I try to be very aggressive about this. The first thing I do when someone asks me to build something for them is to research existing solutions and confirm wit

I try to be very aggressive about this. The first thing I do when someone asks me to build something for them is to research existing solutions and confirm with them that they really need the new thing. If we agree that it's worth building the new thing, I'll probably try to use the same file formats, UI patterns, names of features similar apps do.