State of the Front-end 2024: Reflection 1
Front-end Frameworks and UI Libraries Have Commoditised UX & UI Design
The Software House have just published their State of Front-end 2024 survey. These are my reflections.
Shadcn/UI Library
Pretty much everyone is now using one of the modern declarative, component-based front-end frameworks (React/Next in the lead, followed by Vue/Nuxt and Svelte/SvelteKit). These, combined with excellent, customisable UI libraries (ShadCN, NuxtUI, Ionic), are making it easy for almost anyone to produce a “good enough,” on-brand UI.
I believe this already has two side effects:
The demand for detail-oriented UX & UI designers has significantly decreased.
The quality of interfaces overall has increased (especially in MVPs and prototypes produced solely by engineering teams).
But here’s the flip side
As frameworks and libraries continue to democratise good design, the distinctiveness of apps and services is slowly being lost, averaged out into sameness. The same grids, the same spacings, the same animation curves. Have we traded uniqueness for intuitiveness, speed, and efficiency?
When you remove the need for fine-tuned, bespoke craftsmanship, you also remove the space for innovation that comes from deep, detail-oriented work – the kind that turns a product from merely “functional” into genuinely “delightful.”
In a sea of “good enough” designs, the risk is that we lose not only diversity in aesthetics but also depth and richness in user experiences. And if all products start to feel the same, isn’t that just… bad UX in disguise?
