I read some time ago that the desire to be all original all the time is a sign of imaturity. I’m sure that if I had the quote it would be handy, but I haven’t got it. Therefore, you’ll have to know that that quote is not original to me, but it does pop into my mind with some regularity. I appreciate art that I see that represents a style for the first time (usually, with some exceptions), I appreciate music that I’ve heard for the first time that sounds new or different. Heck, sometimes I hear something new, don’t like it, but then it grows on me (read: Mukula). My buddy Tony Nuzzi kept saying he liked it and I kept saying, “No.” After a while I listened to it again and realized that it was much like some Beck music I was listening to. Doh!
There’s a lot to be said for originality in software as well. However, doing something a new and different way just to make it new and different and unlike its predecessors is either arogant or ignorant. People are used to certain things and not delivering on what they’re used to is more than likely going to reduce usability and confuse them. Originality in what your software does, however, is fantastically cool. Everytime a new web app gets talked about but no one says what its going to do, I get a little excited, hoping that it will be something new and revolutionary. However, I have not thought of anything original in the world of software design and programming with a few exceptions, and those may or may not be original, but they were not seen by me before my design and use of them.
In short, I want to re-affirm the idea that always being original, all the time is going to slow you down, keep you distracted and may actually prevent you from making the breakthrough that would be original had you been in the right place and right time to achieve that originality. Or, like Microsoft, you could just copy the Apple Interface and call it good. Because it is.
