I'm so tired of spending weeks debating whether a hamburger menu icon should have three or four stacked lines, while completely ignoring that half the users can't even click the damn thing.
We obsess over copying Google's exact shade of blue like it's some magical hex code that'll unlock success. We treat successful designs like artifacts to be copied exactly, not living systems built on principles. We see Google's card-based layouts and think cards equal success.
Meanwhile, that blue probably fails contrast ratios. And we ignore the fact that those cards were designed with clear hierarchy, sufficient spacing for touch targets and semantic structure for screen readers. But who gives a shit about that when we're too busy measuring the corner radius on buttons?
We need to stop blindly copying others and calling it a day.
Every visual choice we make connects to bigger systems. Accessibility features, touch targets that actually work for people with motor disabilities, semantic structure that makes sense to screen readers.
Pixel-perfect reproduction are useless if we don't fundamentally understand why they work. Our button may look exactly like Google's. Except nobody can actually use it.