The Software Alchemist

In December, I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Albert Shum, the director of the Windows Mobile design team. He revealed the thought process behind the new Metro UI, used in Windows Phone and Zune, and why it's such a radical departure from previous versions of Microsoft's UIs. Having read a little about Metro before, I found a lot of  the language to be very airy, arty and generally fluffy. The presentation made a lot of the fluff much more solid. I'll unpack a couple of the terms used in the Metro UI literature. Interestingly, these guidelines have more to do with what is left out of Metro apps than what is included.

'Content, Not Chrome'

Every application that allows users to write, discuss, photo, video, chat etc. contains user content. This is nothing new. We are used to presenting users with windows, menus, scrollbars and all manner of widgets in order to view, organise and manipulate their stuff. The difference with the Metro guidelines design language is the idea of letting go of all these widgets and simply allowing  the content to be the interface.

'Authentically Digital'

This is a term that really had me scratching my head when first reading it. 'Authentic' sounds like a term that a designer jeans company would use more often than a UI designer. It's actually rather simple, but at the same time it's a big departure from the way we're used to designing traditional desktop applications. Think about the word 'desktop' for a second. From the begginings of GUIs, we've attempted to draw analogies from the interface into the real world. Glancing at my virtual desktop here for a second, I see a 'recycle bin' that looks rather like a real, physical waste paper basket, a couple of sticky notes and an analog clock. All of them digital artefacts disguised to look like their physical equivalents. Being 'authentically digital' simply means to abandon the attempt to make computers look and behave like other objects and let them be computers.

Bottom line

The Metro UI 'design language' has resulted in some really great looking apps so far, and will continue to do so. The advice given is more high level than most developers are used to, or will even be comfortable with. This is intentional. The broadest advice that Albert gave at the talk was also one that is very applicable to developers, designers and product managers: Pick a small set of principles and use them to answer the decisions and dilemmas that will inevitably appear. You can get much more milage from a rule such as 'design should be clean and open' than from 'All second level headings should have a 20px upper margin'.