Posted by FergusArgyll 4 hours ago
I'm not sure if it's because I've iterated through so many sites that LLMs have produced that "slop" is instantly recognisable and it just feels soulless.
Not like web pages ever had a soul, but it's not there on the generic LLM generated sites.
I think it’s the fact that my eyes have been blasted with a certain visual ‘vibe’, and I’ve come to associate it with apps that are, on average, a bit lazy
Even the example apps in the post seemed like AI slop to me. Common markers are too noisy/busy (mainly repeated or rephrased information). Text being a bit too big (Codex-only?).
I've been building a personal app with Opus 4.8 over the past two weeks and the design is excellent. I provided it with screenshots of what I wanted, then had it build out a gallery of functional UI elements (like designers do). Claude built out a tool that would screenshot the app, compare it to the design screenshot and automatically reposition elements or update the styles to match.
You can also provide it with a style guideline prompt and have it double check all the work it produced matches the UI style guidelines before committing.
I've had good luck providing a png "design board" with all of the template colors and having the first task be to build out a design gallery with all of the ui widget. Then have the design docs specify which component to use. Ensure that the documents specify to only use pre-existing components and have a list of each component and their intended use cases.
Of course, this learning came after seeing how awful V1 of the app was. Initially, it looked really impressive, but once you started clicking around it became obvious how incoherent the design was.
Claude's new frontend-design plugin is solid for web apps in my testing. My wife and I have been using it to build her an app and her discerning design eye is largely impressed with what it's done.
is there a way to quantifiably measure how much better one design would be from another?
The whole "AI slop" noise is, at its core, human slop. It is people applying a hopefully pejorative label, trying to appeal to other slop aficionados that like whatever the current trendy slur is, in an objectively undefinable way.
In this case this guy likes the way Qt apps, they think it looks better, but it isn't a big trick they are revealing: They made it conform to the style they like, but this doesn't translate to anyone else in any measurable way. I think web apps looking like Qt apps feel like the late 90s and it's just weird, but my taste also is entirely subjective and mine alone.
It seems like you were starting with an existing HTML file you asked it to redesign. Generating from scratch with strict guidelines could be more representative.
Today, I can visit a website and instantly tell it was generated using LLMs and agents from A to Z:
1. Everything is in blue or mauve gradient, with a white background, and a single JavaScript-heavy page that lags as soon as you scroll a little.
2. There are always a ton of 404 pages.
3. Third, the HTML comments often expose credentials and to-do lists—sometimes even right above the login page (true story...).
This kind of website is a hard pass for me, and I add the company (and its founders) to my personal blacklist of people and companies I’ll never use anything from.
Think WordPress installations: Depending on how it's done you can either tell at a glance (probably ~90% of WP installations at some points in time) or you have no clue until you look at the html source.
Of course, when given the option to not do it properly is always alluring and then you can tell.
But if it functions fine and you don't have taste or want to be opinionated, why do you care?
I like the idea - all of the designs are pretty meh though. If I had to pick one, I'd pick the HIG one (apart from that cursed glass effect on scroll) and then probably the Win11 one.