I think it's important to not mess with the customers mental model. In particular the shopping cart pattern was created over a period of time to make the eCommerce user experience as frictionless as possible. So when someone wants to get through the cart, you would want as few surprises for the customer as possible. The hamburger icon is a great example of how a UX pattern has taken a long time to filter down into the the collective mindset of users... "oh.. this is the menu". I still get clients asking when the funny stack of lines are and end up adding "Menu" right next to the icon. So my question is this: is it safe to try new things, or is it better to stick with existing patterns we know work? Or is there a blend of both? Is it better to let larger operations (Facebook, Google, Apple etc) to forge the way with mass assimilation of UX patterns? I do think my first instinct is right (first sentence), but I would love to know the experiences of other UX people about integrating new and fresh UX patterns.
Great comment. I'm finding it one answer of your ? To be more and more a "depends on your project."
I do theoretically find a website to be a form of "artistic expression" but unlike most other medium, there is a technically "right" few ways and many "wrong" ways to "implement" your art. When you see a website posted here that takes a bit of artistic liberty in its design, you will undoubtedly have some HN commenters criticize the way they did such and such.
Despite the fact the page load time is only affected by one millisecond, that "incorrect" implementation is reason enough for some to trash the designer and deem his "solution" inadequate.
What we then see is a world full of TALENTED designers often too afraid to try something new.
But, isn't that the point of art? It's meant to be polarizing.
This is just personal opinion, but I'm finding it more and more necessary for the designer of the modern web to have multiple, concurrent projects as opposed to completing one project and moving on to the next.
Currently I'm working on an athletics site which uses your now "bread and butter" design which the OP gripes on, but I'm also working on a payment web app which has a design that harkens to someone filling out a clipboard.
I've just this week also accepted a project to showcase a fashion designers portfolio, and I'm swinging for far left field on that one.
If I was not working on these projects concurrently, I would not have learned that each design has advantages and disadvantages, and I would be pidgeonholing myself if I didn't give myself room to fail
We are all still learning and growing in web development.
And our consumers are growing too. One interesting thing you mentioned is that users are steadily growing more accustomed to the hamburger button - a quick google search will tell you that the Hamburger wasn't so tasty in AB testing, however, users learn. I've been a part of a reason site redesign which found the extra click of a dropdown menu was better liked (and had more click through) than the link bar, despite our demographic was relatively older users!
And The hamburger menu is a great case study as it has become commonplace in modern design. You could go with the triple bar, or do Apple's approach of a double bar that rotates into an "X" ( https://apple.com ), or you could do Google's three circles arranged vertically in their mobile Chrome browser, but the concept is essentially the same.
Now, there are very talented developers on HN that despise the hamburger, and perhaps rightfully so, but you often hear crickets when an alternative is proposed. Certainly the tabbed interface at the bottom with a "More" button works, but it doesn't work for every case.
So sure, you will have some projects where you have to go with what is known, but try some other projects to challenge a different approach out of you to build up your chops.
