Avoiding AI-looking design
Generated UIs tend to reach for the same handful of decorations. None of them are wrong on their own, but together they make a page look templated. The portal avoids all of them: it opens with the page title and gets straight to the controls.
Patterns to avoid
| Pattern | Why it reads as generated | Do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Pill badges above the headline ("New", "Open source", "v2.0") | Filler that every landing template ships with | Remove them. Use badges only next to data they describe, like a status column. |
| Huge hero headline with a pun or tagline | Says nothing about what the page does | Start with the page's job as a plain title: "Moderator Dashboard". |
| Gradient glows, blurred blobs, radial backgrounds | Decoration with no purpose, often purple or indigo | Flat surfaces separated by 1px borders. |
| Grid of numbered or icon feature cards | Content stretched to fill a 3-column layout | A table or a short list. Only make a card when it groups controls. |
| Small uppercase eyebrow above every heading | Repeats the heading and adds noise | The heading alone. |
| Emoji in headings, buttons or the README | Cheap personality | Plain text. The logo carries the brand. |
| Everything centered | Templates center by default; tools don't | Left-align content in a container, like the portal. |
| Large radius on everything | Soft, toy-like, and inconsistent with controls | One radius from the tokens. |
| Cards that lift and glow on hover | Motion on things that aren't interactive | Only controls react to hover. |
| Dotted grid or noise backgrounds | Texture to hide empty space | Remove the empty space. |
| Invented stats and testimonials | "10k+ developers" with no source | Real numbers or nothing. |
| Sections that exist to exist | "Why choose us", "Features", "Get started" on a tool page | Cut any section without real content. |
Writing
| Avoid | Use |
|---|---|
| Seamless, effortless, powerful, unlock, elevate, supercharge | Say what it does: "Searches projects by ID or URL." |
| Lists of three adjectives | One accurate word. |
| Em dashes in every sentence | Periods. Short sentences. |
| Title Case Headings Everywhere | Sentence case, except proper names and the app's own labels. |
| Explaining the obvious ("Click the button below to...") | A clear button label. |
Quick test
Cover the logo. If the page could belong to any product, it was probably assembled from defaults. Remove anything that doesn't help the user do the task on that page.