Today there was a building where the fire alarm or smoke detector went off which resulted in the fire department having to go into the building. The interesting was the sound of the fire alarm sounded almost exactly like what you would hear when there is a large truck backing up. Therefore, a lot of residents actually had no clue that they were supposed to evacuate because of a potential fire. It makes you think how when you are designing these types of products it can be useful to just use what people are familiar with versus trying to be different for the sake of being different.
That can be tricky too where if it’s something like say button layouts on a camera one could then be accused of simply copying another company by using virtually the same layout. But is that worth the change such as if everyone was used to the “record” button on the right-hand side of the camera does it make sense for you to put it on the left side just to be different as an example so that people won’t say you are unoriginal?
I feel from a consumer standpoint, the main times I would prefer a product to be original is if I am expecting it to be different. For example, watching a movie where we expect to see things we haven’t. But in most regular circumstances it’s more about things such as functionality and ease of use where people generally don’t care if it is creatively different. Example, for the most part when people buy a computer they just want it to work without having to relearn everything. I don’t think many would care too much if you made the power button extra fancy looking.