Office 2013 shows that user interface extremes aren’t the way to go
One of the things that currently annoys a lot of people about Apple is the way in which it constantly builds apps that resemble real-world items. iBooks has a background that resembles an open book, and Apple’s calendaring apps have leather stitching and torn paper at the top. In some cases, such design merely irks designers who like the minimalism Apple showcases in its hardware; occasionally, though, usability suffers. For example, the iBooks background never changes, and so while you can instinctively look at a real book and see how much is left to go, iBooks doesn’t help in this way; worse, Address Book for OS X apes a real book and ends up a total mess that’s far slower to work with than its predecessor.
Of late, a lot of people have been pointing to Microsoft as the superior company when it comes to interface design, citing the mostly very smart Windows 7 and Windows 8. The problem is, not all interface design scales, and when you go very minimal, interfaces can lose any sense of tactility and make it hard to focus. Peter Bright of Ars Technica’s shot of Office 2013 highlights that the opposite of Apple’s current design aesthetic isn’t necessarily any better. Acres of white space lead the eye to flick all over the design, making it hard to focus on the content (which is the smallish box on the right, with “This is an inline reply” in it). It’s unclear which components are buttons and which are content areas. Worse, there’s no sense of warmth at all. This feels like an email client designed to appeal to people bereft of emotion. In short, it’s every bit as horrible as Apple’s worst UI design, just in a very different way.
[...] feels like an email client designed to appeal to people bereft of emotion.”— Craig GrannellSupport TBR by becoming a Member or by shopping on [...]
[...] But there’s also a striking visual layer to design that, in many cases, shouldn’t be invisible because invisible can be boring and soulless. Craig Grannell gives a good example of this in his article Office 2013 shows that user interface extremes aren’t the way to go: [...]
The problem with the implementation of Metro that we see here is that Microsoft have forgotten that with simplicity you still need visual hierachy and focus. I think Metro ‘can’ work as a broad UI approach but as you rightly point out it needs more warmth and emotion.
What’s interesting is that the new Outlook.com site from Microsoft looks better than the Outlook app in Office 2013. On Outlook.com, blocks of solid colour and the minimalist design language of Metro is used to great effect – the very opposite of that cluttered, soul-less Outlook app interface.