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Comment by ssivark | Hacker News Reader

I speculate whether this observation indicates that most of the chatter around "design" is signaling focused on appearing hip/trendy -- largely a branding effort overlaid on top of company goals, rather than an effort to think through actual user needs from the ground up. That would explain why so much of the focus is on fads.

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It's more than that—it's peacock feathers. You do it to signal you have money to burn looking "modern". You'll even see people on HN complain that a site looks "old", sometimes—not bad, just old. Keeping up with trends signals you're doing well enough to keep your site from appearing old, so looking maintained and up-to-date.

I think it's related to how chain stores & restaurants look so much more polished these days, and completely re-design their logo and colors (repainting whole buildings) every few years. They didn't used to do that, and everything generally looked a lot less "slick" than it does now. All I can figure is a couple of them started doing it to differentiate themselves from smaller chains and mom-n-pop stores (that couldn't afford that crap) and the rest started doing it so they didn't look left behind. Such a waste.

There is a hive mind of designers, but one must follow this hive mind to remain relevant. It is actually the case that skeuomorphic design, all the rage less than a decade ago, would be a turnoff to users today. Now, could this be because people associate good design with successful new products, and those new products have happened to use a different UI mentality for no other reason than signaling to a design-minded minority? Perhaps. But those new products do indeed exist, and they have truly moved the goalposts. One must follow design trends or perish.

Or maybe design is just entertainment. It’s a story that keeps the monkey mind engaged in what is most likely a banal exercise.

I sometimes wonder if the branding effort I’ve seen over the past few years is even overlaid company goals.

A lot of it seems to be designers signaling to other designers. Like Dribbble has expanded across the web and product landing pages are now the shots.

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