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microsoft didnt start these trends, and it's sad that they are following. win7 was a gold standard of usability and speed. Humans have fast 3d contour perception for a reason, it helps us find buttons and fruits.

i dare you to find your sound device's control panel in win10

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It's fascinating to watch how even babies pick up on what's a pressable button (and what's not) in the real world via contour perception. Before they even have an understanding of cause and effect, they love to find buttons on physical items and press them.

I wonder why UI designers stopped trying to leverage this principle.

Yeah, discoverability in modern computer UIs is terrible.

IIRC Microsoft did start these trends with Metro. Before Metro, all UIs (from MS, Apple, Google and even Linux) used more visually rich themes (it was during the time when Apple went a bit too hard on skeuomorphism). Also AFAIK even though most associate Metro with Win8, it started on Windows Phone 7.

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