All Websites Look the Same

Great comment. I'm finding it one answer of your ? To be more and more a "depends on your project."

I do theoretically find a website to be a form of "artistic expression" but unlike most other medium, there is a technically "right" few ways and many "wrong" ways to "implement" your art. When you see a website posted here that takes a bit of artistic liberty in its design, you will undoubtedly have some HN commenters criticize the way they did such and such.

Despite the fact the page load time is only affected by one millisecond, that "incorrect" implementation is reason enough for some to trash the designer and deem his "solution" inadequate.

What we then see is a world full of TALENTED designers often too afraid to try something new.

But, isn't that the point of art? It's meant to be polarizing.

This is just personal opinion, but I'm finding it more and more necessary for the designer of the modern web to have multiple, concurrent projects as opposed to completing one project and moving on to the next.

Currently I'm working on an athletics site which uses your now "bread and butter" design which the OP gripes on, but I'm also working on a payment web app which has a design that harkens to someone filling out a clipboard.

I've just this week also accepted a project to showcase a fashion designers portfolio, and I'm swinging for far left field on that one.

If I was not working on these projects concurrently, I would not have learned that each design has advantages and disadvantages, and I would be pidgeonholing myself if I didn't give myself room to fail

We are all still learning and growing in web development.

And our consumers are growing too. One interesting thing you mentioned is that users are steadily growing more accustomed to the hamburger button - a quick google search will tell you that the Hamburger wasn't so tasty in AB testing, however, users learn. I've been a part of a reason site redesign which found the extra click of a dropdown menu was better liked (and had more click through) than the link bar, despite our demographic was relatively older users!

And The hamburger menu is a great case study as it has become commonplace in modern design. You could go with the triple bar, or do Apple's approach of a double bar that rotates into an "X" ( https://apple.com ), or you could do Google's three circles arranged vertically in their mobile Chrome browser, but the concept is essentially the same.

Now, there are very talented developers on HN that despise the hamburger, and perhaps rightfully so, but you often hear crickets when an alternative is proposed. Certainly the tabbed interface at the bottom with a "More" button works, but it doesn't work for every case.

So sure, you will have some projects where you have to go with what is known, but try some other projects to challenge a different approach out of you to build up your chops.

I'm arguing that "unfamiliar" does not necessarily mean "hard to find".

My iPad for example is not unfamiliar, but I find it annoying to bookmark a site because of how the bookmark button is hidden behind an icon which to me looks like "sharing" (little square with arrow pointing up). Same for searching for text on the page.... it's not intuitive. I have to "think" for too many milliseconds each time just to do those basic actions.

You could say "I'm familiar with Apple's annoyingly unintuitive iOS Safari UX for bookmarking and searching text on the page." "Familiar" has not saved the day in this case.

When I go to a site because I'm interested in their product, I'm not looking for a familiar interface in terms of layout or design replication from previously visited websites. I'm looking (unconsciously) for top level things such as clear presentation and logical, friendly layout. "Logic" can appear as many pathways. "Interestingness" is what humans get a buzz from and reward each other for all the time, so if I get a dose of interesting too, served just right and not too much, then it's a winner.

I agree. But startups shouldn't be expected to do this. Startups are experiments; you want to quickly determine if there's a market for the product (and fail fast if not, so you can alter the product or move onto something new). Being conservative with design is the perfect approach for this. If you experiment with unproven layouts, and it fails, how do you know if the problem was the product or your layout?

Interactive new stories, artists' portfolios, design agency websites, web apps, and websites that are themselves art - these are all good places to push boundaries in design. Not startup product promo pages.

> I'm arguing that "unfamiliar" does not necessarily mean "hard to find".

Yes it does, it literally means "not having knowledge or experience of" and thus it is hard(er) on people. Familiar does not necessarily mean "all websites do it the same", familiar literally means "well known from long or close association". It may be association with something else, not even software (see apple's skeuomorphic design with the original iOS).

It may be worthwhile to make something unfamiliar (i.e. "harder") - but you should have good reason to do so. "Hur dur I creative designer" is not good reason.