Fluent Design is great.

[phoenixxdee]

For many days, I've often wondered where the design in Windows could be found, I couldn't find it. If I went online, people teach and take courses of designing for other platforms, and it's cool because it adds the cool factor. I think with the fluent design, Windows 10 is becoming more cool.

 

[Demian Mioc]

I agree, but also wish for it to be more consistent overall. Right now we have various and different looking context menus, program and app title bars, every app has it's own implementation of fluent design, some don't even have it like Settings or Skype. Some apps have hamburger menus with fluent design that auto hides, some do not, some have pivots. Frankly it's a mess right now, and with update frequency of 3rd party apps, lots of them don't even follow fluent design guidelines. I hope they'll rectify some of those issues in the future.

 

[anon(5969054)]

I think, work in progress: Another 5 years of inconsistency. By the time things are consistent (in a hypothetic future knowing Microsoft) a new design language will be created once again and so the endless circle of inconsistent UI is never ending.

 

[MBytes]

I hope they document it for developers. Google did a fantastic job with theirs, allowing all/most apps to fit with the same design language. Microsoft did an OK'ish job with Windows 7 language, but barely anything for Windows 8 Metro design, and nothing for Windows 10 (as of yet).

 

[Max_Emerson]

There is a document for the fluent design.

Fluent Design System

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/style/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design-downloads/

Next time, maybe do a quick search first.

 

[PNvmkpk]

Microsoft has so far only applied the color/glow effects part of it. Before we can say how cool it is, we will need to at least see the animations part of it.

 

[maguro]

I hope they document it for developers. Google did a fantastic job with theirs, allowing all/most apps to fit with the same design language. Microsoft did an OK'ish job with Windows 7 language, but barely anything for Windows 8 Metro design, and nothing for Windows 10 (as of yet).

You think?

The MS docs on design and UWP generally seem pretty comprehensive to me. The area that I think is lacking is the samples. Maybe other platforms are like this too, I've never developed for iOS or Android, but the UWP samples are very barebones and don't seem to encourage their design language.

But I don't hold it against them, they're quite high level and supposed to demonstrate functionality.

 

[jmadriz]

Re: Fluent Design is great. But not yet.

For many days, I've often wondered where the design in Windows could be found, I couldn't find it. If I went online, people teach and take courses of designing for other platforms, and it's cool because it adds the cool factor. I think with the fluent design, Windows 10 is becoming more cool.

I thing it is getting there, in current preview build it stills feels gimmicky, and not consistent enough, instead of adding eyecandy to current Functionality theyr should work harder on the design language in a larger scale, as an experience that works without heavy makeup.
Microsoft should work in how reliable their hybrid touch, mouse, keyboard, voice reacts to user input, and how smoothly it transition the user between views, Its frustrating to see, for example, how underwhelming the browser experience is in mobile in terms of transitions and graphics reliability, compared to what you see in safari or android, opening new tabs seems more in-control and in-context on either of these browsers and Operative systems than in Windows 10 Mobile.

I wished Fluent design came into play as a philosophy that would affect graphic consistency and performance in Wireframe First; Then in eye candy later, the blurs, the glass effects, the obscene useless borders only useful in good graphics card setups seem only like an excuse to fabricate obsolescence rather than improvements in the Operative System experience.

Even building web experiences, there will be features in fluent design that would be immediately and obviously dismissed from the usability perspective. Form and Function should come first.

 

[Rahsna Asurac]

Re: Fluent Design is great. But not yet.

Fluent Design System is a multi-tiered journey.
I think they are doing this for two reasons.

1. To ease adoption for developers by soften the learning curve
2. Sneak it into Windows with less consumer resistance

Windows 8's radical design change created an uproar from consumers, so I think this is a genius approach.

With each feature update, we will see more and more of the full vision of Fluent Design System, but already now I am really enjoying it. My favourite element so far is Light and Material.

I am mostly looking forward to see more elements of Depth and Motion ^_^

 

[phoenixxdee]

Maybe there have been a lot of this and that and a lot of reiteration in the past, let's think the time is now. Good or not, we have design. Developers are welcomed to use it and by setting examples, MSFT is doing it right. If Google did it right, it's because apps come from the store and unlike windows that just began the era of UWP. It will be fine, just be nice with your feedbacks. I think it is better than been a cynic.

 

[nate0]

For many days, I've often wondered where the design in Windows could be found, I couldn't find it. If I went online, people teach and take courses of designing for other platforms, and it's cool because it adds the cool factor. I think with the fluent design, Windows 10 is becoming more cool.

I like how reactive it is.

 

[nate0]

Microsoft has so far only applied the color/glow effects part of it. Before we can say how cool it is, we will need to at least see the animations part of it.

Groove so far is a good example of the glow effect.

 

[aXross]

Re: Fluent Design is great. But not yet.

I love what would be the Fluent Design System, the problem is Microsoft themselves seems taking too slow progress and just accept inconsistencies throughout their OS and across of their own apps. The problem mainly not of the design language itself but how they forget the 'language' part of it, the cohesion, consistency, the communication of the design implemented on all of their own products and services. The lack of consistency results unpolished design and overall experience that just makes whatever design language they came up with, feels incomplete, confusing and ugly.

I was excited with Fluent Design System because of its potential, but that's just it, only the potential. I wasn't hyped that much anyways since I can't seem to trust Microsoft yet to actually execute that design into actual experience. Though they've done it in the past with AERO and even Luna which almost all parts of the OS has been redesign, not just with aesthetics but the UI and other technicalities of the design, which is in turn easier for 3rd-party developers to interpret what's that design language really meant by its creator, and start from there from a higher bar.

Inconsistencies such as the difference with even the aesthetics of Office Mobile apps to People app, to Photos, to Groove, etc. As if they are developed by completely separate companies, but by a single company that have single vision and unified approach. Mail app for example have some borders on its UI, while the rest does not. The Hamburger implementation of Groove Music is different from the Hamburger menu implementation of MSN apps.

In regards to Wave 1, they didn't even seem to accomplish the Motion part of Fluent Design as most apps have very little and meaningless animations to basically have none. Task View is one of the most used feature that I used, and it still lacks the animation when I directly click the desktop thumbnail on Task View, only some action does which scream incomplete after years of Windows 10 has been introduced. Connected Animations would play a big role to make the experience feels seamless and better, an aspect that they forgotten from earlier days of Metro which is everywhere in every action.

Light Reveal has only been implemented mostly on Hamburger menus and some buttons, but still left inconsistent on most of their apps. Even on OS side where things are most visible to users, Taskbar. There is no Light Reveal which will would benefit the experience the most in this Wave 1. The new Acrylic Blur is also only implemented on Start menu and Action Center, but not on System Tray fly-out panels.

These are just of the issues I find with Microsoft, rather than Fluent Design System itself which I think still looks promising when properly executed.

 

[aXross]

Re: Fluent Design is great. But not yet.

I wished Fluent design came into play as a philosophy that would affect graphic consistency and performance in Wireframe First; Then in eye candy later, the blurs, the glass effects, the obscene useless borders only useful in good graphics card setups seem only like an excuse to fabricate obsolescence rather than improvements in the Operative System experience.

I fully agree with you. The problem lies usually underneath, not the surface level of the design. The slightest misalignment can make the overall design looks unpolished, making all the fancier elements such as blurs ugly and amateur looking. The fancy effects will only serve as a band-aid to mask the more technical shortcomings of how the design being implemented, making seem look good at glance but irritable for people with higher attention to details.

Not to mention they tend to over-use the effects such as blur to rather necessary levels like on People app. It looks awful since they never improve the layout and other design considerations. It is literally jut put blur and light reveal and be done with it. I'm not gonna even mention the functionality of People app which is appalling.

Calculator are perfectly fine with full window Acrylic. Since it is a kind of app that meant to be a small window anyways and always overlap with other apps.

 

[gold-stars]

I haven't seen any software other than a smattering of Win10 built in apps actually support Fluent Design.

Windows software developers are notorious for never updating the UI of their software, it is often tied to the UI trends of the year it was made in and rarely updated again.

What Microsoft needs to do is get existing common desktop software on-board with Fluent Design UI (even if it's only minor tweaks) otherwise it will just never get off the ground and wind up on the junk pile of failed Windows UI attempts. This way you build up the look so other software that doesn't support the new UI stands out even more which may pressure them into updating.

The other problem is how MS gets desktop software makers on-board, MS is going to have to reach out to them because they are certainly not going to make the change of their own free will, I know that for certain.

 

[Wevenhuis]

For many days, I've often wondered where the design in Windows could be found, I couldn't find it. If I went online, people teach and take courses of designing for other platforms, and it's cool because it adds the cool factor. I think with the fluent design, Windows 10 is becoming more cool.

I'm sure it will have potential. I'm currently not impressed with its implementation. Its a dab and and a shade of fluent design in the OS here and there. It's very patchy. There is no holistic look and feel with in across apps and the whole OS. It looks and feels as inconsistent and the varying shadings, designs and colorings of the different context menu's. It's ugly. On top of that I hardly, aside from a few apps, notice fluent design. It's extremely subtle. I still prefer the light and dark mode to date.

 

[Steve Thackery]

I think it's all a bit ho-hum, to be honest. Desirable, yes, but hardly the kind of thing to get super-excited about.

Also, to some extent it does feel like we are just winning back some Aero-like features that we had way back in W7 and got taken away from us with W8.x.

 

[Akzatum]

For many days, I've often wondered where the design in Windows could be found, I couldn't find it. If I went online, people teach and take courses of designing for other platforms, and it's cool because it adds the cool factor. I think with the fluent design, Windows 10 is becoming more cool.

Must people like you use the word 'cool' as a description for everything except for the real description of cool which only relates to temperature.[\I]...:angry::angry::angry:

 

[Sean Russell1]

Proper Blocking. Any student of any art form will tell you that you need to know what goes where if you are going to relate anything to the user. The biggest problem the UWP apps have is the empty space within the app. Another problem I think is the vertical toolbar. This is supposed to be the foundation for a mobile/desktop platform and that leaves me with two questions: Why was a vertical toolbar the UI element Microsoft choose when smartphones have a menu layout presented with a row of buttons usually on the top or bottom? And… Why are all the actionable buttons intermingled withe the menu buttons? There is no structure in this form. Having the buttons organized is a fundamental of app design. Not only that, but there should be a hierarchy of which button should be presented first in the button row. I think the action buttons should be on the bottom and the menu buttons should be at the top because this follows the paradigm of the possibly the most used app on any platform, Safari on iOS.

1px Border. There is a group of people (It’s a terrible idea, Zac Bowden.) that think removing the 1px border on each application would make the interface “cleaner.” This choice would make the interface cleaner that is true, but it also leaves the user wondering which area belongs to the other with overlapping windows. Here is an example:
This concept provided by Microsoft.

Color Scheme. I’d like to quote someone else on this topic. This is a quote from 3DXYZ on Reddit:
I just left windows feedback on the dark theme since it asked me what I thought about it. I’ll echo some of my comments here. As a 3d artist, all of our production software uses a dark grey instead of a black background for a reason. It allows you to contrast black elements on the dark grey background of the ui. Autodesk, Adobe, Pixologic, The Foundry, Pixar, ILM and others all make their production software using a dark grey theme, rather than a pure black theme for this reason. A pure black theme gives a false sense of contrast, just like a full white background can hurt your perception of contrast. A dark grey such as the “Ask me Anything” Cortana box is exactly the color that should be used as a background. If you view thumbnails on a black background ui, you’re tonal perception of those images changes. If you view them on a dark grey background, now you’re seeing a more balanced view. Black on Black looks bad, for example thumbnails with a lot of black tones against a full black ui background looks strange since the thumbnails blend into the black gui background. A dark grey background does not have this problem and it also puts your perception of tonality in a better area than the extreme ends of the color gradient (pure black or pure white). I propose they make a third theme called “Production Theme” along side the Light, and Dark themes. I like the Dark theme, it should be an option… but I think a lot of people doing visual work would like a more dark grey ui with black accents, rather than a black ui with dark grey accents. Take a hint from Autodesk, Adobe, Pixologic, the Foundry. The explorer would look far better with a dark grey background than a black one. It should still have black elements to it but I think if they tried to understand why how a dark theme is used in other programs for visual work, it would help them realize they need a “Production” Theme. I like the the dark theme (it still needs lots of work though) but a third option may be best for production work, be it visual arts, coding etc, where color perception and less eye strain is important. Even visual studio uses a dark grey scheme.
One of the oddest things about this is the Xbox app seems to follow the dark grey theme, but the other apps don’t.

Accent Color. I like the accent color option in Windows 10, but one of my concerns is making too many things reliant on it. Which elements should be an accent color and which ones shouldn’t. This seems like a grey area that doesn’t make it worth it. The taskbar being a highlighted color that seems reasonable, but putting it everywhere makes it look brash.

Blur/Drop Shadows. Since Microsoft ushered in one good design idea (Flat, via Metro) they have kind of started to change their minds. Some of the classic elements of Windows have been coming back to the forefront. With the “New” Fluent Design Language, Microsoft has decided to put the blur in every app. Even as Apple has slowly regressed from the design idea, Microsoft seems to want to double down on this particular element.

 

[aXross]

You really make a good points here. Thanks for the effort on contributing to this thread! I just want to discuss some points that you made.

Color Scheme
I highly agree on this one. I love dark theme too, but the way Microsoft implement it and interpret it is quite misguided. I don't think every app and every window element should only have a pure black background. I agree about the principle why production apps don't use pure black UI, but rather a dark gray instead in any intensity. There is one app that I used called Polarr and it gives you several theme options, I chose the Dark Theme that has dark gray background instead of Dark Theme+ that have pure black, the reason is what you've already stated, especially when you are actually working on something and not just consuming stuff.

I think the reason why Microsoft just got stuck to pure black background is because of Windows Phones, which was by default got black background. It was good especially for AMOLED, and fitting for a device that only shows one app at a time and the design language makes the UI like floating or laminated on the screen. Metro Design Language principle is being digitally authentic, not pretending like it something else entirely. That's why the feel of it is as if the UI really belongs to the screen, to the glass itself since it blends so much. Though we know we are moving away from it, and for desktop where multiple floating windows are ways we interact, having a pure black windows is also feels kinda bit odd at times too.

I think having 3rd-option would be nice, especially for smaller screen devices such as smartphones or even small tablets. Having pure black background on some apps are more desirable especially for one-app-at-time experience. I kind of benefit for AMOLED users too, though I don't know these days if that even matters much. Though I'm thinking for the sake of simplicity for users and even developers, we just need to tweak the app UI to have dark gray for apps that are appropriate for them. I regards to Photos and Videos app, I'm kinda split about it, but pure black has to remain on photo viewing and video playback though.

In regards on light theme, this needs to have light gray too. Seriously, the pure white is kinda too intense if used to virtually the whole window.

Blur/Drop Shadows
Putting blur to every app is indeed a concerning decision that they do on their apps. I think this has to be only used when really necessary. Though to be fair, their guidelines do specifically recommend but not strictly about using Acrylic (blur) when designing an app. The problem is that they seem to violate that themselves such as on People app, which is disgustingly horrible. If I remember correctly according to their own guidelines, you only should make the whole window of an app to have Acrylic or blur is when that app isn't going to have big window sizes, and mostly floating on top of another apps. The Calculator app is the best example of this, since this type of app that you won't normally used on maximized and mostly remained on a small window. People app on the other hand is a kind of app that shows information density. Even their guidelines advise to avoid using Acrylic on larger scale specially when it contains dense information such as text.

1px border
Where is the image? I think you forgot to add it.

Anyways, I would be the one that also want 1px window border to be removed, not just being clean but also to be more cohesive to the general UI design. Most provide visual hierarchy on UI not with 1px borders but with difference with UI panel colors. Though yes some separators has to be used when needed, which is even oddly missing on some areas such as on Settings.

Though I find it the necessity of this is less with Fluent Design when Acrylic is used. They can make it like changing to be more transparent on that material when that window is behind or inactive. Currently they are actually solid for some reason. Another thing is that window shadows already provide a visual hierarchy between windows.

Still even I want 1px border to be removed, I don't agree either on just removing just for the sake of it with current implementations. The problem is that only Acrylic material change its state when the window is either foreground or background, and Acrylic is typically a smaller portion on that window.

So I got another suggestion that I think will help fixing this issue if we want 1px border to be removed. We need other UI element to also change their tone when being inactive, but don't change the content. When that window is inactive, make the UI elements darker and little faded, only leaving the content unchanged. This should make the whole inactive window more obvious that it is inactive since most of the UI are faded compared to active window that all looks normal.

Though if we don't go on that route, then retain that 1px border, but please use the color of that app, not the system theme unless not specified. The color of the window border and the in-app UI tend to conflict which makes looks unpolished and doesn't seem to belong. When the app is inactive, then just make it black or super dark grey like what it is now.