UXD has NOT become TOO good
• when the average score for checkout for 30 leading retailers is 30%. (http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/DigitalPM/News/918531/Leading-retailers-basket-cases-when-comes-online-checkout/?DCMP=EMC-Media-PM-Bulletin)
• When online satisfaction scores run at only 67% , and one unhappy customer tell 17 other customers/potential customers (See Eric Reiss) as well as all the other knock on effects on Future purchasing, Loyalty and Market share.

“design in the digital space has become so seamless, effortless and professional that it’s arguably all getting a bit predictable”
The implication is that this is a “bad thing”.
Maybe for designers and possibly for brand marketers, but definitely not for visitors or consumers.

Would you like EVERY toaster you use to behave differently, in a disruptive fashion? How about every car, or even every 5th car, (http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/1/13/The_Homer.jpg)?

The crux of the difference lies in what the agencies in the digital and analogue space are trying to do.

ATL is about catching attention and maintaining front-of-mind in 15, 20, or 30 second spots or locations.

Digital is about fulfilling a purpose. Not functionality, a purpose. A purpose can be anything from:
• an aesthetic thoughtful experience, – Inspire me, now! (http://szymon.tumblr.com/)
• an informational experience — Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Bogle_Hegarty)
• a transactional experience, — Williams Sonoma (http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/6126122/index.cfm?pkey=ccookware-top-rated&cm_src=hero)
• to an experience — Orange’s never ending page (http://unlimited.orange.co.uk/flash/go)

The common thread here is that a customer or user is are interrupted by ATL from what they are currently doing, whereas they go to a website with a purpose in mind.

Consequently, the true mash-up here, and measurement of the designer(s)’s talent is how they can marry the design patterns (e.g., faceted navigation + lists of product or content) that are emerging with great emotional / aesthetic design to create an experience, not just an activity

I know what I did was wrong now

For instance, try giving a spoilt kid a new toy that’s similar to something they already have and see how much they care.

This created new “useful” interface techniques, the light-box, the auto-complete, the automatic polling update (as seen in Gmail) but did little to improve the beautiful, aesthetic even disruptive experience that blends with seamless usability.

Part of the limiting factors then were slow JavaScript engines and the dinosaur that is IE6.

This is changing, IE8 (to a degree), Safari 4, Chrome and Firefox 3.5 are far, far faster and with support for Canvas and some HTML 5 we will probably see this technology enable another shift. This will allow beautiful experiences to be weaved into existing user-interface web elements.

The chrome experiments give an early peak into these experiences. http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Traditional media is usually a “view” medium. This generally rewards Disruption: something unexpected is exciting — often, it’s exactly what we’re watching for.

Digital is usually a “do” medium. This generally rewards Usability. If I’m trying to get a piece of information and move on, I really don’t want to relearn how to use my mouse, or find the easter egg navigation. Something unexpected is emphatically not what I’m looking for.

Disruption and Usability each have their place, and neither is correct 100% of the time. The first job of the designer is to understand what sort of experience the user wants.