Is Microsoft Metro Undesigned?
levifig.com
levifig.com
Does anyone actually agree with this? There are a lack of examples and evidence in his post. It seems to me the author just doesn't like the Metro design language.
"Good design is as little design as possible" - Dieter Rams
You think my opinion is "wild". Do you have any hard evidence to back that up? ;)
I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, invalid, or wild (my previous post was referring to the general importance of backing up your opinions). I honestly wasn't commenting on your specific opinion (because I haven't read it except excerpts in these comments). But those who say Metro is a design failure really seem to be running against the grain on that one. In many cases, the author's backlash against Metro was more of a thinly-veiled attack on Microsoft than an attack on Metro. If someone is saying that Metro is undesigned and made simply because Microsoft is out of ideas, that kind of lumps that author into that category for me.
I will admit I have no idea who you are/what you are. Your domain is blocked by my corporate proxy for being a spam URL.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28design_language%29#Re...
As to what I am/am not, it should be pointless: you should analyze my argument and agree/disagree based solely on itself. Am I the greatest writer there is? No. Will I never change my opinion? No. Is this a rational argument based on the information given to me? Yes. And to this point, I haven't changed my opinion (but may in the future).
As to my domain being blocked, I'm sorry: I never spammed, hosted spam and it doesn't even contain any ads. I would argue against "corporate proxies" but that'd be off-topic… ;)
Furthermore, the lack of differentiation between apps is a bad decision in my opinion. It's hard to figure out which app/feature you're using without reading the titles/headers… I don't know about you but that doesn't seem like a good choice in an interface for a desktop/multi-tasking device. Again, Metro is being developed without a clear identity, hence my opinion.
But yes: it is my opinion and yes, you may disagree. Opinions are subjective. :)
It is the kind of frustration I feel trying to use Android for anything serious.
A bit like having one hand tied behind my back.
-Betteridge's Law of Headlines:
But I can't pick out a piece of software or a website that looks the same as Metro except for the ones that are doing it deliberately. If Metro were "undesigned," you would think other people would have made the same "non-choices" before.
What they haven't done is reorganize how you interact with the desktop OS. And I think that's a deliberate choice not to redesign the mouse/keyboard model for using toolbars, icons, and all the stuff people are familiar with in Windows. The full metro tablet apps are perhaps more clear and obvious, but that seems like more a side effect of the "poke things with your finger" interface than any defficiency of desktop Metro. It's more intuitive.
It's not that designers cannot round corners or simulate woodgrain to their heart's content. It's just that it isn't necessary for developing software which fits within the overall design aesthetic...a designer can even use serifed fonts if they wish, it will just be more work than using the standard and probably to little benefit for the user.
Where Metro excels is in allowing the use of branding to communicate with users - e.g. Twitter and Facebook applications are recognizable by their logos - and Metro's simple aesthetic favors designers who can develop similar iconography for their products.
Even further than that, the "Document" icon that looks like a page is becoming more and more foreign, as programs shift toward single purpose apps that handle all of their own data. It makes sense to people who are used to the paradigm of "paper" documents living in "folders" in their computer, but if you've never seen a directory or your app doesn't expose individual data files, a whole lot of other traditional icons start to turn meaningless.
And as we move toward more unified gadgets that a lot of people have grown up with, what do we do? Make a mail client that looks like a smartphone because that's how people read mail? An eReader app that looks like a physical Kindle?
I don't think a leather address book is any more valid than a 3.5" floppy save icon. A single purpose app for contact management should reflect that it's a database of contacts, sure. Should it reflect that it's a book? Eh.
For one, remember that Metro is deeply driven by touch devices. As a general approach, Microsoft's designers made the decision to avoid skeumorphism by making _almost everything touchable_. It's a great philosophy for touch interfaces, and it works quite well on today's windows phones.
Another piece of the puzzle driving metro is Kinect. Since Microsoft uses the same design language on all its platforms, the XBox shapes the desktop. Since the Kinect has trouble reading vertical hand gestures, the designers push for most desktop screens to lay out horizontally like the XBox.
With just those two small examples, you can see why the Metro desktop experience is both flat and horizontal (in many places, not all), which this author interpreted as thoughtless.
To reiterate my point, I think the Metro language is very well considered for devices that ask users to complete one task at a time (mobile, tablet, television). It's not so great in a multitasking environment, perhaps because Microsoft is trying to make their cross-platform experience too consistent.
Again, Microsoft has great designers and Metro has some awesome design ideas but it's, in my opinion :), fundamentally undesigned because it fails to make the hard choice of defining what is its purpose and use. :)
What, specifically, did you hope MS would change? Say what you will about the product, but the Windows platform has been a cool piece of engineering for a while now.
"Design is about making choices and Metro makes none."
This assertion seems to be the central point of your post, but I don't think you provided the evidence to back it up. How is simplicity not a design choice? What about "be authentically digital" as a design mantra? I'm not refuting your assertion, I just wasn't swayed by your arguments. Maybe you could point to some specific examples to illustrate what you mean.
Regarding the architecture, I was thinking specifically of the mixed delivery of a whole new one (Metro/touch-driven) and the old/current one (classic Windows/mouse-driven). I've read quite a few articles about this but one I find myself agreeing with the most is Gruber's: http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/windows_8_fundamentally_fl... -- the main point is Microsoft failed to make the choice to potentially come up with two products, one designed for Touch and this new Metro architecture (ARM, HTML5 apps, etc…) and one geared for the desktop computer. They're so caught up on their perceived value of the "Windows" brand, they're failing to make the hard decisions…
As to your second question, I think my above point also covers this one in part. Microsoft is in a position to make some radical changes and improve on a product but avoids making those choices. Even the Surface will have a version with a full-blown CPU and ability to run desktop apps. Metro is caught in the middle of this "identity crisis" and, as such, fails to deliver a good experience in either camp. Furthermore, I think the core design model of "colored boxes" fails to deliver the unique experience that each app can offer: my experience with the "Music" app can't be the same as the "Control Panel". It becomes forgettable and everything blends together way too much. Yes, this particular point maybe a bit subjective but I'm sure some UX specialists could pitch in and give the hard evidence. My point is a "gut feeling" but informed by knowledge of what a good experience is… :)
Thank you for your comment! :)
As a side note, have you used metro apps on a desktop? They work well, and generally the simplicity and hard decisions made make the experience more visually engaging.
That's how I feel about Microsoft's decision. I've tried the metro apps and while they impress visually, they fail to help me remember them the next time I need to do something they exist for; they all look alike and lack distinction and uniqueness.
This is obviously all subjective, but I believe we'll see some major changes in the next 2-3 years to the Metro UI: Windows on the desktop users won't use much of it (not the Metro look, the native Metro apps)… Put a non-tech person using Windows 8 and you'll get "huh?" and "where's A or B?" at an alarming rate. A new user to OS X (coming from Windows) will have less trouble finding what he/she wants than coming to Windows 8 IMO, and that's not good for Microsoft.
I think you might have an interesting point to make, and as someone who has worked on the project, I am especially interested in seeing and hearing criticism, but you have not provided any information or value to the discussion.
I'm not rooting my point in a specific argument: it's my opinion based on experience and an understanding of the corporate "identity crisis" the Metro UI is being dropped into… :)
The choice they made was that we need not shoehorn interfaces into desktop or touch categories.
Why not be able to touch your laptop?
And it was a tough choice in the time that Apple separates iOS and OS X.
Android is the one that didn't make a choice and simply copied Apple in this regard.
Imposing a touch centric UI onto traditional desktops is the very definition of shoehorning.
"Why not be able to touch your laptop?"
Having a touch interface doesn't magically confer touchscreen hardware. Most laptops will not be touchscreen as this means additional cost.
"Android is the one that didn't make a choice and simply copied Apple in this regard."
Apple did not invent the grid of icons concept. At best they imitated designs that came before them and Android imitated the imitator. It made a lot of sense at the time considering the iPhone was in the middle of running away with the market compared to traditional smartphone interfaces like the Blackberry, Palm, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.