Why We Crave Software With Style Over “Branding”

oftware started out being specific — designed just for one person even — then expanded to a broader audience by trying to appeal to everyone and losing its identity in the process.

What we’re witnessing, I’d argue, is the reemergence of style in software: the process of humans recognizing and projecting their sense of self onto products — turning inanimate pixels into something with soul.

Style is the indescribable quality that sums up how interacting with something makes a person feel . It isn’t simply sprinkling bits of color or animations on top of enterprise software to move metrics. It’s the feeling the user gets when everything about a product feels specific to a certain personality that they can identify and relate to.

Modern software’s humdrum lack of identity has resulted in users craving more interesting, opinionated tools, tools that feel like us — or a better, more interesting, wackier version of us.

Modern software’s humdrum lack of identity has resulted in users craving more interesting, opinionated tools, tools that feel like us — or a better, more interesting, wackier version of us.

As technology advances, software will increasingly be chosen not just for how well it addresses its use case, but how it conveys its personality, similar to how ... See more