Rethinking design piracy in the world of UX
Imitation is the best form of flattery. Or is it not?
In 2017, I came across the term Design Piracy while reading one of the articles by Justin Zhuang, a Singapore design critic, writer, and researcher at In Plain Words. “Piracy is a ghost that will always haunt the world of design.” A quote from his writings left a deep impression on me ever since.
What is Design Piracy?
In plain words 🌚, design piracy refers to the knockoffs and imitations that copy the original designer’s intellectual property.
The Yeezy, AirMax, Supreme shirts that you find on eBay or Alibaba are just some daily examples. They are pirated, sold at an affordable price, and widely accessible. As the saying goes, “Imitation is the best form of flattery”, though lawfully wrong, it is still being consumed by the public at large.
Over the past decades, design piracy has been closely related to the field of industrial, fashion, arts, and literature design. It is always about something tangible.
However, what about designers’ intellectual property in UI/UX, a field of design that is rather non-tangible?
Design Piracy in UI/UX
Design Patent for UI
In recent years, companies are indeed filing for patents for their software development. Patents help to win the legal war over design originality as seen from the 2012 Apple vs Samsung saga.
Apple, known for its sleek designs and products, had over 1,300 patents related to its physical products and GUI. A list of things in their patent includes how a button will appear on their screen; how the handwashing feature will appear on the Apple Watch; and many other examples.
Can you still create copyrights to your UI design? The short answer is yes. The long answer? Reading this article here by Craig Rosenberg will be better for the explanation. At what stage would you consider a design a copy? or it is truly original for a patent or copyright registration?
The Apps’ Mimicry
Craig Rosenberg mentioned in his article that:
“In general, you can copyright the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. So you couldn’t copyright the idea of a clickable button, but you could copyright the artistic design of a specific button; for example, Apple’s original Trashcan icon is protected by copyright.”
With this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the examples below from popular apps to see and understand what is design piracy in UI/UX.
Design that represents an E-commerce app
E-commerce apps, though cluttered with information, you will notice that you won’t have much trouble navigating around different apps. They all have a ‘fixed’ layout and interaction that you will expect. Starting from a “Search”, “Categories”, and their “Latest Sale”.
They are designed for your behaviour. They understand that you are here to shop, be it casually or with an intention in mind. Users always want the best deal in town which explains the various “Sales” cards that they have.
Design that represents a travelling and experience discovery app
Similarly, for travel or experience apps, the first thing you will notice is the large search bar that prompts “Where are you going? Where to?”. They understand that you have a destination in mind and your goal is always about finding what you can do at a certain place. These are apps catered to help you discover things beyond your intended goal.
The above are just two examples. If you are seeing a pattern here, you are on the right track. They are working around the concept of “you can copyright the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself”. In this case, the idea comes in the form of layout, iconography, fonts, or colours.
We can at least expect products to not be a blatant copy and paste but a design that shares a similar concept.
Rethinking Design Piracy in UI/UX
In the generation where high-profile sites and companies dominate the market, they bring along a set of fixed user behaviours in interaction. Should we be mitigating away from the usual engagement?
Instagram popularised “Double tap to like” as a form of interaction and this has also appeared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and probably some other smaller platforms.
“Upvote, Downvote” popularised by Reddit, ingrained a mindset of moderation for good and bad replies. This once again can be seen on platforms like Zhihu, Quora, and other forums.
The concept of Card design was also given a lot of attention in Google’s Material Design, Twitter’s card component, and the list goes on and on.
“Form follows functions” popularised by the architecture and industrial age perhaps is the most relevant quote that aligns with today’s digital age.
If we prioritise the “functions” as a user requirement, the “form” to follow may produce a similar form. Thus, originality may not be the best answer to the best user experience or interaction.
My final thoughts
Humans are a creature of habits, changing your habits is hard, let alone changing others’ habits. Design piracy in UI/UX is unavoidable as users are accustomed to certain interaction behaviours and will always expect similar feedback (across different products) when they interact with something.
What would differentiate an app from the other, in terms of design, is localisation.
Chinese apps are good examples of having a direct “sibling” of an English app. Facebook is Weibo. Quora is Zhihu. Instagram is Xiaohongshu. Whatever Facebook has, Weibo has it better. They are built with the intention of how their local users will use them.
In the end, we are providing the user with a better experience while using our product. It is not about how creative the interaction or design is but how it can help them achieve their goal with lesser hurdles.
I believe design piracy in UI/UX has been closely related to user behaviour and expectations.
My question to you now is “Has piracy become the solution for most user experience problems?” Let me know in the comments :)
Well, that said, if you can create a new UI or design layout that creates a breakthrough, that is very impressive as well.
