i'm just thinking of how every web page seemed the same for a long while there cos everyone was just using safe defaults
do you mean the bootstrap era or the bootstrap 2 era or the microsoft-went-square-so-everyone-fell-over-themselves flat trend or the material era or the The Web Is Now Blue And White era or ......
(e: and that's only back to, like, 2012/2013.... fucking hell)
or the "we made our own design system that we've open-sourced for no reason other than to say we open source"
Do you mean that as an example of brand taking a back seat by becoming bland and homogenous?
just that you had to actually look at what the specific thing was.
in such circumstances, the "brand" is really "thing with trendy website"
yes, still very much in that zone too. The web has been design system'd to death. I don't think you can even find out what the thing is via the site now, I guess that's a big part of my ranting, that they really don't want to assert what it is too clearly. Hence the "but it's so easy to use" being the brand.
lol holy shit that was you?! I saw that ages back and laughed my ass off at it
@fasterandworse I definitely remember this being put forward about 10-15 years ago during the UX boom (basically, “your UX is your brand”). I don’t know if it’s so much of a conscious decision anymore. I suspect not, because as you allude to, UX is more about fashion now.
I agree, I don't think many of the things I criticise about the UX industry are the result of a conscious decision, but no less insidious. It's a good point though, I also remember the emergence of UX as a thing when there would be talk about it being everything - as if things like usability, accessibility, customer service, QA, etc never existed before.
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