Everything Digital is Becoming the Same

It started earlier when I read an article about the homogenization of thought caused by AI. A month later, Spotify Wrapped came out — and then my Locket wrapped, Youtube wrapped, LinkedIn wrapped, Strava…even my flight app. And during these two moments, I was also noticing a common design pattern that has no doubt been influenced by the design of ChatGPT: the controls being centered at the bottom of your mobile screen, typically rounded edges like a pillbox, with one to three things you can click on.

It’s feeling like “trendsurfing” but on a business scale. Whenever something is found to be successful and adopted widespread, companies immediately jump for it to ride the trend wave before it dies. We see this all the time, with the most notable recent event being the Dubai chocolate bars. I feel like social media has exacerbated this FOMO in corporations — that they’re perpetually missing out if they don’t follow the steps of other corporations. We see it both on this larger macro scale but also in our own micro ecosystems of being. Stanley cups, parachute pants, so many others thati’mcurrentlyblankingonsorry!

We’re also seeing products bleed into each other, trying to diffuse into each other’s previously defined spaces. I was on an Uber today trying to listen to my Spotify music when an announcement appeared to sell their audiobooks+ (am I the only one who didn’t know they were doing this?) as they emerge into Audible’s space; they integrated music videos with songs as they take that from Youtube into their own system; they added DM features so you don’t need to go into any other app. I wanted to share a song to my music friend but there was a second of pause — did I copy the link and send it over on Imsg like I usually do, or just send it on Spotify and isolate our music conversations within this app?

It’s a disorienting feeling to shuffle through your apps and have to consciously consider whether or not to do a specific action there or a specific action here on this particular app. It’s weird to realize that these apps are becoming so homogenized that you can pick up these patterns without having consciously tried to find these common threads.

On one hand, it’s scary to consider the future of our digital landscape. What does it mean for these apps to all start to glom into one? Will the future become a centralized app/interface like many predict with the advent of AI chat platforms e.g ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini etc? Or will the pendulum start swinging the other way, as these businesses realize the independent creativity of design and interactions that a good amount of the population prefer?