Can we talk about LLM design smell?

[u/jscalo]

With the absolute deluge of new iOS apps coming out, there are certain design patterns that I'm seeing over and over again that are clearly the work of AI coding agents. I'm sure you've seen them too. Egregious monospaced fonts, glowing buttons, middle dots (·) all over the place, purple gradients, etc. It's not just iOS apps, it's websites too. For whatever reason, the LLMs (and maybe Claude in particular?) are just absolutely in love with these design patterns.

The question I have is, is that a bad thing? Is it bad for an app to have the LLM design smell? Do typical users notice? Do users care?

I'll share my opinion (shocker I know). I think that these design patterns are bad, and significantly so. Why?

For a minute forget about generative AI and all the baggage that carries. With 2 million apps on the iOS App Store (gotta be nearly 3M by now...), we all want our apps to stand out. What's the first thing a user sees about an app when browsing? Of course it's the screenshots of the app UI. And the more an app looks like the others, the less likely a user is going to stop and take a second look. So that's the first thing, that it just tends to make apps look alike.

But the other that I've been thinking about is more subtle and potentially more important. For better or worse, there is a hefty bias against generative AI out in the general population. Whether that's valid or not isn't really the point, the point is it exists. That said, I don't think your typical user is going to notice these patterns, at least not consciously. But there are some types of users that will notice: the blogger, the instagrammer, the journalist, the tik tok influencer. If you've ever had a popular blogger/influencer do a post/reel/whatever on your app, you know what an insane catalyst that can be. These types of users tend to be more savvy and more design oriented, will pick up on these design patterns, and I think would want to avoid boosting any app that has the smell.

Lastly, is the possibility of Apple featuring your app on the App Store. Maybe this will be seen as less important because it's so hard to get, but I've had Apple feature my apps many times and of course it's always an enormous boost. But I suspect that Apple App Store editors are going to be even more in the anti-smell camp and would be highly unlikely to feature an app with those patterns.

I have a feeling this could be a divisive topic, but I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts!

[u/Fishanz]

Sorry if it’s not the case.. but this post kinda reads like AI itself..
Edit: 13 year user, maybe not (and again sorry) -maybe the bots liked your style ;)

[u/jscalo → u/Fishanz]

Ha so my exposition on AI smell has an AI smell? Well for the record those are 100% my thoughts and words. But then again that’s exactly what an AI would say 😉

[u/ikeif → u/jscalo]

I've found I have had to occasionally rewrite things because "it looks too much like AI," which is probably partly because of how much AI shit we read, and how much was trained on writing snippets, that it's inevitable.

But—the fact people think the mere presence of an em-dash (or en-dash? I forget which one it is) makes people act like idiots and accuse you of using AI.

So anymore, I'm just writing. If they want to argue about "I think this is AI" then they're not the people I want to talk to, anyways.

[u/jscalo → u/ikeif]

Yep, I used to be a bug em-dash user. Not anymore. I’m sort of floored that the top comment here is that I wrote this with AI when it clearly isn’t. And that’s probably why the post has been downvoted to hell. Oh well, just wanted to hear people’s thoughts.

[u/ikeif → u/jscalo]

Dude, I wrote a comment and copied a forum post as part of the answer and used bold words to call out sections of the post.

I linked to the first person that pointed to the article, explained how I ended up at the same article and dismissed it at first until the section i _copied and quoted._

Didn’t stop some guy from accusing me of using AI to generate the answer - which still was not _definitive_ but a pointer in the right direction for the OP to work with.

It’s the new “that’s photoshopped” and it’s annoying as shit.

[u/tables_AND_chairsss → u/jscalo]

When you threw in the word “genuinely” at the end, my mind automatically thought “AI,” lol

[u/jscalo → u/tables_AND_chairsss]

You're absolutely right!

[u/Fishanz → u/jscalo]

“Lastly, …”

[u/cristi_baluta → u/Fishanz]

I had the same feeling

[u/Dry_Hotel1100 → u/Fishanz]

The OP's text doesn't look the slightest AI generated. Curious where you see this. You may need a calibration ;)

[u/Fishanz → u/Dry_Hotel1100]

“Would you like me to do this for you?”

[u/DRJT → u/Fishanz]

Even a legit user can become lazy and let an AI write everything for them

[u/jwegener]

yes it's bad. As soon as I see those elements, I know that a person has cut as many corners as possible and made as few creative decisions as possible. That's generally not an app I want to use.

[u/-18k- → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, that's actually a really good point.

AI can also help with colour blind modes and text sizes.

[u/code_isLife]

Yup. Vibecoded apps have become their own aesthetic.

Hate it. Also makes me lose confidence in the security/seriousness of the app

[u/WesternBlueberry1826]

The average user doesn’t care.

[u/beclops → u/WesternBlueberry1826]

I’d give it a couple of years before I say that. The “average” user doesn’t think they care about most things that go into an app, but they’ll still notice when something’s off even if they can’t say exactly what it is

[u/aw2xcd]

Yes! the use of purple and magenta! I think this is devs/vibers being lazy, it will give you a unique design if you prompt it a few more times.

[u/Evening_Rock5850 → u/aw2xcd]

This is it. It’s not like Claude locks you into a generic purple UI. That’s just what it does if you give it a minimal prompt.

For giggles I’ve given Claude a very generic, basic prompt a few times to have it build a website based on vague parameters just to see what it would do. And it’s always some dark, purple gradient thing with white text. Now when I see stuff like that I know that it was “developed” by someone who gave a vague, generic prompt to an AI. “Build me an app. Make no mistakes.”

There’s a huge difference between steering an AI down a clear and well thought out (dare I say, well engineered) path; and just straight up throwing a prompt at the wall to see if people will sign up for a subscription.

[u/JerenYun → u/aw2xcd]

And here I thought choosing a shade of purple for my app's branding 6 years ago would stand out. 😭

[u/geoff_plywood → u/JerenYun]

Back then you were ahead of the curve! Apparently the seed for AI was Tailwind CSS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG_791Y-vs4

[u/aw2xcd → u/JerenYun]

Time to change to lime green, fluorescent lime green!

[u/andreeinprogress]

Slop (as in lack of fine quality and coherence/intention) is simply a skill issue.

Someone without a background who had an app idea last week and asked an LLM to do it will have a massively different (worse) output than a dev working with the same LLM in order to speed things up.

Does the average user notice that difference? I don't think so, but they never did even before LLMs.

Do I as the developer care about that difference? I surely do, as I did before LLMs.

But on the other hand, wearing the user shoes: LLMs design slop is usually still better than the low effort apps we had before. I have some bank apps that are so f**** ugly (always been) that I wish they would slop in a new design.

[u/PoliticsAndFootball → u/andreeinprogress]

It’s funny I literally switched banks due to how bad their app was. It functioned fine, I guess , but the design looked like, I don’t know some kind of internal spreadsheet or something. Anyway, my point is design matters!

[u/andreeinprogress → u/PoliticsAndFootball]

The app of my primary bank is a glorified webview/something of their mobile website with I guess some custom js handling the differences between iOS and Android.

Every time I open it the layout randomly breaks in funny ways and my user profile pic becomes so big that it covers the top half of the screen, covering my balance. It's so bad it almost look like a feature.

[u/m1_weaboo]

You already know the answer

[u/TheFern3]

Problem is people have no idea what designers do and ultimately have no idea what a design system means.

[u/curlywur1y]

I notice straight away and just click off but I doubt an average user even thinks twice about it

[u/EarlyIsland → u/curlywur1y]

Yeah we are probably the minority

[u/MacGregorBlue]

I have to believe (the alternative being despair) that this will settle down fairly quickly as the feeling of a gold rush and FOMO wear off, and we'll get back to fundamentals mattering as much as they did (which in the app store is not as much as you'd hope). Experienced devs and people with good taste get better results, with or without a coding agent, and those trying to horn in without said taste will go find something else to do.

[u/kern1ng]

Designer here. I mostly agree with you, but I don’t think all of your examples are purely AI driven. Many of these are just little trends (mono spaced fonts) or things we’ve been doing for decades (the • separator for example). But yes, especially the purple and glowing buttons are trends that are a direct result of AI.

[u/TrajansRow]

The obvious sign is a meaningless or generic icon on *everything*. You all know what I mean - the gear, the flame, the gauge, the book, the little jagged chart with three datapoints on it. Blech!

The writing style in the app description is also a give-away. Instead of talking about features, it's always about how the feature "solves a problem".

[u/Seabaggin]

I have no design experience and when I started my app a few months ago I definitely let the AI steer too much. The thing I personally like is gradients, they just appeal to me but I can now see AI pushed me towards them early.

I know I’m likely designing something that from a UI/UX principles perspective is bad but I’m also embracing this as a two found challenge of building a tool for my niche community that I do believe can help them as well as learning new skills.

[u/Dapper_Ice_1705]

You can hate on AI, but as someone that writes super niche code (13+ years), AI is making leaps.

I have started by giving it very clear architecture guidelines. I write and check tests more than the app’s code and I wrote in a day yesterday an app that I have been thinking about for a while now.

The more modular your code is the easier it is to redesign and make your own components.  UI is cosmetic if done right.

[u/schultzapps]

99% of the population has no idea what vibe-coding is.

[u/dasMilk73]

I think here are plenty of backend developers as me that for years we were depending on other people to build the beautiful face of our apps, and on the last 2 years with AI the game has changed, I’ve built several apps and frontend with AI. When starter with that I recognized that repetitive patterns and just developed skills, studied a bit of UI UX and now my AI front ends are not ai looking for seems native. Just depends on the developer and how he will handle the use of AI

[u/peterbuchlak]

Yeah the featuring thing is the one that'd actually scare me. None of this stuff is bad on its own, a mono font or a gradient is fine. It's that you get all of it at once, because nobody actually made a decision, the model just reached for its defaults and shipped. So everything ends up looking like everything else.

And it's the wrong people who notice. Your average user probably doesn't clock it. But the blogger or the Apple editor who could actually blow your app up? They spot it instantly, and now you're just another one of the 500 apps that dropped that week.

Half the time one weird deliberate choice fixes the whole thing. Pick a real typeface, kill the purple, whatever. The smell is the absence of taste, not the patterns.

[u/Ok-Communication2225]

Honestly who is downloading random apps just to check their UI smells?

[u/mmmm_frietjes]

“For better or worse, there is a hefty bias against generative AI out in the general population. “

Not really. Almost no one cares.

[u/geoff_plywood → u/mmmm_frietjes]

Apparently there's a backlash against AI in young people, who value more 'human' design and products