41–50 of 99 posts
There's a balance to be struck between affordable and honest (not kitsch) design. To get it just right is where the devil is. For examples look no further than Apple's iOS (borderline kitsch) and Microsoft's Metro (reduced affordance). I think one UI that gets this balance done very well is Facebook.
yet another trend that has its merits and draw backs. There will undoubtedly be designers and designs that go too far with this approach and those who do it well. I feel like this is well along the lines of minimalism for the sake of minimalism. Not enough differentiation can become very confusing and over minimalistic aesthetics which espouse "function over form" often end up doing the opposite. I find it funny that…
These guys are confused, they're lying to themselves.
Honesty in the context of industrial design takes into account the materials, manufacturing and physical form.
And in graphic design, respecting the limitations of print.
Pixels are intangible. The 'honest' that's respected within industrial/graphic design, fields that have influenced this new 'flat' digital style do not translate due to the fact that pixels are intangible. The ideals that defined the modernism movement were based on the tangible.
What if a "non-flat" design improved communication/interaction? E.g. I touch this button therefore using 3D to communicate such interaction would make sense.
The designers that promote these ideals are confused.
Honesty for me in this context comes down to the HTML/CSS/JS crafted to create these visual and interaction elements.
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I find your comment unfair and I am not even a MS user. Usability is so much more about how it work, not just how it look. All design systems will have some learning curve. A learning curve where you have to understand that everything a button is pretty close to being easy to learn. So in my mind, the problem you seem to think there is is a pseudo problem. I.e. it's not actually a problem. The Map is not the territor…
The difference is that glossy buttons have affordances that make them stand out from the rest of the interface. Which means that even after learning what is and isn't a button, you can find them more quickly. Completely flat interfaces lose this advantage, but they also have other benefits.
I think they are doing the right thing by making sure that they get the fundamentals right and then they can add to improve.
That is hell of a lot easier than if you have to fight with a and already established strong visual hierarchy.
I would do exactly as they are. That seems to be the right approach for such a huge undertaking that this will be.
It's modern and clean and flat but doesn't take it as far as windows 8 where everything is text, a rectangle or an icon.
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Even if all text is clickable, not everything should have such a similar visual weight. In Gmail, there's a big ass red button that does exactly what you think it will do. ( http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyrwjaXatd1qea4hso1_500.pn... ) I bet I could use Gmail for the first time in Arabic if I had to. I'm not sure I could use Outlook.com.
And that big red button was only added much later. The first versions of gmail didn't have that. MS is doing something very wise here. They are starting flat and then over time they will find a balance between what needs to be more obvious than other things. Just wait and see.
If I was seeing GMail for the first time in a completely foreign language: I wouldn't associate "red" with Compose/New Message.
Colors carry significant cultural baggage.
Here in the U.S, for e.g: I associate Red with `danger`, `anger`, and perhaps `stop` or `caution.` [0]
At first glance, a red button (relying solely on skeuomorphic distinction, and not the text) is something I _definitely_ don't want to click. I would assume it would delete my selected mail, or perhaps mark it as spam.
At least with text you don't have that cultural baggage. You have the baggage of the language, e.g: you definitely have the steeper learning curve of learning the UI's language.
Though I'd rather it be grammatically ambiguous, as opposed to being visually ambiguous. For instance: if MS used slang or abbreviations in their Metro applications, it may throw off non-native speakers.
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While I agree with GP that MS could benefit from using a bit more distinction. I'd still steer away from using colors and gradients and such (rather: such distinctions wouldn't be my first choice). Cultural differences aside, you have to consider biological differences, such as color-blindness.
You can add visual distinction without necessarily resorting to skeuomorphism. For example: add some vertical lines, mess with font-weighting (which MS seems to use heavily), etc.
[0]: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours...
I can't help but feel like this is just the next obvious cycle in design fashion and as such it's not something to get so worked up about. "The Honest Design Age" strikes me as an absurdly grandiose term. I like the more prosaic interpretation, which is that certain graphical idioms have become so commonplace that in order to stand out visually, you need to do something different. Fashion. In a few years, designers w…
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And that big red button was only added much later. The first versions of gmail didn't have that. MS is doing something very wise here. They are starting flat and then over time they will find a balance between what needs to be more obvious than other things. Just wait and see.
I should also point out that I only know what the "big red button" does because I use GMail. If I was seeing GMail for the first time in a completely foreign language: I wouldn't associate "red" with Compose/New Message. Colors carry significant cultural baggage. Here in the U.S, for e.g: I associate Red with `danger`, `anger`, and perhaps `stop` or `caution.` [0] At first glance, a red button (relying solely on skeu…