Windows 10 Mobile: One small step for Windows Phone, one giant step backwards in UI

[TechFreak1]

People started clamouring that UI should become IOS & Android-esque, MS has now given them what they wanted but at what expense?

The metro design has become diluted by the demands of the vocal.

Unfortunately with anything new, some will like the new design and others will not however this not the final RTM build so it could change between now and release.

I'm going to wait until I've used the preview build for a few days on a secondary phone and see how that goes. I suggest you guys should do the same, if your that concerned at least try it out and give MS helpful critique instead of bashing them.

 

[dKp1977]

I'd caution over going too nuts about Outlook or Office apps and how they might affect/infect general Windows apps. One of the Office team's big "things" is to try and re-invent the look of the product every iteration. Yes, they did adopt the awful Office ribbon in Windows 8's Explorer, but the worst parts of it, like tiny buttons in the title bar and the counter-intuative File menu, aren't common in the rest of Windows or 3rd party apps.

I'd look more closely at apps like OneDrive, an actual shipping app not designed by the Office team. The latest WP OneDrive forces you to use a white theme even if it will drain your battery and has a hamburger menu (boo!), but for the most part it is designed like a standard WP app. It has a normal app bar with normal icon buttons and is based on a pivot control like many other 3rd party WP apps. The hamburger menu is only for account settings and enabling "shake for feedback". They will be rarely used, so it's not horrible in this case that the button is on the upper left. They apparently really didn't want the app menu to scroll.

I hate hamburger menus and love the Metro design language with equal passion, but I'm not ready to go totally nuts about it yet until I see software closer to release that isn't Office using the Office-like layout. That said, it's great that so many are putting the pressure on MS to stick with the Metro design language.

Aweful ribbon? Oo This has been one of the greatest additions in Windows 8. It makes using the Windows Explorer a bliss, since there's so many actions just a single click away that took many more steps before. I personally even liked the ribbon in Office too, as it offered many often used tools right away. Tools that have previously been buried deep inside cascaded menus.

 

[hungdizzle]

The simple clean interface of Metro is slowly disappearing. Not a good thing. But if it makes it easier for app developers, and leads to more apps.. is that a good thing?

 

[FAHMI BASSEM]

The simple clean interface of Metro is slowly disappearing. Not a good thing. But if it makes it easier for app developers, and leads to more apps.. is that a good thing?

No it's not!

 

[theolympusguy]

I love the design, right now I have windows 10 on my PC and surface and the apps/tiles are setup as close as I could get it on my phone. I want onenote, Xbox or Netflix...the apps are all in the same location, either on phone or PC. I don't care about hamburger menus, I just want amazing sync, customizable tiles and universal apps...nothing else matters to me. The email looks way better with the new look over the old look. I love the idea of everything being the same...less thinking and way way more productivity since I don't have to look for apps (like I did on my android). I was a die hard android user for a long time but now windows is just making it easier and from everything I hear...its only getting better.

 

[techiez]

What if they place the hamburger menu within the familiar three dot swipe up menu that we are accustomed to seeing. Let users swipe upward from the three dot menu. From there, the hamburger menu button can be located exactly where the three dots would have been prior to swiping up. My thoughts is that most people's thumbs revert to that natural position of the 3 dots once they swipe up anyway. I can't deal with stretching my thumb all the way up. I get chills imagining the torture Lumia 1520 and 1320 users would endure with the present position of the hamburger menu on windows 10 mobile.

forgettimg abt universal apps? would you like to click on top or on bottom using a regular keyboard mouse PC, imagine the windows close maximize minimize button at the bottom, you would hate it

 

[techiez]

The buttons at the top have more to do with keeping consistency throughout W10. Joe B stated that W10 runs the same code across devices. Sure, it's feasible to be able to put a couple lines of code to make that change for phone...
...but perhaps that may come at a later update.

In any matter, if you aren't happy about the change, voice you opinion to Microsoft or your complaints are wasted.

I wish if UI design was so simple as you put
Your if else will double the effort for developer and he would nt care to develop for windows at all

 

[Torcher Death]

Based on just the screenshots, I'd say I prefer the old one... though the new one does seem to offer more functionality.
As for the damnbuger vs ellipses, again I go for the old ellipses over burger, just for one hand accessibility purposes...especially for the larger screen devices.
Hopefully, MS is able to meet somewhere in the middle, where neither the UI nor functions are compromised or go the long & hard way by making it such that users can choose the theme for such apps.

 

[drachen23]

Aweful ribbon? Oo This has been one of the greatest additions in Windows 8. It makes using the Windows Explorer a bliss, since there's so many actions just a single click away that took many more steps before. I personally even liked the ribbon in Office too, as it offered many often used tools right away. Tools that have previously been buried deep inside cascaded menus.

Parts of the ribbon are not so bad. Large, clickable icons on a tabbed/grouped interface are a good thing. The implementation Office has is so gunked up with inconsistency and clutter that it became awful. Here's my current Outlook 2013 ribbon bar:



Here's just a few things off the top of my head:

First on the list are the "quick access toolbar" icons in the titlebar. No other (non-Office) apps use the titlebar for anything other than the title. In addition, the icons are the same size and spacing as the Outlook app icon, which when you click on it, it's a menu. Two of the others are actions (buttons) and the last is the edit menu. Only two of the four icons have similar functionality, but at least the last one has a down arrow on it, indicating that it's a menu.

Next up is the Tab bar. The last four tabs work like pretty much any other tab ever, but not the first one. The first tab isn't really a tab. It's not even a menu, at least in Office. (In Explorer, it *is* an actual menu, but I'll get to that later). In Office, it's a whole new screen that overlays the existing application. The functionality of this overlay screen isn't even consistent across Office apps. It ends up being a dumping ground for anything that doesn't fit into the ribbon. In Outlook, it's mostly account info and settings. In Word, it's mostly file, print and document functionality. As a bonus, the exact same MS account sub-screen is called "Account" in Word and "Office Account" in Outlook. It doesn't even attempt for consistency.

The button bar itself is pretty functional and I don't hate it that much, but it's a visual mish-mash. It mixes, kind of randomly, large and small buttons each of which could be either action buttons like "New Email" or menus like "New Items". The down arrow next to the menus is a decent cue that the icon opens a menu rather than does an action. Its worst sin is the "Quick Steps" menu. It doesn't look like it at first glance, but that's actually a list with 6 items in it. The right side has an up arrow, down arrow and another down arrow. The top down arrow scrolls and the bottom down arrow opens the list like a menu. None of this takes into account any of the other UI inconsistencies in Outlook below the ribbon.

The WIn8 Explorer does some of this, but not nearly as badly. It still has the button visual mish-mash but it fixes some of the title bar inconsistency by having a separator between app icon and title bar. The File menu is an actual menu, not something that covers the entire app pane. Still not consistent, but better than "hey, where did my app go?". It still has the silly list menu for "Layout" but I like that you get a preview when you hover over an option.

It's all perfectly functional, but inconsistent and confusing. It doesn't surprise me in the least that the mobile Office apps have the same sort of UI issues on mobile as the desktop product.

 

[Squachy]

You want horrid design direction? YouTube. The app on wii-u has a different UI than the app on windows and the website..... They all function differently and it's quite irritating. Consistent UI across the board is the way to go. Just add bits and pieces of visual flair unique to each platform and be done with it. Btw you guys make it sound like hamburger menu is an Android invention..... News flash, it ain't.

 

[hagjohn]

At the moment, Windows 10 is a mess. It's cluttered and messy looking. They have a lot of work ahead of them but sometimes Microsoft doesn't always care about the aesthetics (of the OS), like they should. The whole OS is looking more like 7.10 instead of 10. I'm concerned with what I see so far for touch screens. The start screen is a horrible mess, with part of the start menu in it. There are some good things. Cortana, universal apps (once they come) and the store beta is looking promising. Windows Phone 10, well, I need to play with it before I comment too much about it.

BTW, if you have iOS or Android, you can be using the new Outlook app now. Of course, us Windows phone folks have to wait.

 

[portalfocus]

Yeah I don't understand the hamburger menu. I'm holding my phone with my right hand and my thumb cannot easily reach either corner of the screen, particularly hard to reach the top left corner (without the palm of my hand getting close enough to the bottom right to screw up what I'm trying to do). Hey, you know those handy menus and buttons on the bottom? Yeah let's move them so they're always inconvenient to access.

Have you use the new Spotify App?. You are able to just swipe to the left to Access to the settings without having to actually touch the circle-hamburguer menu

 

[portalfocus]

OneDrive UI may be the best solution, or maybe adding an option to swipe right to own the menu.

This.

 

[portalfocus]

You want horrid design direction? YouTube. The app on wii-u has a different UI than the app on windows and the website..... They all function differently and it's quite irritating. Consistent UI across the board is the way to go. Just add bits and pieces of visual flair unique to each platform and be done with it. Btw you guys make it sound like hamburger menu is an Android invention..... News flash, it ain't.

Well said.

 

[Godson Arun Kumar]

Surprised people here are finding such a small change so difficult to acclimatize to. Wonder how you people switched over to windows phone in the first place. Each person has his own tastes. An OS can only be made to a general taste of the public and not to individual people. Such people are better off getting into tech and developing their own OSes and apps for their liking.

 

[dKp1977]

Have you use the new Spotify App?. You are able to just swipe to the left to Access to the settings without having to actually touch the circle-hamburguer menu

That depends on the dev to implement this particular way to access the menu though. If he doesn't, you simply have to use the button. But I don't get people complaining about accessibility of navigation items on huge phones. I got myself a 1520 a year ago, knowing that it's a flipping huge device, hence not always be comfortable to use one handed. These devices simply aren't meant to be used single handedly. Even though a UI should be designed with ease of use in mind, designers can't be held responsible for people with small hands purchasing devices that are too huge for their hands.

 

[manicottiK]

Surprised people here are finding such a small change so difficult to acclimatize to.

People unhappy about the apparent changes aren't saying that they can't acclimate, but rather that some characteristics of the new way reduce usability and convenience.

For the sake of argument: in the Windows Phone 8 email message list page, there's a button bar at the bottom of the screen containing buttons for new message, select messages, refresh, and search. On Windows 10, that bar is at the top and contains hamburger, new message and search buttons. When a user wants to create or find a message, which button placement is more convenient? Pretty much everyone will agree that both can be used, but the one at the bottom is easier when using the phone one-handed.

That bottom placement puts the app buttons near the hardware buttons for Back, Home, and Search, minimizing hand movement and stretching/covering the screen with our hands. Fun fact: in WP7 and 8, the app bar ALWAYS stays near the hardware buttons, regardless of whether you turn the phone to the left or the right when going into landscape. That prior attention to user experience (keeping the controls together for single-handed use and general user convenience) is what some of us worry about given the early app previews that we've seen so far.

Sure, these aren't final apps, but the direction appears to favor consistency of design over usability. It's a slavish devotion to how something looks rather than how it works -- it is form over function. But it's fixable.

User interfaces that are aware of the size of the object being used can be intelligently adjusted to facilitate use. Developers, although not enough of them, already do this to handle landscape layouts on phones. There's no reason why an app couldn't be smart enough to move the buttons to the bottom. Hell, I'd even go so far as to make it optional and have an OS setting for "Button bar placement" where the choices are "Phone optimized" or "Match tablet". Then, that would give MS another marketing plug -- that apps on their platform can adjust for users.

 

[luke_f]

The whole Windows 10 thing was about listening to customer feedback (as opposed to how it was done with Windows 8). This is once again a case where most of the customers seem to favor a different UI strategy. MS should listen to that. I don't care so much about design, but I care a lot about usability. And I see problems with usability if important functions are moved away from my thumb.

 

[tiziano27]

For the sake of argument: in the Windows Phone 8 email message list page, there's a button bar at the bottom of the screen containing buttons for new message, select messages, refresh, and search. On Windows 10, that bar is at the top and contains hamburger, new message and search buttons. When a user wants to create or find a message, which button placement is more convenient? Pretty much everyone will agree that both can be used, but the one at the bottom is easier when using the phone one-handed.

In the email app, when the user activate the command to create a new message, or open the search functionality, the next step is typing, that generally is done with two hands. For the Select functionality the user also needs the other hand to reach the first message of the list in big phones.
So, the impact of having the buttons at the top is insignificant.

People should use the preview before whinning.

 

[manicottiK]

Having read many of your other comments on these Win10 threads, I suspect that we're going to have to agree to disagree, but here's a weirdly agreeable rebuttal to your reply.

In the email app, when the user activate the command to create a new message, or open the search functionality, the next step is typing, that generally is done with two hands.

Agreed! Fortunately, both of those hands are already going to be at the bottom of the screen, where the New Message button was and where the keyboard will appear. Further, shape writing makes it pretty easy to "type" one-handed on 4"-5" devices.

For the Select functionality the user also needs the other hand to reach the first message of the list in big phones.

The checkbox-select function in WP7/8 was never terribly elegant, mostly because left-right swipes were for changing panels and up/down for scrolling. However, despite this inelegant solution, a function of the large headers in WP7 and WP8 was that the first item in a list started lower on the screen, making it easier to reach with the hand holding the phone (but not really on a phablet). It's the quest for greater information density that is shrinking headers and driving the top of the list toward the top of the screen and out of the normal reach of a thumb attached to the hand holding the phone.

(Now that I think of it, moving the button bar to the bottom in the coming "small headers" design will make reaching the tops of lists even harder. This is why user interfaces need to be tested to see what user experiences they create. People who beat up MS for "giant headers that do nothing" simply didn't understand that they did something really important -- they preserved reachability despite increasing screen size.

So, the impact of having the buttons at the top is insignificant.

I think that your comments about the keyboard and the top of the list ague for the older design. Welcome aboard! :wink:

People should use the preview before whinning.

That's true for some of what's posted, but it's the very much the wrong verb for a lot of the commentary from A5cent, Spaulagain, me, and others. Here's how you can tell:
Whining: to utter a low, usually nasal, complaining cry or sound, as from uneasiness, discontent, peevishness, etc.
Critiquing: evaluate (a theory or practice) in a detailed and analytical way.

Now, although my tongue was in my cheek for much of that, the point stands that there are valid arguments to be had about what we've seen (and even pencil-drawn mockups). Of course, there are invalid arguments, too. Let's try to avoid the latter ones.