Beautiful Windows 8 concept
dribbble.com
dribbble.com
I count eight distinct types of system font in there, all denoting different data/functionality. Semiotically there are no signifiers other than the size, weight and position of the text. It's the closest thing you can get to mystery meat navigation whilst still providing words.
Look at current incarnations of Windows Explorer that people are familiar with. There is a very clearly delineated sidebar and "address bar" at the top. (The web changed the way that people interact with computers. Many people's first and only experience with computer applications is a web browser, and unfortunately for many of them it will have been Internet Explorer.)
By removing the lines of demarkation between UI elements, instead of downgrading the system interface it's been upgraded. Everything in the Windows Explorer pane is on equal footing.
The out of focus windows would get old pretty quickly too. If you're working on two things side by side your eyes have to switch between one in-focus and one out-of-focus window. Unless there's a way to dynamically switch focus to "on" for multiple windows, but then that would get messy quite quickly when you can't tell whether something is in the background or foreground, active or inactive. Yuck.
The dock at the bottom looks nice, but the challenge is that you're reliant on icon designers adhering to very specific standards or the whole thing will look crazy.
The main problem with this concept, I think, was that the extreme minimalism ended up in a UI that hides too much information.
Even when I love the way it looks like, it feels like I would need to hover everything, just to get more info (and if Win8 aims to touch devices... hover is not good).
And of course, it doesn't look good for multitasking.
Here are some other concept designs from the same time... http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/25/2823647/windows-8-desktop-...
This other example is really interesting, because of the fact that it anticipated extremely well how Windows 8's Explorer looks like today: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/056/8/b/8b357c7cff026...
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/056/0/b/0bd5349ab72b1...
Compare it to the real thing:
http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-bl...
I count two typefaces, at varying sizes & emphasis, according to their importance. The header hierarchy and sizing is quite nice actually.
Separating lines are not the only way to achieve grouping or separation, whitespace can be just as (usually more) effective. You can see in the Skype window that a slightly darker background helps isolate the action area and give focus to the chat area. The gestalt principles are also in effect here.
My main criticism would be the unnecessary whitespace at the top of the Explorer and Skype windows, which is also inconsistent with the browser window behind, and causes the window controls (max/min/close) to be too far from the edge and consequently less easy targets. In Skype it's even worse since they are shunned onto the middle of the window. That is an usability nightmare.
I agree with the out-of-focus effect. Maybe the effect could only apply to overlapping windows, if windows are not touching then both are in focus - that solves the multi-app workspace case. OSX uses very broad shadows to basically achieve the same.
Separating lines aren't the only way, but there isn't enough whitespace here to be good: it just looks like a regular Windows Explorer window without the lines; there's not a lot of increased space.
How do I launch Office from this interface? What do the tick marks next to "Homegroup" and "SkyDrive" indicate? What about the 3x3 grid of tiny squares next to "Max" in the Skype window, which is almost impossible to see? Why is the "minimise" icon in the top right of all windows still a thin horizontal bar? Why say "thumbs only" when that's self-evident? What do the red and green squares in the IE tab bar indicate? How do I see which taskbar icon is highlighted if my wallpaper is white? How do I see them at all if my wallpaper is bright orange?
So you can do this as a hobby, mostly for a portfolio.
But asking money for end user software is something you really don't do on linux so there's no really well designed software.
Actually when this was first made (a few months ago) it was just an experiment to see how Metro styles and concepts could be applied to the desktop. Back then the Win8 builds were still all using Aero and there was no hint of a new style, so in retrospect it got quite a few things right.
Looks very "metro" to me.
"Full flat GTK3 theme": http://lgsalvati.deviantart.com/art/Full-flat-GTK3-theme-255...
This is what a designer thinks looks good but there is no solution to any problems here, just more problems that aren't obvious in a single screen-shot. It's the same problem as when as web developer gets the signed off design and realises that the whole design falls apart when any number of variable elements go in because the designer narrowed in on making a flat image look good rather than exploring every possible outcome of that UI.
The biggest initial problem is exploration and sign-posting (making discovery of user objectives easier either explicitly or subtly). The is no room for sign-posting because everything is flat and white.
Also the contrast looks good in a flat image, but would drive people nuts after a while (and would break most contrast requirements for accessibility).
Don't get me wrong, it's lovely... but no one will ever produce a commercial OS UI like this.
edit: nevermind, they're the same person.
edit2: on second viewing... I still hate it. So far towards artsy-minimalism, so far from function.
While i'd love to see this and it is undeniably beautiful, its not really what i'd call a practical solution. This makes me wonder, is it only beautiful because its a concept? It only looks so good because its free from practical restriction, what would it look like if it was made into a real world application?
This also makes me ask, is the only way to radically change UI to come up with a completely new from scratch paradigm, and if so, is this why we have metro?
Surely, quite a lot of time a design can be tweaked in its current version to make some great changes which drastically improve upon the usability. But on the contrary I think that Windows has reached a stage where some minor tweaks in its current incarnation won't make a lot of difference. It can only be optimized not radically improved until it is completely though from bottom up.
You might like to read about the concept of "Local Maximum"[1] on 52 weeks of UX. Here's a excerpt from the post.
Do you ever feel that your design has become stale and that despite your making lots of little changes to it over time without any big overhaul there is just no way to drastically improve it? If so you’ve probably hit what Andrew Chen calls the “Local Maximum”.
edit: github not git, my bad.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Chrome_OS_21.0...
I still like my 90's plinth buttons - at least I know which is a button and which is a piece of headline text.
- too much screen estate lost on a window title bar ?
- on date/time as well
- how does the "invisible" taskbar look when a window is maximized ?
- vertical scrollbar too narrow ?
And where is my beloved quick-launch bar ? ;)
Take http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6697/explorer2.jpg for example, the problem there is that in the screenshot it's all aligned and nicely ordered but i can't help noticing he only displays landscape pictures. Same goes for several other concept screens.
I don't want to break down his work but it's just that there are many great concepts that I would love to see come to reality but once they have it isn't all that like I thought it would be.
UI/UX really is hard :)
http://theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui-con...