An answer I haven’t seen yet is that making your website look and act like other websites is fairly well established UX principle for avoiding user friction. It’s known as Jakob’s Law.
Why did every website/product start looking the same?
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Re: Why did every website/product start looking the same?
#22It's faster and cheaper to use an off the shelf framework and template than building something original from scratch these days.
Re: Why did every website/product start looking the same?
#23wasnt this spearheaded by a combination of web frameworks (most famously ones like bootstrap) ? It's easier for a programmer without design chops to cobble together something using boostrap than actually design a site from scratch
does bootstrap dictate how a site looks? isn't the point of it to be a framework that is customizable?
Re: Why did every website/product start looking the same?
#24Because visual design is both a) very hard/expensive to do well from scratch and b) not a differentiator for most products. For the vast majority, it's just more cost effective to use a standard template and focus on your core product instead.
I would disagree. The designs I'm talking about are actually extremely polished. They spend an hour just to make sure the animation of a single component flows a certain way. And yet, they spend all this time and money only to make something that someone else already championed.
Re: Why did every website/product start looking the same?
#25Is it because of Corporate Memphis? https://www.wired.co.uk/article/corporate-memphis-design-tec...
This is also a contributor. But from what I've seen, the wave of corporate memphis is slowing down compared to the new dark mode trend and whatnot.
Re: Why did every website/product start looking the same?
#26wasnt this spearheaded by a combination of web frameworks (most famously ones like bootstrap) ? It's easier for a programmer without design chops to cobble together something using boostrap than actually design a site from scratch
does bootstrap dictate how a site looks? isn't the point of it to be a framework that is customizable?
well yes - but it has templates. And you can chose not to change those templates. And lots of sites dont change anything. Sure, a colour, sure a logo...but there was a period, and idk if I still notice it now or if im so numb to it that i dont - that seeing 3 big company statements in a row while scrolling made me groan in agony...