"Design is about making choices and Metro makes none. Of course excessive skeuomorphism is bad but it is design because it makes a statement and presents no choice. What Microsoft shows in “balls” to make changes it’s lacking in making choices. The lack of depth and uniqueness of the Metro interface reminds me of design work when empty of inspiration and avoiding a carbon copy from another design: flat geometric objects with simple colors. You may criticise Apple’s, at times excessive, skeuomorphism or even Google’s “engineered look”, but those are choices. With Metro, Microsoft is undesigning the UI because they’re seemingly out of ideas and refusing to make choices."<p>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.<p>"Good design is as little design as possible" - Dieter Rams
Metro simply defaults to text as the basis of communication between the software and the user. The advantage is that this allows for localization both in linguistic and cultural terms - "save" translates into multiple languages and is recognizable by people who have never seen a 3.5" floppy disk or who are coming to computers for the first time.<p>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.<p>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.
I think this author has some fair criticisms of the Metro desktop experience, but is sadly ill informed about the decisions that drive Metro's design. It is very far from "undesigned."<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
"I found that, while the architecture is changing, it wasn’t as dramatically as I had initially hoped."<p>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.<p>"Design is about making choices and Metro makes none."<p>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.
This article seems to add no value to the discussion... Did you plan to make a point rooted in any sort of argument? Where did Microsoft not make a choice?<p>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 don't know if that's true about the Metro design or not, but about Windows 8 as a whole? Definitely. They tried to combine 2 OS's and 2 interfaces that are not even too consistent with each other (I've seen some concept designs that were much better), and have no place being together anyway, especially if you're forced to use the Metro interface when in desktop mode.