[Calidude]

The major issues I have with Windows Phone besides the obvious detriments that come with being a "new kid on the block" is that Windows Phone's UI tends to use the space on the screen in a yet-to-be-optimized manner.

For example:

-The long, unused space under the arrow on the home screen seems like a waste of potential design choices.
-The titles of every screen seem too large, too overzoomed to make sense if you were emulating a Metro station's signs.
-Messaging notifications have a lot of space above the message and next to the time that is ALWAYS empty. Why not put the person's name up there next to the time and have the message scroll by under like a stock ticker (or not if you need privacy.)
-Transition screens such as the "Send from" screen have very small text compared to the rest of the vast screen space, again not doing justice to the idea of a Metro station sign.
-Live Tiles, considering how BIG they ALL are, could definitely be more informative. Perhaps less informative ones could be made smaller? Custom sized like widgets?
-The media playback buttons when you play a video are HUGE. WHY?
-Context buttons at the bottom of every screen are too closely spaced together and you get the feeling more buttons should be added.
-Artist/Album/Track lists in the Zune section have WAY too big a font.
-The IE9 toolbar is kinda wide for the little information it shows. I like that its at the bottom, but does it have to be so big?

There's probably more I missed, but does anybody get the same feeling I do? I know this is something that can be tightened up over time, but these are my thoughts so far.

[jeremyshaw]

IMO, MS knows it has to changes the UI ever so slightly. the 800x480's ~16:9.5 ratio is going out, and moving forward, 16:9 is the (sadly) standard (well, all except Apple, whom uses a massive 16:11 ratio on the iPhone/iPod touch - which I like), so the GUI will need to be tweaked (or MS has to move to softkeys...), and hopefully, that tweaking will bring along other UI changes, too.

[Pronk]

I think you need a third option - that in some cases more use could be made of space, but to overdo it would make the UI far too "busy" and take away from what makes it different.

For example - a few toggle switches for wifi, data etc. underneath the start screen arrow a la the charms on Windows 8? Yes please - would be a very useful addition and not detrimental to the style. But I think e.g. live tiles have to stay how they are. Smaller, and they just become icons and the larger ones effectively become widgets, and the look is broken - you then effectively have a mishmash like Android and it's awful, inconsistent widget/icon soup.

[S1NKING SH1PS]

I personally love the setup the way it is - everything is perfectly distanced and spaced out in my eyes.

[HeyCori]

I personally love the setup the way it is - everything is perfectly distanced and spaced out in my eyes.

Agreed. I could nitpick a few centimeters here and there but the amount of additional information I'd see on the screen would be minimal. Right now everything looks bold and beautiful. The UI is easy to see and understand. I'd hate it if the UI became a cluttered mess because of information overload.

[Winterfang]

Yes. Especially on the Keyboard, it should cover the screen completely on landscape.

[selfcreation]

Sounds to me like MS left room for features in a future updates. but I like the clean look.. If they fill that space I think it would be to "clutter"

I agree for keyboard in landscape doh.. That should take up the screen


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[bear_lx]

i personally love the way it looks... although the only two things i would change would be a full keyboard in ls, and add some toggle switches under the arrow, make so the slide out when not using them , but when you touch the area the slide back in, just like the signal and battery up top... that would be perfect!

[canesfan625]

The major issues I have with Windows Phone besides the obvious detriments that come with being a "new kid on the block" is that Windows Phone's UI tends to use the space on the screen in a yet-to-be-optimized manner.

For example:

-The long, unused space under the arrow on the home screen seems like a waste of potential design choices.

Like what?

-The titles of every screen seem too large, too overzoomed to make sense if you were emulating a Metro station's signs.

Not sure what you mean. On the home screen or the app list?

-Messaging notifications have a lot of space above the message and next to the time that is ALWAYS empty. Why not put the person's name up there next to the time and have the message scroll by under like a stock ticker (or not if you need privacy.)

App design, not UI

-Live Tiles, considering how BIG they ALL are, could definitely be more informative. Perhaps less informative ones could be made smaller? Custom sized like widgets?

How big they are? they are 173x173. I remember seeing a homebrew app before that would let you make custom tiles though.

-The media playback buttons when you play a video are HUGE. WHY?

good question. I bet this will be changing in one of the tangos.

-Artist/Album/Track lists in the Zune section have WAY too big a font.

Its Zune. Exactly the same on the Zune devices.

[Big Supes]

I personally love the setup the way it is - everything is perfectly distanced and spaced out in my eyes.

Third that. :)

Yes. Especially on the Keyboard, it should cover the screen completely on landscape.

How would you know what you've typed, though? Baring in mind typos. I also like to reference the thread when creating my response.

[IamVortigaunt]

@Big Supes

I believe what he means is that it should use the full horizontal space. Currently, in landscape mode there are gaps on both sides of the keyboard.

[Big Supes]

Oh, I see. Thanks.

Well, IMO, you need the space either side to cater for switching/Bing Voice/Attachments/Send + Time/Battery/Wifi/Signal. Also, you don't want to be typing too close to the handset buttons.

[jeremyshaw]

Yeah, I like it spaced out, especially if the device has capacitive buttons. Maybe not as much as it is right now, but still...


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[Calidude]

I didn't realize the keyboard wasn't fully extended in Landscape. That's a major oversight.

[jmerrey]

I agree with the keyboard in landscape mode, but otherwise the appearance of the interface is perfect to me. If I wanted cluttered I'd go with android.

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[Reflexx]

I really like the design. We have clarity without clutter.

I think a thing to keep in mind is that the design needs to work on a variety of screen sizes. So what may seem like a lot of space on large screens may not seem like that much space on smaller screens.

In design, you learn that space is important. It doesn't always need to be filled. Sometimes the best use of space is to just leave it as space.

With that said, I'm sure there are going to be small tweaks here and there as time goes on. There's always going to be the challenge of form vs function. We want it attractive, but we also want to cram in as much information as we can. And those two things are hard to gel together.

[Calidude]

In design, you learn that space is important. It doesn't always need to be filled. Sometimes the best use of space is to just leave it as space.

Sounds more like lazy design to me.

[bigkevbosky]

I do think some space is wasted, but not much. The whole point of WP7 is minimalism and putting a bunch of toggles and icons in the unused space would just make it look cluttered.

I do agree the tiles should take up more of the screen and the arrow should be gone. I think at this point its almost common sense to swipe right to get to your app list. In fact, I'd prefer it they just got rid of the arrow and app list altogether and make the app list a tile, one that can't be deleted.

[jfa1]

I didn't realize the keyboard wasn't fully extended in Landscape. That's a major oversight.

I dont think it was an oversight by MS I think it was most likely intentional on the part of MS. You are most certainly entitled to your opinion!

[Reflexx]

Sounds more like lazy design to me.

Sounds like you're not a designer.

[aubreyq]

I felt compelled to click "No" because the question said "too often." If it read "Do you think sometimes space is overused/underused?" then I would've answered yes.

[N8ter]

The UI does waste a lot of screen real estate on white/blank space. Tiles really don't have to be that big, and there should be a way to group apps on the Start Screen (sorry!), the app list needs some work. Text runs off the screen with no way to see what things really are... The header in many apps and hubs serves no purpose but to waste space. I'd rather they just had a splash screen or something, personally.

Additionally, Tile sizes would probably be fine if the OS supported higher DPI displays and there were devices using those displays out. Becuase they aren't so startlingly big on small devices like the Focus Flash (in fact the UI actually looks rather pleasant at that screen size, provided the screen is of a decent type - which SAMOLED is), but they are heinous on bigger devices like the HD7 (borderline) and Titan (showstopping).

So, if the Titan had a 720p Display the Tiles could potentially not be so huge (same for Focus/HD7/etc. if they had qHD displays) and it would also allow for more text to be visible in things like Zune and the app list - not to mention the quality improvement on media viewing (pictures and video) which would come as a side-product of a higher DPI.

Its Zune. Exactly the same on the Zune devices.

My biggest issue with Zune is the lack of Landscape support, leading to issues like in the attached image. If the problem isn't obvious, then I dunno what to say. Imagine downloading a 50 track Opera from Zune and having it be completely unreadable because the titles are cut off and you can't even flip the screen to landscape to get useful information on each track... Shrinking the text would also help.

Sorry, but text running off the screen like that coupled with the lack of landscape support is beyond sloppy.

And I have several albums where this issue is in full effect. It makes getting to tracks a total PITA. You either have to remember the track number, it's placement in the list, or simply play one and scan through them until you find the one you need. None of that should be necessary. Should be able to flip to landscape and see what you want.

And how about a setting to control text size? Wouldn't that be brilliantly innovative in 2012?

[aubreyq]

The UI does waste a lot of screen real estate on white/blank space. Tiles really don't have to be that big, and there should be a way to group apps on the Start Screen (sorry!), the app list needs some work. Text runs off the screen with no way to see what things really are... The header in many apps and hubs serves no purpose but to waste space. I'd rather they just had a splash screen or something, personally.

The whole thing with text running off the screen is part of the Metro style and design. That's essentially its "signature" and I honestly don't see that going away. I actually like it and also like the large tiles. It differentiates WP from other OSs. Regarding app grouping, I hope the rumor is true that Tango will bring that to the user, especially if it can be done in an elegant fashion.

My biggest issue with Zune is the lack of Landscape support, leading to issues like in the attached image. If the problem isn't obvious, then I dunno what to say. Imagine downloading a 50 track Opera from Zune and having it be completely unreadable because the titles are cut off and you can't even flip the screen to landscape to get useful information on each track... Shrinking the text would also help.

Sorry, but text running off the screen like that coupled with the lack of landscape support is beyond sloppy.

I agree that landscape UI support would be nice, but again, the core Metro UI will probably never be altered the way you mention.

And how about a setting to control text size? Wouldn't that be brilliantly innovative in 2012?

That might work if all the text on the screen scales accordingly, but again, Microsoft probably won't go for it because it affects the Metro's look and feel in general.

Based on your posts, you don't appear too receptive of Metro in general. Have you considered other OSs that better suit your needs?

[ljkelley]

I love the homescreen just like is. The only place I would do changes is in the Zune music player to bring it more in line with how the ZuneHD was.

But the homescreen is perfect. If they removed the slide over button and assume you just knew you could slide over and filled the whole screen with squares it just would look awful and boring. Even Windows 8 doesn't allow the tiles to use every inch of the screen, thats the beauty of Metro. Its thoughtful, because there is a very small line between simple and having the look that you didn't bother to design at all.

[jmerrey]

Sometimes I wonder why people have a wp7. I read what they say they want, and it sounds just like android, or ios.

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