Is the Tiles UI Ugly? How Does People Like It?

[Leonsoft]

IMHO, the tiles filled with a single color without border are quite ugly and I hate it.
I'm not sure whether MS has made some investigation how does people like it? E.g., how many people like it and how many dislike it?
My point is not malicious. I just hope windows to be more successful and attractive.

 

[noersetiawan]

I like it, well kinda. If all tiles are the same color (the accent color) I don't really like it, having various app that have (or can change) their own color, that's what I call looks colorful and awesome. Probably MS did it in the past when they create WP7/Zune, and yes they need to do it again now with a lot more of subjects, maybe the current tile UI will gone if they find that most people don't like it.

 

[DCTF]

It takes a lot of fiddling, but you can get something good. Most of the best screens I've seen leave empty space to allow the background pic to show through. The video of a forthcoming build showed a vastly expanded colour palette, and a Transparency slider.

Win 8.1 made a more solid look more easily, but it was worse in terms of aesthetics involving the background wallpaper. If your tiles were too small or contained to much info, they obliterated the image. Where they were larger, your tile icon/info and the image would fight each other for attention, since they were equal sharpness (W10's translucent layer attenuates the colour/contrast range of the underlying image). You'd often have to fiddle with the image in an editor to make sure a horizontal/vertical bar wasn't blocking a key part of the picture. I don't think this was something MS could commit us to for a whole generation.

 

[Rakesh Rocky2]

I like it, well kinda. If all tiles are the same color (the accent color) I don't really like it, having various app that have (or can change) their own color, that's what I call looks colorful and awesome. Probably MS did it in the past when they create WP7/Zune, and yes they need to do it again now with a lot more of subjects, maybe the current tile UI will gone if they find that most people don't like it.

I second this and also like to add that tiles without animations would be boring

 

[DCTF]

I like it, well kinda. If all tiles are the same color (the accent color) I don't really like it, having various app that have (or can change) their own color, that's what I call looks colorful and awesome. Probably MS did it in the past when they create WP7/Zune, and yes they need to do it again now with a lot more of subjects, maybe the current tile UI will gone if they find that most people don't like it.

I wish there was a design standard for app tiles, though. For example, right now the default opaque blue of the Outlook tiles is jarring, but we can expect that to change later. However, there's no cure for the eternal ugliness of IM+'s tile, or the fixed green of Evernote. It would be great if all apps had to be submitted with the creator's favoured look and a white monochrome version for the user who wants to maintain an appearance across their theme.

I also like the appearance of some setups with multi-coloured tiles, but it's quite unlikely that a user will get a great-looking Start page by pure serendipity. Forcing the apps to have a white icon option would leave the door open for customisation apps to let you say, "I want this tile mauve, this tile blue, this tile with [photo x]", and so on.

 

[Ma Rio]

The only way I like tiles now are if they are completely transparent, with minimal icons on them. Everything else is just bad.

 

[Asskickulater]

I love the tiles, transparent, colorful, I think either way they look amazing, I could never go back to the boring home screens of android, ios.

 

[chalx]

IMHO, the tiles filled with a single color without border are quite ugly and I hate it.
I'm not sure whether MS has made some investigation how does people like it? E.g., how many people like it and how many dislike it?
My point is not malicious. I just hope windows to be more successful and attractive.

MS should check market share, no need to investigate. Simply, majority of people don't like modern UI and complete windows phone UX. In my company we gave last year windows phones to employees and not single one likes it. They are still using WP just because they are to cheap to buy phones they like, but they are hating their phones. And when I ask them why, every one of them have problem with UX. Not with app gap, but with UX and UI. I personally wanted to like my Lumia 925, I tried and tried but after three months I gave up and went back to Z10.

 

[colinkiama]

It's all windows 8's fault for having such a bad reception. Now most people hate the tiles. They will never know how nice they are on the phone :'(

 

[colinkiama]

And in my opinion tiles ui wasn't ugly but it was boring in windows phone until wp8.1 brought transparent tiles. A beautiful solution to having a background in the start screen.

 

[DCTF]

And in my opinion tiles ui wasn't ugly but it was boring in windows phone until wp8.1 brought transparent tiles. A beautiful solution to having a background in the start screen.

Yeah, that's why I'm quite in favour of brutal changes rather than a slow creep of changes. That's always been Windows's problem - putting shell upon shell upon shell until either the thing they have is unattractive and/or unwieldy, or it's built up too much enmity.

We don't agree about exactly how beautiful WP8.1 was - I liked it, but I felt like it had "work in progress" written all over it - but I'm totally with you that if WP7 or even 8 had launched looking like WP8.1 , the OS would have had a completely different reception.

 

[Kevin Rush]

I think the key to liking the tiles is to use live tiles to show images and information. I really think the reason apple and goggle fans can't understand tiles is because they simply would never want, big dead chicklet icons, to start any apps. Lively, informative Live Tiles are amazing and useful. I wish we had more of them and they updated even more often.

Re: Chalux, I find it hard to believe anyone hates WP. The UI is beautiful and easy to use. To me, it sounds like they were given a free phone, not of their choosing, so it is bad.

I read an article recently that said the Blackberry Z10 was the worst UI to learn. Different strokes for different folks.

Best Wishes.

 

[Praxius]

I does the tiles just fine.....

If you would like some different colours and tones or even icons for different apps in order to change things up, there are dozens of apps in the store that help you customize and change various tiles for many apps.

 

[Asskickulater]

I does the tiles just fine.....

If you would like some different colours and tones or even icons for different apps in order to change things up, there are dozens of apps in the store that help you customize and change various tiles for many apps.

that's not a very realistic solution, by doing that you are in fact giving up the main feature of the start screen: the live tiles
.

 

[jojoe42]

And in my opinion tiles ui wasn't ugly but it was boring in windows phone until wp8.1 brought transparent tiles. A beautiful solution to having a background in the start screen.

Agreed. It was a nice change to get more with the times are transparency is starting to become more trendy again. I quite like the "square-ness" of the tiles because it differentiates from every other platform. Not yet sold on the Windows 10 for Phones approach to tiles, but I think with the transparency slider it should help. All in all, it's up to the eyes of the beholder. My friend thinks the tiles look ugly and too chunky

 

[Kevin Rush]

... All in all, it's up to the eyes of the beholder. My friend thinks the tiles look ugly and too chunky

Respectively, maybe your friend is responding to your particular layout?
There are many forum strings where people show their Start Screens. Some are better than others.

 

[Ushae]

Well we have a lot of options on the table now, more than other OS phones too.

- Complete transparency
- Adjusted accent colour tiles that can be partially transparent (this is my favourite)
- Solid colour Tiles

I think MS should also allow us to choose the shape of the times, eg rounded edges etc more options are a good thing. There should be a them for everyone once W10 is out.

 

[CapoFantasma97]

I think MS should also allow us to choose the shape of the times, eg rounded edges etc more options are a good thing

I think that is only ugly, and would mess up the general GUI feel.
Metro/Modern isn't for round stuff.

 

[mjrtoo]

IMHO, the tiles filled with a single color without border are quite ugly and I hate it.
I'm not sure whether MS has made some investigation how does people like it? E.g., how many people like it and how many dislike it?
My point is not malicious. I just hope windows to be more successful and attractive.

Then you must hate every interface and webpage on the planet because they have all copied the 'metro' design.

 

[michail71]

I think that is only ugly, and would mess up the general GUI feel.
Metro/Modern isn't for round stuff.

In some ways it's about letting computers be computers in an efficient way and not simulating reality.