All software dashboards and layouts look the same...

This is something I was thinking about yesterday. I know many people use templates to get off the ground but I decided to build my own from scratch using tailwind.

I agree with what someone said about; that general people who will be using our product/service won't care if it looks similar just that it gives them value/benefits. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about this.

I feel like many of the main factors have been well-discussed here, mainly the comments pertaining to templates, reinventing the wheel, laziness and the cost efficiency of not being creative, and the fact that having similar components can lead to a sense of similarity.

There's another factor that I feel wasn't touched on, which is the creativity process itself. When designing something new you have to take inspiration from something, however the sources of inspiration are very homogeneous. It is actually very difficult to just naturally be creative when creating something - for example, try drawing an animal that doesn't exist. You will tend to take pieces of animals you know.

Additionally, consider the client's perspective, especially in regards to familiarity. When designing something new, you are often challenging an existing standard. If someone were to create a new dashboard, a client would look at the industry standard and just say, "Why doesn't mine look like that?". They will be drawn towards what they already know and find it difficult to accept what you make, unless it is revolutionary in some way.

Most people are using templates - We did not. There are pros and cons to both decisions. We have noticed user ease of use comes from dashboards that look the same.

One of the master templates for dashboards is AdminLTE - a free template. The majority of themes on ThemeForest will have origins from this one one way or another.
I use it as well, it's not bad. Users are familiar with this design. And it saves lots of time to just customize it, rather than building it from scratch.

I think that is normal see very similar dashboard because the concept of a dashboard has a common patterns / components / design ecc.

It's a waste of time reinvent the well if you find a template that fit your products, you will develop the same thing. Anyway you can modify the template if you want a custom solution :)

Designers can be expensive and the quality of free or cheap themes has gotten pretty good. It depends on the product but a template is a good option for a lot of small businesses.

Templates save time, i usually use some bootstrap template or something for dash's. Even without a template they tend to look similar because of the components used.

the admin template called "adminLTE" is often used. It's a free theme, with enough features for almost all the needs

You've obviously looked at many dashboards - which is not usual.

For example - to me as a designer, majority of the website designs that are posted on IndieHackers seem the same, as they all follow the same principles, use the same illustrations, have the same website structure and copy is often similar.

But to the end user, that's not something they see, and usually you don't need to be inventive. Plus everything szferi said.

I'd say custom design really comes into play if you need to climb above competition in the same niche, but for MVPs and established businesses it's just an icing on the cake.

Most of the dashboards try to communicate a lot of information in a very limited space using mainly tables and charts. If you are taking into account only the geometric constraints, there are very few ways you can arrange this element on a site. The other factor, I think, is that familiarity helps the user to find information fast on the dashboard. You should do a lot of UX research if you want to do something significantly different and more efficient, given these constraints.