[oDot]

Interestingly, I am looking for the exact opposite -- I don't want my products looking anything like other websites.

The democratization of skill-learning is splendid, but boy is it hard to find a non cookie-cutter designer these days.

If you know anyone ..

Ofek (at) nestful dot app

[imjonse]

> I don't want my products looking anything like other websites.

if your product is a personal page or art/game, sure, understandable. Otherwise for apps it is beneficial to have consistent UI. It was the case for decades on desktops, it is true to a certain degree on mobile phones, and it makes users' lives easier.

[alias_neo]

I remember fighting this one well over a decade ago when management was telling us engineers that our web, Android and iOS should all look, feel and behave the same; it took some time to convince them that what you need is not consistency across platforms but consistency _within_ platforms.

Nobody on iOS cares what/how your app looks/works on Android, they care that the UX meets the expectations they have of that OS because they're switching between apps on that platform all day every day, people actually moving Android<-->iOS are few and far between, I mean literal decade(s) time-frames that people aren't switching.

[esafak]

You don't have multiple devices? I have an Android phone, an iPad, a PC, a Mac, etc.

[z3t4]

I have Windows, Linux with various desktops, iPhone, Android, and of course web browsers, and I think the apps look and behave pretty much the same across all devises. Maybe because almost all apps are web apps in a native shell. UI components it seems was a matter of performance rather then usability and developer experience!? Or it's just scripting madness gone framework insane.

[pasc1878]

Yes and they behave differently which is what I expect - they are different tools and they should behave consistently on a platform.

They should be tuned for the platform.

I can't use gestures on a PC or Mac but I can on a iPad or Android. Similarly I can control a PC or mac from a proper keybord and mouse but the usual use for iPad/Android is via a single finger.

[cpursley]

Well, your customers do. Having to relearn an entire new set of UI patterns for each site/application is exhausting for regular people. Don't make your users think.

[Pet_Ant]

I miss the Windows 98 days where almost all apps used the same generic UI and the visuals drifted into the background like noise and I just saw buttons and checkboxes.

That’s the worst part of webapps is that they have their own look’n’feel. I don’t want your branding and colours. I want the functionality and get out of my way. I want my own colours and fonts.

[whizzter]

While I agree to some extent about branding and colours, things were hardly a panacea with a lot of buttons and checkboxes as the infamous "Bulk Rename Utility" showed how things could get out of control (probably nice for the author and those that used it from the start but waay too cluttered for anyone without exp).

First and foremost an UI shouldn't confuse or even worse mislead the user, now button as hammer for everything chaoses of old or branding idiocy of today both are guilty of those crimes.

The art of UI's has progressed, sadly some fresh designers are dogmatic as they are mostly exposed to "beautiful" B2C products rather that internal products and often miss the effectiveness factor of tools.

https://medium.com/@aneel.kaushikk/bulk-rename-utility-redes...

[Pet_Ant]

> things were hardly a panacea with a lot of buttons and checkboxes as the infamous "Bulk Rename Utility" showed how things could get out of control

Layout and usability are independent of widget design. I'll take the widgets shown in the "Bulk Rename Facility" over the any of the flat UI "material" nonsense where it's not clear what is clickable and you cannot by process of elimination explore the UI.

That said, usability definitely has been improved over the years. So no, not everything was better then, but the widgets were.

[BoorishBears]

I've never heard of, or seen the tool, and I'm not particularly steeped in legacy software.

So I immediately got why this could be an example of "out of control UI/UX"... but immediately my eye was drawn to the bolded headings at the top of each section, and then the numbers next to them.

And so pretty much immediately after that it was clear how this worked: select the files I want to rename, checkboxes to select the transformations I want, and press the big Rename button when I'm ready.

Their redesign feels worse. Hiding the details of each transformation feels well intentioned, but it'd get very annoying having to open and close sections: never getting a full picture of the pipeline I'm putting together.

It also hides features I wouldn't expect to exist, like the Js renaming and translation.

I think if we hadn't let UI become implicit marketing and kept it highly HCI-driven we could have had the best of both worlds. But I guess the software industry decided we need new product releases to look different enough to warrant collecting more money, so we're deep down the current path.

[graemep]

Or MacOS from the same period which was even better, or desktop software in general. Even now desktops are a lot more consistent.

People often complain about lack of consistency between Linux desktop apps (e.g. Gtk vs Qt), but the differences are usually compared to the differences between web apps.

[oDot]

I was talking just about the look of it, and not the interactivity. UX's familiarity bar is much higher than than the UI one.

Edit: And even for UX -- I am confident in saying we did not reach max usability yet. Some people (me included) are willing to take the risk of (some) unfamiliarity for potential innovation

[numpad0]

You don't start from sewing your shirt to dress like a clown, you buy a weirdest cuff links you can find, and that suffices.

Well, I might start from researching multi Kinect coordination to scan myself, but I'm not a sane person. You probably are.