Interface design is diverging: that's a good thing
Key takeaways
- Interface design is moving away from universal trends toward brand-specific storytelling through visual aesthetics
- "Dribbbleization" has long led to designers creating for peer approval rather than user needs - but visual design is finally diverging
- Core UX principles remain consistent while visual expression becomes more intentionally diverse
- The biggest risk isn't going too far, it's missing the opportunity to differentiate in a saturated market
- Leaders can foster effective design exploration by providing strategic context, experimentation space, and the right talent
Trends in the visual language of interface design have for years swept across the digital landscape like so many ocean swells marching single file towards the shore.
Skeuomorphism gave way to flat design, which evolved into the highly-codified Material design, then shifted toward an increasingly rapid traipse from neumorphism to digital interpretations of brutalism and maximalism. With each “movement,” a new aesthetic orthodoxy. Too many interface designers dutifully followed along without deep consideration of users, strategic goals, or brand storytelling.
We're finally watching that pattern break down, as major brands and appllications pursue strikingly different visual directions.
Anthropic's humanizing scribbled lines contrast with Arturia's techy, diagrammatic edges. Notion’s chaste minimalism sits alongside Airbnb's playful 3D icons. Apple's doing … whatever Apple’s doing.
These aren't outliers or startups eager to telegraph their independence: they're sophisticated organizations making deliberate choices about how their interfaces should feel.
Dribbbleization
"The German says to wait here..."
To understand where we are, let’s first review what got us here.
The design community has spent years trapped in what we sometimes call "Dribbbleization" - the tendency for many designers to strive to impress other designers rather than serve actual users.
Dribbble, Behance, and similar platforms have created an ecosystem where designers showcase polished, trend-forward work to gain peer recognition. The most-liked shots become the visual language that other designers emulate. The result? A homogenization of digital aesthetics driven not by user needs or brand strategy, but by what gets likes and comments from fellow designers and pushes work to the top of the feed.
The problem compounds when combined with the aesthetic-usability effect, first described by Hitachi's Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Kashimura in 1995. The aesthetic-usability effect refers to users’ tendency to perceive attractive products as more usable. People tend to believe that things that look better will work better — even if they aren’t actually more effective or efficient. This has intensified an adverse dynamic in UX/UI design: as less-experienced or strategically-oriented designers copy trending styles that "look good," they are far more likely to introduce, ignore, or amplify deficiencies in usability.
This dynamic has real business consequences. When every fintech app adopts the same gradient-heavy aesthetic, or when every SaaS platform uses identical illustration styles, brands lose their ability to communicate their unique value through their interfaces. Users encounter a sea of sameness that makes it harder to understand what each product actually does or why they should care about it.
The problem with Dribbbleization isn't just visual repetition - it's a misalignment of incentives.
Designers optimizing for peer approval rather than user outcomes create interfaces that look nice in static screenshots but are often barely usable - far from serving the people who actually need to interact with them every day.
Divergence is strategic, not chaotic
Today, we are seeing a move towards diverse aesthetic approaches, but it's important to acknowledge that we're not seeing random experimentation for its own sake - we're seeing strategic differentiation in response to market saturation. When hundreds of competitors occupy the same visual space, no one stands apart. Smart organizations are using visual language to tell clearer stories about who they are and what they offer.
Below is a great example. Musical instrument makers Arturia's web interface sets it apart from a sea of competitors by adhering to usability principles while cultivating a unique visual language that feels completely consistent with its approach to its products: precise, comprehensive, and making bleeding-edge technology easy to learn and master:
So what’s driving UI design divergence?
Four key forces are converging to make aesthetic divergence both possible and necessary:
- Design tool maturity has democratized sophisticated visual execution. Individual designers can now achieve complex aesthetic effects without massive development overhead, making it feasible to pursue distinctive visual directions.(This is hugely due to the dominance of Figma in the UX/UI design world, although last week's IPO news may be the prelude to the rise of un-enshittified competitors like Penpot)
- Market saturation means that functional parity is increasingly common. When every project management tool offers similar features, the interface becomes a primary differentiator. Visual identity is often the first way users understand what makes one option different from another.
- Brand storytelling demands have intensified as companies compete for attention in crowded markets. Organizations need their interfaces to communicate their values and positioning, not just their functionality.
- User sophistication has grown as people interact with dozens of digital products daily. Users can handle more visual diversity because they've developed stronger mental models for how digital interfaces work, regardless of their aesthetic treatment.
How product and brand leaders can create conditions for effective exploration
For leaders overseeing design teams, the challenge isn't deciding whether to embrace this trend (you should) - it's how to enable smart exploration that serves strategic goals rather than just visual novelty.
The most effective approach focuses on creating conditions that help design teams triangulate the right aesthetic direction by combining strategic context, user insights, and creative experimentation.
- Provide Strategic Context: Design teams need clear understanding of organizational goals, competitive positioning, and brand values. Without this foundation, aesthetic choices become arbitrary. The most innovative visual directions emerge when designers understand exactly what story the interface needs to tell and who needs to hear it.
- Enable Controlled Experimentation: Effective design exploration requires space to test ideas without committing to full implementations. This might mean dedicating sprint capacity to visual prototyping, creating design systems that accommodate aesthetic variation, or establishing regular design critiques that evaluate aesthetic choices against strategic goals.
- Assemble Diverse Perspectives: Teams that include both visual and UX expertise, along with strategic and technical input, make better aesthetic decisions. The goal isn't to let visual designers run wild, but to ensure that aesthetic choices are informed by user needs, technical constraints, and business objectives.
- Establish Clear Evaluation Criteria: Aesthetic exploration needs boundaries. Teams should understand how visual directions will be evaluated - whether they support user task completion, reinforce brand positioning, differentiate from competitors, and remain technically feasible.
Finding the right balance in UI design experimentation
The biggest risk isn't that teams will go too far in exploring new aesthetic directions - it's that they'll miss the opportunity to differentiate in an increasingly crowded market. Conservative visual choices feel safe but often result in interfaces that fail to communicate anything distinctive about the organization or its offerings.
However, aesthetic innovation should serve strategic purposes, not exist for its own sake. The most successful explorations emerge from deep understanding of user needs and organizational goals, not from a desire to create something that looks cutting-edge.
The sweet spot lies in aesthetic choices that feel distinctly aligned with brand values while remaining usable and accessible. This requires ongoing dialogue between design, strategy, and user research to ensure that visual innovation supports rather than undermines core user experience principles.
Mindfulness app Open, which recently recruited James Blake as its Chief Sound Officer, breathes life into its own visual language which gradients, soft images and textures, and simple line diagrams, but keeps a focus and clarity at the center of its user experience:
The path forward: balancing visual exploration with strategic discipline
Interface design divergence represents an opportunity for organizations to use their digital presence - and product interfaces - more strategically. Instead of following trends that everyone else is also following, teams can develop visual languages that reinforce their unique positioning and make their products more memorable and differentiated.
The age of universal design trends is giving way to something more sophisticated: intentional aesthetic diversity in service of clearer communication and better user experiences.
This shift requires that design leadership (and the C-suite above) balance creative exploration with strategic discipline. The goal isn't to be different for the sake of being different, but to find aesthetic approaches that genuinely serve user needs while communicating organizational values more effectively.
For leaders managing design teams, this means moving beyond trend-watching toward fostering environments where aesthetic innovation can emerge from deep understanding of users, strategy, and brand identity. The result should be interfaces that don't just look distinctive, but feel purposefully aligned with what an organization is trying to accomplish.
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