I’ve tried the opposite approach. When a client mentions the chatbot, I’ll sometimes open a few smolweb sites, fast, minimal, readable, calm. No pop-ups. No blinking corners. Just content, clear and immediate.
Their eyes change. “Oh, that loads fast.” “That’s easy to read.” “I like that.”
The quote made me optimistic. It’s a shame that clients followed their own observation about straight-to-the-point websites loading fast and being easy to read, with a degrading remark about the simplicity of such websites. I realize that the point of a web developer job has always been something different than making good websites (as a whole, it’s closer to first making something nice and then trashing it with your own hands), but that’s a dreadful realization.
Yeah that’s why I couldn’t stay in design work. Too many times the client wants you to take your balanced, appealing attempt to express their vision and turn it into clipart.