Last month an old student from my web development class at the University of Ibadan called me. I could sense he was not happy but we talked for a while until he was more comfortable to make his complaint…
Obi: …Why is your website the same just like everyone else — it used to be different
Me: …How do you mean?
Obi: …I don’t know but all of you just do the same thing these days
Me: … really? like how?
Obi:… it’s the same, logo at the top left, banner, and clients…. not that bad but it’s not your style.
Really interesting take and while I agree that the sameness can be boring and restrictive from a design perspective, I’m not sure about the need to ‘innovate frequently’.
I feel the answer lies in a balance (like most things) considering the intended target audience (eg of a website). There are a lot of times that users simply need ‘consistency’ in design which doesn’t give room for a designer to ‘innovate frequently’.
An example is for an ecommerce site, imagine the confusion if a user doesn’t find the ‘basket’ icon where she expects? Even imagine if ‘basket’ is called ‘trolley’, this is sufficient to cause a decrease in sales (i.e. cart abandonment) just because a designer was too clever.
The truth is just because some things can be improved and made to look better doesn’t necessarily mean they should. A lot of times, usability has been proved on a large population (eg website navigation), so a new company might be better off jumping on that best practice bandwagon. Of course if you’re Apple with proven design chops, you stand a chance.