Wow, every single time I see one of the new Microsoft flat UI designs get upgraded, I think it just keeps getting worse and worse. Some of the early changes, they were laudable, but then Microsoft makes some other not-so-opportune changes and things end up overall worse. So, what’s the problem? One of the things that people point out is lack of customization in Microsoft’s newer products. In the past, especially on Microsoft Windows, the look and feel was easily customizable to any way that you would like it. But on the modern Windows, there is no room for customization. Another problem is that Microsoft’s flat UI designs are simply not well executed. You can make a flat UI design that works well and is minimalistic, but unfortunately for Microsoft, they have not put very much thought into their flat UI designs. So, although Microsoft’s designs are minimalistic, many of the design decisions are quite jarring.
The other thing is that people say that how well a UI looks is highly subjective… but I can dispute that. There are objective things in Microsoft’s implementation of flat UI that do not exist in other party’s implementations of flat UI, such as lack of contrast between borders and overuse of colors.
20190129/DuckDuckGo why are microsoft icons so ugly
20190129/https://www.quora.com/When-will-Microsoft-get-rid-of-the-ugly-flat-icons
20190129/https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Windows-10-so-ugly
20190129/https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_personal/the-ui-is-so-ugly-an-there-are-no-options-to/d5d716ef-443d-49cf-a3ef-719bf65df0d6
Another aside. Throughout the history of computer user interface designs, there have always been many variations of user interface designs. Some came out as the best, others came out as the worst. We know, for instance, that the user interfaces of first Macintosh Classic, then second Microsoft Windows 9x, were among the best of designs. By contrast, traditionally the worst of designs were frequently found on Unix. Fast forward to the present era, and well, although Apple is still among the best of desgins, Microsoft has lost their upper hand position and is now among the lesser of designs.
Interestingly, as I am looking at my macOS desktop, I realize that although the internal application design of my Microsoft products have degraded over upgrade cycles, their external icons on the desktop have improved. Previously, they were just an “O” for Outlook, a “P” for PowerPoint, an “X” for Excel, and a “W” for Word respectively for the Mac OS X app icons. Now, although they still feature those single letters, they also have additional graphics to the side indicative of their functions: an envelope for Outlook, a graph and text for Outlook, a spreadsheet for Excel, and a text file for Word. Alas, the icon design is a bit cluttered squashing these two design concepts together into one, with each on one half of the icon.