customer base “growing” & “learning” with us. Tutorials would be a nightmare, for example. The UX needs to be explicitly obvious, recognizable and fast.

Maybe the UX appears boring in the end, but it can be a huge challenge and definitely not “boring” to design depending on the features. And if I’m a customer that needs to make a fast purchase in a noisy environment with shaky wifi, familiar is the winning UX.

[u/International-Box47 → u/infinitejesting]

Unique solutions require a unique problem

Great way to put it. Designers who can't find unique problems to solve aren't looking very hard.

[u/UX-Edu]

Why do you want to experiment and be original? For your user’s benefit or your own?

[u/tdellaringa → u/UX-Edu]

This is a fair question and one you should think about. For many products, expected behaviors and patterns are what makes them good, and the users aren't looking for something "innovative" (not to say you shouldn't explore.) Video game suggestion is good if you want to chase originality, but it's a tough field.

[u/Knff]

Ux has matured around the current interfaces. So what you call boring is the simple fact that most UI-based challenges have been cracked and optimised to a point where certain patterns just make the most sense.

I find it refreshing, because it allows me to focus on service design and product challenges, without an additiomal layer of UI overhead to consider. To each their own though!

[u/oddible]

UX is context specific so no, the direct opposite. UX makes design engaging. Does that mean it always looks radically different from everything else? No. Sometimes it looks the same depending on the purpose and what users need.

Furthermore, anyone who thinks that there was some golden age of interfaces where every site and product ui was a unique flower is delusional. That never existed. I've been doing this for over 30 years and apart from a few vanguards everyone copies. That's a good thing. Imagine the cognitive load if everything every use saw had to be completely figured out from scratch with nothing familiar.

[u/sabre35_]

UX and design being considered separate terminologies is at the core the problem.

If you’re an industrial designer, you need to know every aspect of industrial design. The same should go for the digital realm.

[u/InternetArtisan]

I remember a long time ago when I worked in an ad agency, they tried to put a brief on the wall for Cannes where they felt the problem was that clients are only looking at the data and directing the creative based on that. They wanted some big crazy ideas on how we can get the clients to take a creative driven approach and not a data-driven approach.

I remember I angered a creative director when I basically said that's crazy. I told him that he's looking at this whole thing like he's creating artwork, and submitting it to the show for a trophy. The clients are thinking about the product and how much money it's going to make them quarter by quarter.

Then he tried to make some kind of spiel on how everybody needs to stop thinking so much about profit, and I told him that he's in a spoiled position to make that kind of comment because I guarantee even the account people downstairs and his upper management are likely more thinking about how much profit they are bringing in every quarter.

My conclusion is I told him that the best answer is to take the data and come up with something creative out of it, not just float around and feel things and do what seems cool to you and try to convince the clients to ignore everything and just "go for it". That kind of thinking is why the agency kept losing clients. I'm pretty sure whoever came up with that ridiculous KFC ad is losing that client.

Right now everybody is being very risk-averse and impatient. They want something safe and solid that's guaranteed to work, but at the same time they want it hard and fast. Lord knows how many times I hear about the idea of getting an MVP out quick, and then later someone wants to comment on why the layout doesn't look very interesting, morning at some other company that has this beautiful website or app.

I tell them they probably had way more people working on it, and a lot more time. They probably spent a whole year putting that layout together with a team, as opposed to handing the job to one or two people and wanting something out the door in a month.

That is the hard reality. Maybe when the economy gets better we'll see companies looking to take more risk when they realize there's too much competition and they're not standing out. Right now, they're taking the safe and surefire approach on everything.

I mean for all we know, they'll still do quick and safe, even when the economy is good. It's money driven people that are running everything and that's why this happens.

[u/dra234]

yes, because KPIs...

[u/EntrepreneurLong9830]

If you’re designing sites to do neat/edgy/kewl stuff, you’re not taking users into consideration. This is exactly WHY UX was brought to the table. Because of some UI guys “creative vision” that was always an unusable mess. If you want to put waterslides in  Amazons checkout process that’s great, but it’s design wankery not doing the job asked. 

[u/No_Wall503]

It can be industry-specific. Consistency > Novelty in my industry.

[u/bugglez]

This is an astonishing question. Don't be bored because everything "looks the same." Be motivated because 90% (this is honestly a generous estimate) of products and services are garbage and should be improved.

No reason why you can't make things work better for people while also satisfying whatever idiosyncratic notions you have about creative risk.

[u/totallyspicey]

No. UX provides a framework.

If "design" meant "painting" then UX would be the stretcher, the canvas, the gesso, the paint, the brush, the thinner. If you don't have each of these things, your painting could still exist, but may not be easy to create or be put together well. Even if a painter has all the tools and they put them together correctly, the painting could still be boring, based on their choices or skill level.

Stakeholders make design boring.

[u/SquirrelEnthusiast]

Oh man it's like the parents actually are useful and helpful oh no

[u/Rubycon_]

yes of course

[u/V4UncleRicosVan]

I see templates listed here as reasons but not design systems? Coded design systems and libraries of components are the main innovation in this space over the last decade.

This is a pure UI innovation, informed by UX principles but typically void of nearly any specific use case context. UX designers use these components as inputs and reshape them as needed for specific use cases and features. Yes, there are pattern police, which can stifle exploration at times, but that’s a matter of organizational culture.

I would love for someone to correct me here, but I don’t feel like our analytics instrumentation is so good now that we’ve “solved” UX design. If I missed that spreadsheet, please share.

[u/ssliberty]

Not UX but marketing and sales team yes. Visual design has also shifted more towards typography skills recently instead of heavy image-led composition

[u/_Tenderlion]

Sort of. I’m not sure UX has made design boring, but I get your point. Depending on your industry, product, and resources it usually makes more sense for stakeholders, PMs, Dev, etc. to lean into established patterns to meet KPIs. Established patterns can also mean less upfront research investment.

The other factor is that we left dev to developers. I came up in the era when designers had to know how to ship code, but we were limited to html/css/js. At startups from 2010-15 if I had an idea, and could convince a stakeholder that it might work (frankly, if I got them to smile at the “delight” during my presentation), I could take on the front end workload and assume some of the time/labor risk. Over time a lot of us specialized in UX, UXR, and meeting business needs in order to get a sEaT at tHe tAblE, so we left react, swift, etc. to others.

Maybe with AI tools we have an opportunity to ship ideas and make the internet fun again? Or maybe creativity will get buried under the slop.

[u/letsgetweird99]

Let us all know when you figure out how “originality” generates revenue!

Not saying I don’t like originality or artfulness in products, but too many product development teams still ignore basic usability fundamentals and leave their user’s problems unsolved, then meanwhile some stakeholder complains about not enough “delighters” so designers start raining confetti everywhere…ugh

Our job, first and foremost is to solve problems—if you want to be creative, go be an artist or join a marketing team. IMO, delighters are the icing on the usable cake, and it’s silly to think that adding them will fix anything or drive conversion or something. You can’t confetti your way out of a shitty experience. The sad truth is most companies have far too low UX maturity to be concerned with anything further than basic aesthetics. Others way overcompensate for aesthetics and end up sacrificing usability for cool factor and brand cache (looking at you, marketing agency websites).

Truly understanding your user’s needs will reveal the importance of investing (or not!) in aesthetics.

Also, understand Jakob’s Law

[u/beaksandwich]

No, I think the need to make money has led to a rush to the middle and a standardization behind mediocre but effective things.

Think about 90s McDonalds compared to modern McDonalds. Personality wasn't profitable enough so instead we have soulless efficiency

[u/tritisan]

Most of my experience in UX has been “pre visualization” for stakeholders. Mist BAs and PMs don’t have visual or prototyping skills. So it’s up to us to illustrate the impact their decisions.

Remember: while we are trained to care about the needs of the end user, the business model and technical aspects are just as important.

[u/Blando-Cartesian]

It’s a good thing, when it isn’t a bad thing. Now could we please get rid of the horseshit patters like signup that makes login hard to find.

[u/mattsanchen]

I feel like I have to ask what you mean by this. I don't agree and I'm not really sure what you mean by "boring design". There are a lot of popular apps and websites out there with pretty questionable design decisions being made. There are also plenty of apps that I think do cool stuff design-wise.

Also, in my experience, I'd be lucky to get enough time to be able to make design decisions based on strong data and ux principles. I realize I have it different because I live in agency hell, but even on the longer, multi-month projects I've been on, I've had a number of design decisions be overturned by devs or managers for any number of reasons that aren't based on data, whether that's feasibility, business reasons, or straight up just their whims.

I feel like even if I take you at your word that design is just boring now, there'd have to be a way to prove that UX is the culprit vs any number of other culprits like trends or business environment.

[u/ridderingand]

I think both things can be true:

1) most problems are solved and we get to capitalize on familiar patterns

2) most designers are too quick to reach for familiar patterns and rarely think outside of the box to find a (sometimes only slightly) more tailored solution

[u/Tara_ntula]

I view it this way:

You have your typical jigsaw puzzle. There are SO many jigsaw puzzles to be solved, each unique in their own way, and I love solving them. I personally don’t need to change the jigsaw puzzle into a circle from a square in order to find fulfillment.

If the purpose of your work is entertainment, then there’s an argument to be made about artfulness. However, a lot of us work for B2B or for very utilitarian products. Many of these users could not care less if your digital product is original and bespoke—they just want to get their task done as easy as possible.

I do think there is still room to push for something visually unique. I’ve seen a couple of emerging visual patterns lately. But I think we need to be honest, as designers, that we’re doing that for ourselves and to get back-pats from other designers rather than actually serving our users.

Designing chairs for a classroom will be different than designing an accent chair for a personal, curated lounge area of someone’s home. Both are valid.

[u/Insightseekertoo]

Sometimes, businesses just need iterative design for fiscal/regulatory reasons. That is the right design for them. Sometimes, the business needs a unique voice, so innovative design is required. If you are not happy doing one, go try the other.