Works pretty good but must be really hard to code.
You see it plenty on the web.
Just like you often see on the web when used this way, the spaces change as you interact with them: they disappear as you navigate deeper into the site, they shrink as you scroll a bit down, etc.
(They aren't that complicated to code in either XAML or HTML/CSS, the two markup languages used for this.)
>it's alive space that brings the eye to what's happening or what's new/fresh or what's about to go on.
That's the misalignment of interest right there. The devs would love to have their users focus on "what's new", i.e. ads and self promotion. The users give on average zero shits and just want the functionality they came for. I guess we all know which side MS is on.
Certainly I know examples I like and examples I hate, and I think everyone has a different preference, but it's not the worst design tool on the block.
«The users give on average zero shits and just want the functionality they came for.»
Groove also uses it to front-and-center feature artist information and album art of the currently playing song or some album you are looking at it. There are links in those banners to start playing something or otherwise interact with it.
As a design tool it's neither good nor bad, user hostile nor user friendly: it's merely an option in the palette of design choices for an app/website and its up to the designer how they want to use.
Front-and-center is not the way I would describe it. They're squashed to the left, leaving huge swaths of empty.
Notice how the actual functional buttons in the banner are tiny, have no frame around it and no hint that they're clickable. They're tucked away in a corner and almost an afterthought. Also, definitely not touch-friendly. (I suppose that paradigm is dead now.) Looking closer, I especially like how there is an 'additional functions' button at the end even though there's plenty of space to put more buttons.
Most of the space is just wasted on a pointless gaussian blur that would get old real fast.
Also note how the actual functionality (in the article picture for groove) is to display icon lists of albums, and there are certainly more than can be fit on the screen. The humongous banner comes at the cost of reduced functionality.
>As a design tool it's neither good nor bad, user hostile nor user friendly
The way tools are implemented and marketed can either push third-party devs towards user friendliness, or away from it, e.g. by making certain choices easier/harder or by promoting certain reference designs. The message I'm seeing so far is definitely not towards encouraging user-friendly UI.
> One example of this is collapsing, dynamic headers, which are, again, common already on the Web. The Groove Music app already uses such a header; when viewing a particular artist, the header is shown with biographic text and a large picture. Scrolling down through the artist's songs shrinks the header, removing the text and using a small picture.