
All Websites Look the Same - tambourine_man
http://www.novolume.co.uk/blog/all-websites-look-the-same/
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Kluny
The point of a website is to communicate information with your users. Design
is important only so far as it helps with this goal. All books look the same
too - a stack of paper between two covers made of cardboard, bound on the left
side, and containing text and/or pictures. The content is what differentiates
them. These are two of my favorite websites:

www.sheldonbrown.com www.toyodiy.com

Neither has got anything interesting in the way of design and I don't care at
all. Both of them are completely loaded with content that has been worth (to
me) hundreds or thousands of dollars in saved money and effort.

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interactive_guy
Just wanted to say I appreciate your book metaphor - it's an interesting way
of thinking about design and its purpose.

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ffn
Why is this a bad thing designers must be "guilty of"? Most websites are built
around providing some sort of commercial service / product, so the number 1
goal of design is to get out of the way of the user paying money and receiving
service. If the design was radically different website to website for no other
reason than artistic-special-snowflakia, then as a designer you're putting on
extra cognitive load onto your users and forcing them to think about things
that ultimately don't matter to either you or them.

Literally everything from cars (colorful sells with engine in front and some
seats in the middle, brake is left of the accelerator) to desktops (mother
board, 4 RAM slots, 1 CPU slot, USB slots, etc.) to stores (carts out front,
role of checkout stands next, isle separated by content after) benefits
tremendously from standardization, and are what makes modern life even
remotely livable.

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muzmath
It isn't a bad thing, the article is poorly thought out. Did anyone actually
enjoy using the novel flash sites that 'never looked the same'? Leave that to
the design portfolios and let the rest of us continue using accepted design
patterns that people easily recognize.

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ch215
Looks like I'm in the minority in agreeing with the author's sentiments. It's
a counter-intuitive argument but I'll try to make it...

I'm of the motherfuckingwebsite.com school of thought--an evangelist for
simple design--but I think simple and unique often go hand-in-hand.

Take my industry: newspapers. Ninety-nine percent take a flat-pack,
everyfuckingwebsite.com approach. I think that conformity compromises design.
Readability should be at the heart of most sites--let alone news sites--yet I
find most hard to read for colours, distractions and so on.

The news websites I enjoy are simple and unique--like the Drudge Report and
Hacker News, which are pretty much just a list of links with minimal layers. I
think that gets to the core of my purpose as a reader: no bullshit clicking
around for ages to find what I want/need to read--just here's the news in our
view.

For me, that's a big reason for the Daily Mail's success too. Content aside, I
think their presentation of news is second to none. You could argue it's like
a lot of sites but I disagree: few run tall pictures, nine-deck headlines and
so on. MailOnline's production is similar to the way editors put a page
together for print. They've transitioned much of the craft online. I think
that's how the website retains something of a newspaper 'feel' which most have
lost.

Anyway, I should stop writing, I'm going off on tangents and probably talking
gibberish, just wanted to chuck in my 2p.

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larrik
Functional consistency is easier on your visitors, while visual
differentiation (the actual pictures you select, mostly) helps identification
of your site.

I wouldn't call it "conformity" at all.

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crdb
I suspect another big reason is, if you're mostly a backend guy and you're
building the site and can't afford someone to worry about the front end, how
do you make your site responsive and mobile friendly? Bootstrap.

It's (extremely) easy to learn and (as mentioned in other comments) its
ubiquity means people come to expect it and are already familiar with the UI.

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bt3
I think the bigger thought here is that "change is uncomfortable". It's also
unfamiliar.

Also, the designers to whom this article references work for clients, who are
not the visionaries. And the design agencies job is to make them happy, via
conformity.

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muzmath
It's better to use designs people are familiar with as opposed to something
truly novel - which can cause confusion.

