Couldn't agree more. It's just designers trying to justify their own salary.
I like interfaces that have nice 3D effects, especially on a window manager. I like high information density. I like being in control and having a customisable experience. Metro flies in the face of all of those.
As a designer who also writes code, this attitude really frustrates me. There are a lot of reasons that flat UI makes more sense for software, especially for responsive web.
Flat UI means less code and easier maintainability. It holds up better across a wide range of sizes. It makes it easier to have a style guide in code and create reusable modules.
This allows the design team to focus on the bigger-picture user experience instead of perfecting button gradients.
High information density is great in many applications, especially interfaces supporting complex tasks for expert users. However, it takes a lot of work to design a great high-density interface. I feel like most of the high density interfaces I see are more of a case of the design or product teams not being able to make hard decisions about what's really important.
While some flat UIs certainly go too far in the other direction, I firmly believe that minimalism encourages good design by forcing a conversation about what information to prioritize. Especially for the mainstream consumer web, this is almost always better for everyone.
Finally, I don't appreciate this kind of attack on my profession. Good design is far closer to engineering than to taste. I don't think I'm hoodwinking people into hiring me.
Aesthetics are just as much a matter of taste as they are engineering. A lot of code frankly lends itself to such verbosity/elegance/simplicity/density/readability/(...) because of cultural:personal [preference, pedantry, experience, understanding, knowledge base].
Rather, I'm not so quick to have an opinion on aesthetics, because I think philosophically, beauty defines a balance between simplicity and engineering. Every part expresses itself perfectly.
There are ideals that work across the majority, and there are ideals that are appreciated by a niche audience. There is the Ideal, which is never achievable, and there is the expression of the Ideal, which always exists. Engineering or design, I don't see a difference. Different content, same concept.
Looks like they did a lot of other things at the same time (like not creating app-wide singletons up-front). It would have been nice to see numbers just for rendering.
>> > It's just designers trying to justify their own salary.
>> Seems a little unfair.
Not when you've been using computers for 35 years and have seen it migrate from flat to nice to gratuitous and now back to flat.
The original bevels on buttons were a nice indicator that it was in fact a thing you could push. Lots of subtle cues were added in the late 90's and UI probably reached a high point. Then the graphics hardware got awesome and compositing with lots of effects became possible. These were used because they looked neat at first glance. Designers wanted to stand out and went crazy with bling. Then there was backlash, and now the trend is toward flat, simple, and frankly - in many cases - ugly UI. The pendulum is swinging too far back the other way IMHO. But not to worry, it will go back in time and we'll eventually have another high point. Probably better than the previous high since touch and swipe and all kinds of new things will be properly part of the picture.
Got it, thanks. The other guy did say: "Not when you've been using computers for 35 years and have seen it migrate from flat to nice to gratuitous and now back to flat."
This is one of the biggest crimes of flat design. Let's throw away all the opportunities for high information density and replace them with flat blocks of color!
I like interfaces that have nice 3D effects, especially on a window manager. I like high information density. I like being in control and having a customisable experience. Metro flies in the face of all of those.