In the last ten years, we have more or less achieved a visual standardization of the web, which made our communication and interactions more predictable and thus, more effective. This is visible in the buttons, the headers, the illustrations, the copy, and the layouts. All branded in a slightly different style but still looking extremely consistent and recognisable from one platform to the other.

UX today is taking the form of a global visual language! Yet, the pursuit of consistency, although it usually ends up in a result that is widely acceptable, does not help us to create an ‘honest’ relationship with the end user and thus a memorable (User) Experience. The scope of this talk is to remind the audience how absurdity can please our brain, tapping not in our need to recognize patterns, but in our innate drive to discover new things and be surprised. We will start from the philosophical and artistic background of Absurdism and study examples from web design, art, and pop culture to derive conceptual frameworks to push the limits of our own design work.