6 ms·

> There's no shame in being homogenous and obvious, though. The real world analog is this... The reason people (especially Americans) stay in Marriott propert

• 3sdfs 6mo ago
  Trade-offs.
  • pen1sl1cker 6mo ago
    [dead]
• sdoering 6mo ago
  It is actually a rational choice. It is a defense against extremely bad experiences. A personal example from a few weeks back. My SO booked a hotel for a weekend as a birthday present. We went there, it had a fantastic spa, dinner was delicious, the room great, clean, and so on. Individually designed, well thought out, friendly staff. Breakfast came around and the coffee was abysmal. Really truly abysmal. What did we do? While eating breakfast we looked for a McDonalds, as we know for sure, that regardless where you are - you will at least find an okay and drinkable coffee at McDonalds. It is not a great coffee. And will never be. But the likelyhood is very low that you will find a shit coffee. Marriott is basically the same for hotels. Or MotelOne in Germany. It is the power of brand - you get a solid 7 out of ten. And to be honest - when I am traveling for work, this is all I want. I want to know, that I will have a clean room, a bed that is good to sleep in. And the knowledge, that I will likely wake up rested the next day when I have to be at my best for my clients. The risk of ending in a shit-hole got smaller because nowadays people write their experiences - but on the other hand, having seen how many of my reviews were being deleted by Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and the likes because some lawyer requested it - I don't give a rat's shit for online reviews.
  • triage8004 6mo ago
    McDonald's and 7/11 Cafe always good when you need fast and drinkable coffee that.eats Starbucks every time
  • ValentineC 6mo ago
    > Marriott is basically the same for hotels. Marriotts are sadly not the same between countries, and that's probably a good thing. The standard for large chain hotels in the US are much, much lower than everywhere else in the world. Full-service Hiltons in the US don't even have executive lounges anymore.
    • sofixa 6mo ago
      > Full-service Hiltons in the US don't even have executive lounges anymore. Some (at least one) don't even have breakfast facilities...
    • cultofmetatron 6mo ago
      > The standard for large chain hotels in the US are much, much lower than everywhere else in the world. this is true for fast food as well. mcdonalds in poland and spain were MUCH better than the slop in america. I had taco bell here in srilanka recently. it was DELICIOUS and tasted like real food. same goes for popeyes and pizza hut here. pizza hut in america on the other hand tastes regrettable and left me feeling like shit.
      • ncphillips 6mo ago
        KFC in Japan is not fair.
      • miki123211 6mo ago
        mcDonalds in Poland used to be the luxury brand. This is the part Americans don't get. It used to be the new, western chain that you only saw in American movies, and then you could experience it for yourself. When I was a kid (middle / solid working class family), we'd semi-regularly do mcDonalds trips as a treat. The experience of going to mcDonalds because you were too poor to do anything else was unthinkable to us. Other brands that are staples of the American experience were also like this. CocaCola definitely comes to mind here; most of our tapwater is drinkable, and bottled water is much cheaper than coke, so that was the default option for most people, along with coffee and tea of course. Somebody did the calculations on Polish Twitter recently, and apparently taking a 4-person family to Pizza Hut in the early 2000s used to cost more than our average daily wage.
• runarberg 6mo ago
  Personally, if I had to go to Phoenix, AZ for work and stay at a Marriott hotel, I think I would rather convince my boss that this business trip could be a zoom call, and during that zoom call I notice that participants have all sorts of fun virtual backgrounds, filters, emoji in their statuses etc. Because it turns out, the type who don’t want fun little differences are exactly the types who will gladly go on a business trip to Phoenix Arizona and stay at a Marriott hotel.
  • tmp10423288442 6mo ago
    > all sorts of fun virtual backgrounds, filters, emoji in their statuses I don't want more pieces of flair in my life, thanks You generally won't get to know someone well enough to appreciate their unique aspects unless you see them in person at least sometimes, unless that person has the habit of letting their freak flag fly in all circumstances, which has its own downsides.
    • runarberg 6mo ago
      > I don't want more pieces of flair in my life, thanks Then don‘t. My boss didn’t require me to put a minimum of 15 pieces of flair in my status, and personally I just put blur on my background... scrap that, I didn’t turn on my camera at all and just used my standard avatar (which I consider fun in fact).
• teiferer 6mo ago
  McDonalds. Homogenous everywhere in the world. US, Italy, Japan, Brazil, same stuff. Good pizza in Italy, goos ramen in Japan, grilled Picanha in Brazil, that's why you go there and want it different/original. But in software UI this is often overdone. I want the pizzazz in my audio software in what it produces, not in how the UI looks like.
  • gowld 6mo ago
    McDonald's is homogenous within a country, but very different in different countries.
  • stevage 6mo ago
    McDonald's is extremely different around the world. Different menu, different price.
    • olalonde 6mo ago
      "extremely"
    • ekianjo 6mo ago
      "extremely different" is an exaggeration. It's mostly the same with some local differences.
      • solatic 6mo ago
        Considering that people expect literally the same thing, I can understand how even small regional differences can seem extreme. Like not finding any beef on the menu in India, or any bacon in the Middle East.
    • makingstuffs 6mo ago
      I’d say the only place I’ve experienced McDonald’s to be ‘extremely’ different is in India due to the obvious prevalence of vegetarianism and outlawing of beef. In other countries the do have a lot of additional meals which are specific to their local taste (rice/fried chicken/different sauces) but the core burgers like a Big Mac, mcChicken and sides such as fries are there.
• pedalpete 6mo ago
  I think this is a fairly limited view of design, that's commonality in branding and somewhat layout. Real design would be changing how beds, showers, toilets, keys, etc etc work. Yes there is familiarity in the truly banal, but progress in design happens when we really question how things work.
  • pbhjpbhj 6mo ago
    >Real design would be changing how beds, showers, toilets, keys, etc etc work. That's [design] engineering. Rather than aesthetics/ergonomics. Like writing your own widgets in JS, generally a bad idea.
• pxoe 6mo ago
  Especially americans? The popularity and demand for homogenous american products and services (and other similarly homogenous things from other countries) overseas shows that it's not just "especially americans". What point would that even make? If anything the amount of people and customers of such things worldwide could easily outnumber just the people who live in one country, even as big. Desiring a level of service is not really a "uniquely american" thing. Perhaps there's also some impression that there's some "international homogeneity" that blurs things and makes it seem like it's coming from one place (even though it's a mix), but seemingly "cultural and local" things in other countries can be no less homogenous. Going from one japanese ryokan to another you're gonna experience the same level of homogeneity.
• ecocentrik 6mo ago
  Good homogenous experience is the hallmark of good design. There are no surprises with good design. It just works the way you expect it to work. Good design should not generally challenge your expectations.
• bluegatty 6mo ago
  The 'real world' analogy is much simpler: standards. Canonical UX patterns are generally beneficial and most 'design' attempts are well-meaning dark patterns. Xerox figured out windows, scroll bars, buttons, groups in the 1970s and most web interfaces are STILL not up to that standard! Heck - they're not as good as Visual Basic apps from the 1990s. Largely due to lack of design discipline.
• philwelch 6mo ago
  Used to be more true than it is now. I’ve been in a couple really shitty Marriotts.
• lodovic 6mo ago
  Exactly, these hotel chains guarantee a sort of minimum quality level which is sufficient for most people. No surprises.
• Gud 6mo ago
  More important than “same”, you don’t want any weird shit going on. I travel 300 days a year work for and stay in hotel apartments, and I still miss the Hyatt I stayed in Manchester in 2021… last place I stayed that had gotten everything right.
• doublesocket 6mo ago
  Am I alone in not wanting banal homogeneity even on a work trip?
  • password4321 6mo ago
    Probably after a certain quantity of work trips/year, yes.
• cambaceres 6mo ago
  Would you like your hammer to have a new and innovative design, or do you want it to look exactly like any other hammer? The majority of UIs exist for the user to perform a task as effectively as possible, and they benefit from being familiar.
  • a4isms 6mo ago
    > they benefit from being familiar. “Intuitive Equals Familiar,” a classic from Jef Raskin, the man who started the Macintosh¹ project at Apple: https://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html https://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html ——— ¹ Only to have Steve take it away. Jef left and created the Canon Cat, an opinionated computer that eschewed the WIMP interface in favour of anchoring n incremental search. Steve would also leave and create NeXT, and Canon would invest in NeXT as well.
    • alsetmusic 6mo ago
      > Steve would also leave and create NeXT More accurate to say that he was forced out. We (Mac nerds) were shocked when he came back. My father told me that I was super excited talking about his return, though I don't remember that. I do remember having a Mac Addict magazine with SJ portrayed as a priest on his return. Internet Archive ftw.[0] 0. https://ia601204.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/22/items/MacAddict-017-199801/MacAddict-017-199801-BobKiwi-v1_jp2.zip&file=MacAddict-017-199801-BobKiwi-v1_jp2/MacAddict-017-199801-BobKiwi-v1_0000.jp2&id=MacAddict-017-199801&scale=4&rotate=0 https://ia601204.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages....
      • a4isms 6mo ago
        Good comment! When there is a boardroom battle over control, I think almost any take is fair. Sculley kicked him off Macintosh. Steve then tried to oust Sculley, who gave him a "window seat." Sculley had the Board's support, and Steve resigned rather than quietly sit in the corner playing with "New Product Development" toys. The Board refused to accept his resignation and encouraged him to rescind it, but no they didn't give him meaningful authority, so he carried on to Plan B and negotiated the right to make "Education" computers. Did he jump? Was he pushed? Yes! And back to the point I was making... His trajectory had something in common with Raskin's trajectory, right down to raising money from Canon. ——— p.s. Fellow OG Mac developer here. I still have the SE/30 I used to write a classified ads app for QuarkXPress and Aldus PageMaker back in the day. I would describe classified ads software in the 90s as, "faster horses about to be eclipsed by automobiles."
• littlestymaar 6mo ago
  > when I'm traveling the Amalfi Coast in Italy, I want the Airbnb experience Unfortunately, Airbnb itself have turned into an IKEA showroom experience …