If you feel like me, you may have noticed that the Internet is flattening. Search engines return paragraphs of AI-stitched summaries, drained of character…and perhaps the beginning of the end of SEO. Social feeds churn out the same phrasing and formatting, whether from human or machine. Interfaces have become frictionless and interchangeable, mostly due to the use (and perhaps overuse) of UI frameworks (as I discussed with my friend, Nick Cawthon). Everything works. Everything loads fast, scrolls smoothly, and does exactly what it promises.

And yet, it all feels hollow and…booooorrring! When I open my newsfeed, I find that I endlessly scroll, searching for something worth reading that isn’t using the same exact clickbait tactics as everyone else. This is also why I’ve turned to newsletters for just about everything I need/want to know (more on that later).

In many ways, I believe we’ve entered a stage where utility dominates. Platforms are obsessed with speed, efficiency, and the promise of infinite content that they can monetize with ads that are rarely relevant. The result is an endless gray field of functional experiences that blur together. Designers see this in product briefs that prize optimization over imagination. Users Customers like me, feel it in their bones: a dull ache from interacting with tools that deliver results but leave no trace in memory (hence the endless scroll).

Utility has always been a core part of design. But when utility becomes the whole story, the spark disappears. And in that absence, a new frontier is opening: delight.

It’s not as if we haven’t been designing, or at least trying to design, for delight from the beginning. I just think, as we’ve expanded into the realm of utility and well-known patterns, we’ve sort of fallen into the sameness vortex, where, because everything tries to delight in the same way, nothing actually delights.

Hence, as I once again found myself endlessly scrolling for news and asking AI for info, which was returned instantly and blandly, I thought I would sit down and write about it in the paragraphs below…concluding with a rallying cry for all of us.

— Justin Lokitz

Design Deep Dive

The Drift Toward Utility

The shift toward utility didn’t happen overnight. It began when platforms discovered the power of centralization, basically owning the marketplace where two different customer segments exchange value with one another. The product goal here is to reduce friction through patterns, frameworks, constraints, and algorithms.

Google became the gateway to information. Facebook and YouTube consolidated attention. Amazon set the standard for frictionless shopping. Each promised convenience, and each succeeded in drawing the world into its orbit.

We designers adjusted to the gravitational pull. Websites were structured to please search algorithms rather than audiences. Brand pages were optimized for platform feeds. Commerce revolved around ranking higher on Amazon instead of creating richer shopping experiences. Distribution dictated design.

When artificial intelligence entered the picture, the gravitational field intensified. AI-generated content now pours out in every direction, filling blogs, feeds, and search results with competent but indistinguishable material. It is clean. It is instant. It is relentlessly uniform.

Personally, having owned a consumer-facing supplement brand on Amazon for a few years, I’ve been seeing this unfold for a couple of years. It used to be that I could post some really nice product shots with a sharp product description that described my products’ benefits. Alas, as soon as ChatGPT hit the scene, not only did this become easier and easier to do for everyone, but it also meant that there was no longer any differentiation. Uniformity is now the norm.

That uniformity is both the triumph and the trap. As everything converges toward efficiency, the cost is individuality. You know it when you scroll through a feed and can’t remember who said what. Or…when you attempt to compare products on Amazon. You know it when a product interface feels like you’ve seen it a hundred times before. Utility has become the default, and sameness is its shadow.

Delight as Strategic Advantage

When the everyday world flattens, what stands out are the peaks. Delight becomes magnetic. Delight becomes the thing people talk about.

Think of the first time you held an iPhone and the glass seemed to wake under your touch. Or the first time you opened a Moleskine notebook and the paper felt too good for grocery lists (which is why I have so many Moleskines stockpiled in a cabinet). These weren’t just functional products. They carried a sense of occasion. They made customers pause.

History shows the same pattern. When cars replaced horses, horses didn’t vanish. They became sources of fascination, kept alive in culture as symbols of beauty and freedom. When streaming gave us unlimited music on demand, vinyl records resurfaced as artifacts of taste and ritual. When fast fashion filled closets with disposable clothing, handmade garments and tailoring became symbols of identity. In fact, according to the New York Times, “Sewing Is Cool Again”!

In each case, the industrial solution became background infrastructure, while the older, more human alternative transformed into something rarer and more meaningful. We’re entering the same cycle with design. AI will dominate the realm of utility—summaries, templates, commodity experiences. That leaves space for human design to rise in value through originality, character, and emotional resonance.

Delight is not a luxury add-on. It is the differentiator when utility has been commoditized. It is the reason people will choose, and more importantly, talk about your product over another that functions just as well.

Designing for Meaning in Practice

The question becomes: how do designers cultivate delight when so much of the digital world, and especially AI, is built to flatten difference?

To me, it all starts with narrative. Every product, every service, every brand carries a story, whether articulated or not. Too many design teams neglect this layer, focusing instead on mechanics. But when you encounter a product that speaks to you, it’s usually because the story has been woven into the design itself. A notebook that feels like it belongs to explorers. A digital app that feels less like software and more like a companion (which, ironically, is sorta how I feel about ChatGPT, now that I’ve been using it for a few years).

It also requires attention to moments. Delight does not always come from grand gestures. It lives in the smallest details. A micro-interaction that surprises you with elegance. A turn of phrase in an onboarding screen that makes you smile. A texture or color that lingers in your mind after you’ve closed the app. These details cannot be mass-produced by machine learning. They emerge from teams that care about the humanity of the experience.

What’s more, sometimes these details incorporate friction. But, rather than that friction being an artifact of underdesign, when intentionally designed to bring a smile to someone’s face, it becomes a winner.

A good example of friction incorporated into design is how Duolingo designs daily streaks to keep learners coming back. These create a sense of momentum, while the threat of losing them taps into loss aversion. Stories break lessons into quick, digestible bursts that make progress feel achievable. And…when life gets in the way, the “streak freeze” softens the blow, giving users a safety net without breaking the habit. The result is a rhythm of small wins that turn language practice into a daily ritual.

And then there is community. Delight expands when it is shared. Designers who build spaces where people feel seen and connected create value far beyond the utility of the product itself. You can feel this difference when you join a small, well-curated community compared to a generic platform group. The human investment shows up in tone, in moderation, in the culture that grows around the design.

The practice of designing for delight requires a mindset shift. Instead of measuring only speed and efficiency, teams must consider memorability and emotional stickiness. Instead of designing to satisfy algorithms, we must design to spark conversation. Instead of optimizing only for the average user, we must craft moments that feel personal, even intimate.

The Business Case for Delight

Some may dismiss delight as indulgent. But in a market where utility is abundant and free, differentiation depends on meaning.

When every search engine (including ALL of the AI chat apps) delivers the same AI summary, the site that still carries a distinct voice will stand out. When every product can be bought through Amazon, the brand that makes its unboxing feel ceremonial will win loyalty. When every app solves a task quickly, the one that lingers in memory will be the one people talk about.

Delight has always mattered, but its strategic weight increases when utility loses its power to differentiate. Consider the resurgence of newsletters. They are simple, often stripped-down communications, yet readers flock to them because they carry voice, perspective, and a sense of relationship (which is what I am going for here, too). My personal favorites include Morning Brew and Superhuman, both of which employ a different tone of voice while relaying information in an interesting, surprising, and very human way.

Or look at boutique consultancies thriving not because they scale but because they create crafted, human-centered engagements that large firms simply cannot replicate.

Delight is not about chasing novelty for its own sake. It’s about building layers of meaning into experiences so that people feel connected rather than processed. It creates loyalty that is emotional rather than transactional. And…in a digital economy increasingly defined by commoditized content, that kind of loyalty is priceless.

Where Designers Go From Here

The temptation to chase efficiency via well-used patterns, libraries, and constraints will always remain. Clients ask for it. Platforms reward it. Budgets push for it. But And…designers have an opportunity to redefine the terms of value.

Instead of fighting AI at the level of utility, we designers must accept it as background infrastructure, like electricity or plumbing. Let machines handle the mundane. The role of design is to shape what humans find memorable, joyful, and worth gathering around.

This is not nostalgia for a lost Internet. It is recognition of a cycle. Technologies that once seemed magical eventually become invisible. The electricity grid no longer excites us, but a candlelit dinner still feels special…as do smart bulbs that change colors to create different moods. Streaming services deliver every song instantly, but a live concert can leave us speechless (BTW: if you ever have a chance to go to The Sphere in Las Vegas, do. Not. Pass. It. Up.)

Delight is design’s concert, its candlelight, its vinyl record, its tailored pants. It is the thing that cannot be mass-produced, the experience that carries weight because it was made with care.

The future of design will not be measured in how many seconds we shave off a process. It will be measured by how well we give people something worth remembering. Utility will always be there, humming in the background. But delight is what will endure.

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