---
date: Aug 29, 2026
author: Murat Alpay
role: Product Designer, Design Engineer
category: product
featured: true
cover: /images/interpolation-space-is-a-decision.webp
excerpt: AI is extraordinarily good at adding plausible interface. That has made me much more interested in removing it.
---

# Boring UI is becoming more valuable

AI is extraordinarily good at adding plausible interface.

That has made me much more interested in removing it.

Ask for a customer detail page and you will probably get tabs.

Ask for analytics and you will get metric cards.

Ask for filters and you may get a surprisingly sophisticated popover with animated chips.

None of these things are necessarily wrong.

They are patterns because they often work.

The problem is that they are now almost free.

There used to be natural friction around adding an interaction.

Someone had to design it.

Someone had to build it.

Someone had to name it.

Someone had to handle all of its states.

Maybe someone questioned whether the interaction should exist at all.

A lot of that friction is disappearing.

I think some of it was useful.

## Cheap UI creates expensive attention

I recently spent too much time making a filter panel feel good.

The panel faded and moved in.

Selected filters animated into chips.

The result count transitioned nicely.

There was a small blur treatment that looked great in a recording.

Then I actually used the product.

After the tenth time opening the panel, I wanted it to appear immediately.

I knew where I had clicked.

I knew what was behind the button.

Nothing was being explained.

The interface was simply asking me to watch it arrive.

So I removed most of the movement.

It immediately felt better.

Not more minimal.

More respectful.

## The chrome and the product have different jobs

I still care a lot about motion.

Sometimes movement is the clearest way to explain a change.

An object moved from one place to another.

A layer entered a hierarchy.

A file was created.

A spatial relationship changed.

Those transitions can teach the product.

But a menu appearing for the thousandth time is not teaching much.

A sidebar does not need to perform.

Search does not need personality every time I use it.

A destructive action should not become visually ambiguous because the interface wanted to look sophisticated.

A table is allowed to be a table.

I find myself increasingly wanting product chrome to become boring through use.

The first time you encounter something, it should be understandable.

The hundredth time, it should be nearly invisible.

## AI is very good at making care visible

This might be the part that bothers me.

Generated interfaces often contain many signals of care.

Nice transitions.

Soft gradients.

Perfect icon alignment.

Helpful little badges.

Decorative empty states.

Everything says somebody paid attention.

But craft is not the quantity of visible decisions.

Sometimes the most considered thing you can do is remove one.

A filter that opens instantly.

A label that uses the obvious word.

A table that does not become a gallery.

A button that stays exactly where your hand expects it to be.

As it becomes easier to decorate software, restraint becomes easier to notice.

I don’t think boring UI means unambitious UI.

I think the best tools become boring in exactly the places where the user has already learned them.

That leaves attention for the parts of the product that are actually changing.