Digital Sameness
By North Kingdom
Digital sameness is a phenomenon spreading across many sectors in our age of digital maturity.
It refers to how in today’s world, everything digital—from web pages to mobile apps, even brand logos—tends to look the same, behaves the same, and features the same functionalities. Has YouTube introduced autoplay? Then rest assured that every other company dealing with video streaming will do the same, regardless if it makes sense for the brand, or even worse, if it becomes detrimental for the digital well-being of the end-user.
Before you run in defense of your brand or product and dismiss this observation, try with a simple experiment. Open a few web pages of clothing brands, banks, airlines, or even agencies. Now flip quickly between them without looking at the logo or show them to someone else. You will see that it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish which brand authored that experience.
At its core, digital sameness neutralizes differences and therefore undermines branding efforts. As a result, brands turn to louder, omnipresent, and sneakier communication that follows end-users, in the same way, in the attempt to stay top of mind.
Digital sameness means a huge missed opportunity and a danger not only for business growth and brand longevity, but the lack of originality also has a negative impact on industry professionals and end-users.
Three reflections for the next decade
The beginning of a new year, or in this case a decade, is an ideal opportunity to reflect on where your company may be most at risk of digital sameness and where you may want to intervene. These are previous faults of digital sameness that are changing in the future.
- Investment in UX and tech over branding. Forrester has observed how the customer experience index (indicating the correlation between customer experience and loyalty) has remained unvaried more than 200 companies for the fourth year in a row.
From this, we can infer that for at least four years the effort of many companies, especially the established ones, has been done in the name of consistency or effectiveness (i.e., creating design systems, adopting cross- platforms business systems) and adoption (i.e., developing an owned app, investing in new technologies), rather than creativity and personalization. Undoubtedly, many of these initiatives were needed, but at the same time, we can’t help but ask: what could have happened if the same effort had been addressed to the brand and the core of the business proposition?
We believe a brand profile rooted in your unique purpose, and a balance between structure and transformation are vital.
- Omnichannel copycat rather than strategy. The experience should feel the same on mobile and desktop! Such is the foundation of responsive design, but this does not mean that the experience should be the same across different platforms. The amount of data available to each company could be the starting
point to creatively re-think which features are available where. How can you write design and strategy briefings based on context and user needs rather than touchpoint?
To navigate this complex landscape, prioritize briefings inspired by user needs and pain points and incorporate creative problem finding (not only problem- solving) in your strategic process.
- Previous experience over human needs and curiosity. Regardless of our occupation within the industry, our age, and level of experience, or as end- users, we all have one thing in common: we are human. Whether we like it or not, our brains are biased and will steer us to the route allowing us to maximize rewards and minimize threats. Inevitably, these traits “interfere” with our creative processes, in how we structure them (it feels safer to repeat a known process than trying something new), how we make decisions (can we demonstrate that this new idea has worked before?) and how we execute them (referencing mood boards of already existing items). How can we evolve our processes, or invent new ones, for ideas to matter more than status? How do we make sure everyone feels safe to contribute?
Create a culture where people feel safe to contribute and where they can gather around your brand purpose. Explicitly invest in creating a shared understanding of your creative process and learn to be comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown.
Restoring the importance of creativity
Fighting digital sameness does not mean ignoring useful design patterns and user-centric norms or periodically re-thinking each experience from scratch. But it’s time for everyone in the industry to give creativity the importance it truly deserves. Each company is in charge of defining what this word means for them and what is their recipe for it. For some, it may mean sacrificing some profit to accept greater unpredictability, for others an explicit effort in company culture or a transformation in the work process, allowing more flexibility: it is up to you. For 2020 and beyond, we look forward to seeing what you will create, not to become more alike, but in the name of meaningful and intentional differences.