[karpour]

This really makes clear how boring web design has become. 99% of websites use the same standard layout, there's almost nothing distinct or exciting about any of the designs. I remember web design being an art form, with books being printed with the best designs... I'd visit brand websites just to look at the design itself, even if I wasn't interested in what they were selling.

Of course not all is bad, but I'd love to see some creativity again, it seems like almost no one dares to break the norm anymore.

[codingdave]

I like that we are stagnating. One of the things that took us away from the early content-focused days of the web is when every business had to get their brochures online, and every designer had to make their mark with how creative they could be. It vastly threw off the signal to noise ratio of web sites, and it delayed good UX for at least a decade because everyone re-invented menus and buttons on every web site.

Don't get me wrong. I like creativity. I am an artist, even have a degree in Fine Arts. But there are times to innovate, and there are times to just make things work. Web UX needs to just work.

[shinycode]

Yeah 90% of websites are just informative … why would they need to be creative ?

[unlikelytomato]

the same reason every building in the world is not the same identical concrete cube

[hnlmorg]

The vast majority of buildings do follow the same regional templates though.

The reason they’re not specifically concrete cubes is more to do with the relative unpopularity of brutalist design than it is to do with the artistic flair of architects.

In fact I’m sure most architects would love to stamp more of their creative personality into their work but they have to dial it back for cost and practicality reasons.

[modo_mario]

Here in my area of Belgium it's become very popular to build modern cube buildings. Flat roof, featureless. No longer brick but a flat white, grey or black outside. i find it absolutely disgusting.

We're really just reinventing brutalism but without much of the commendable outcrops like the barbican or whatever.

[hnlmorg]

The only reason The Barbican (London) works is because wealthy people moved in. In my opinion, it's still a very ugly estate but it is a well maintained estate. So people can still admire its design.

Whereas other examples were left to deteriorate because wealthy people moved elsewhere. And thus all people see is dilapidated, ugly concrete.

While we are on the topic of brutalism, one of my most disliked Sci-Fi tropes is concrete buildings used as "futuristic" buildings. I honestly think the only reason they do this is because concrete is featureless so it could be from any era. If they used Victorian-style architecture or Germanic Gothic buildings then all you'd see is historic-looking architecture which would pull you out of the moment. But I, personally, cannot "unsee" concrete buildings in Sci-Fi. Everytime I see that I just see lazy set design. Plus I'd hope in a few hundred years we'd have found a better building material than concrete.

[Timwi]

Flat roofs are good for greenery and solar panels.

[shinycode]

I understand that it’s easy as analogy but I also could compare to shopping carts around the world. When it’s a tool the design converge to something similar for the job at hand. For corporate businesses a website is a tool. I won’t expect an artist or museum website to look like a corporate one

[unlikelytomato]

I am not so sure shopping carts are that great of a counter example. There are plastic ones like target, heavier duty ones, the weird ones at microcenter, lumberyard style, hand baskets, short ones, drag behinds, ones with kids car toys built in, tiny ones for kids to yeah along, ergonomic hand baskets, etc.

Then there are the innovations people had tried over the years like different styles of kid seats, calculators built into the handle, coupon scanners built in, security boots on the wheel, Aldi store coin lock connectors, motorized baskets, Ikea escalator locking wheels.

Thinking further, the designs change across the various countries I have visited over the years.

On top of this, I can visually picture all the different styles the groceries and department stores use near me to "brand" their carts and experience directly(Target's specific branded plastic carts and baskets). The very much see the shopping cart as part of their customer experience and have experimented with different setups. One could argue that the scope of utility for a shipping cart is miniscule compared to many websites. And yet, there is actually a lot of variety.

Given how there are people dedicated to so many seemingly insignificant corporate details(email signatures and other branding activities), it seems custom "website experience rules" would slot right into that line of thinking.

[shinycode]

Yes but in itself it’s not meant to be artistic, what you describe is to me variants of the tool. Creative variant yes, but not for art purpose. Just like a website. Maybe somewhere in the world there might be an artistic version of a shopping cart but it’s not a tool anymore and it’s not found where it belongs, in a supermarket

[esseph]

There was some F1 website posted on here the other day and it was absolutely beautiful, but a bit quirky to use in practice.

Ton of people complained, they hated it!

That's why everything is fucking boring, because everybody tries to cater to the average.

[Tempest1981]

This, I assume: (vertical scrolling moves horizontally, then vertically, later diagonally)

https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/43832710/how-f1...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44816977

[LandR]

Love that!

[cheschire]

I’m so happy I was not the only person to notice that.

A bit quirky is exactly how I would have described it and once I accepted scrolling one direction would move the page wherever the designer wanted, I was fine.

I guess we found all the kids at Ender’s battle school that couldn’t imagine the enemy’s gate as “down”.

[owlninja]

I do wonder how HN specific this is? Every site that has a quirky design or attempts something new gets absolutely blasted by surly people. But then someone posts a funny GeoCities style bootstrap theme and everyone goes on about how they miss when sites had a quirky touch?

[electroly]

I really think it's just simply about scrolljacking and not anything deeper. The GeoCities style sites have normal scrolling and the F1 site has hijacked (and very bizarre) scrolling. If your site hijacks the scrollbar then you will get complaints on HN. Keep it in mind and see how many HN complaints you read that are actually just about scrolljacking. I think readers here love quirky websites as long as it doesn't mess with scrolling.

[Timwi]

When I “blast” a website design, it's for practical reasons, not because I dislike the design. Since I mostly read HN on my phone, every website that is slow, laggy or unreadable on mobile just stands out negatively.

[bookofjoe]

I tried really hard to like that F1 website but just couldn't do it: terrible experience.

[verdverm]

From the well aged book "Don't Make Me Think", people read the web differently than books. Almost always they are there to find information or get something accomplished, not for aesthetics or pleasure (though social media has likely skewed this since it's penning)

This is why consistent UX beats out cleaver design (churn)

[esseph]

Bring back those crazy flash websites from the early 2000s

[appreciatorBus]

Pls no.

Like if someone wants to do crazy stuff, that’s fine, do it as an art project, whatever.

But IMO the only people who benefit when businesses and institutions are required to turn their websites into works of art, are artists. Everyone else is worse off.

[esseph]

There were some absolutely amazing ones in the style of old demoscene releases

[thrance]

See also, The Tyranny of the Marginal User: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...