Undulations

Metro is the new user-interface paradigm pioneered by Microsoft first in it’s Zune range of media-players, and now being rolled out across it’s range of platforms, viz. Windows Phone, XBox, and Windows 8. Metro rethinks the traditional UI based on icons and windows, and simplifies it to a highly minimalistic UI characterized by bold colours, prominent lines and large, striking typography. Is Metro really the revolution it stands to be? Or is it rather a mere UI redesign that will have to be rethought a couple of years from now?

Before we begin, a little bit of context - here’s an excellent article about the design philosophies of Apple and Microsoft I came across The Verge Forums, a highly recommended read. Much of the following article was originally presented as a comment on the same post. That being said, let’s get on with Metro.

Metro is much more a “design language”, in the “language” sense, and much more of a radical re-invention than Luna or Aero – as such, it more likely for Metro to stand the test of time a little longer than these interfaces did, unless people start to feel Microsoft has done something terribly wrong with it.

I’ll elaborate.
Firstly, Metro is nothing like the interfaces like we’ve seen so far. The current generation of interfaces is known by the self-explanatory name WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers). Be it Apple, Microsoft, or the dozen Linux varations (the most prominent of them being GNOME3 and Unity), the fundamental principle is the same – there are icons which lauch programs and programs lauch in windows. These windows, ubiquitously, can be minimized, maximized, resized and closed. There are menus, buttons and toolbars which performs various actions.

Little of this has changed over the years, and little is different across platforms. All desktop interfaces (and to an extend, mobile interfaces) are variations of the same theme, different only in the mechanism and degree of visual polish.

Metro is different in the sense that it rethinks this design pattern altogether – perhaps not entirely, but considerably. Icons have evolved into tiles – active blocks which can display real-time information. There are no windows in the conventional sense – applications are one large scrollable workspace with minimal pop-up windows or distractions. The entire notion about typography is rethought too, where the hitherto compact text in Windows (a vestige of the early design concept of designing for information density over readability to make best possible use of the small screen area available then) is eschewed for large, bold typography that literally pops out.

And finally, Metro puts minimalism upfront, and goes in the exact opposite direction of what user interfaces have come so far – by eschewing all sorts of visual embellishments for a plain, pure, matter-of-fact look.

It’s worth noting that Metro has already been inspiring design renovations in the industry, the most prominent being the redesign of Android 4.0. Android 4.0 takes a definite bold step in the direction that Metro is going, clearly drawing inspiration from many trends that Metro has set.

To sum up, I believe Metro is an interface revolution unlike Aqua, Luna and Aero, and hence will stand the test of time for maybe a decade to come - there will definitely be updates and minor redesign, but the foundation set in Metro is here to stay. And let me not hide the fact, as you may have probably noticed by now, I’m a big fan of what Microsoft is doing with Metro, and I really hope it indeed does (stand the test of time).