I’m a computer science student. I’ve been studying and following Microsoft for more than 5 years. To me, it was a company of wonders who do magnificent things. It pioneered in flat, minimal design that made almost all tech company follow. In the recent 2 years I had less interest in working with programming and taken a very deep interests in Microsoft design. I have designed myself some dozens of apps, one of which had over 1.5 million downloads. I have been trained by Arturo Toledo, a designer from Microsoft involved with Windows Phone himself. Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, in contrary to common beliefs, I think they’re very wonderful (but still have room to grow) software that have excellence in both technicals and ergonomics. Then Windows 10 happened.

Firstly and chiefly, it’s the controversial ‘hamburger’ menu. If you haven’t known about it, it’s a the small, ‘3-dash’ menu resides on the top left corner of the UI. It has been used extensively in Android and iOS and it has its own built-in controls (Android? I’m not very sure in iOS). It’s a convenient way to store loads of shortcuts to functionalities in app. Because of this convenience, it is as popular as ‘Comic Sans’. To many of the UI/UX designers and myself included, it’s lazy, unthoughtful, and ill-utilized. It is comparable to a messy drawers where this clueless boy tries to stuff in as much of his paper as possible because he doesn’t know better. It stands against one of the very basic principles Microsoft set for designing mobile app — ‘Don’t try to do too much’, and the hamburger menu is clear indication of a functionality-bloated app. When it was just introduced to

Microsoft apps, OneDrive for Windows Phone, outcry ensured. Everyone complained it has been too Android-like, mainly because the audience has long been exposed to the previously sensible ergonomics. However, despite the loud feedback, or the loud protest from the designers’ community, Microsoft seemed to insist on the hamburger menu and let it lived on to Windows 10 design principles. Not even the pseudo-pivot in the updated OneDrive app can appease to the audience.

Talking about pseudo-pivot, Microsoft has been killing the trademark design language of flowing typography and panoramic magazines for the ordinary tabs, or a combination of pivot and hamburger instead. The inconsistencies are awkward when Microsoft couldn’t decide between the two, making the, otherwise uniformed experience, UI become varied between controls. This has huge impact into users’ expected interactions, why would the phone app and the people app should be different to interact?

The changes in these basic application navigations are followed by a makeover in the experience themselves. Applications are no longer pivotal, whether it’s on phones or on tables or on mouse and keyboard. Instead of wide panoramic, horizontal scrolling, magazine-like immersiveness with beautiful typographies, users now have to make do with basic ‘hamburger menu’ ‘tree-point’ navigation. Hidden navigation in app bar is shunned upon, because content is no longer king. Certainly it’ll be uniformed with the architected universal app that stretches between devices, users will always expect everything to be on the top left corner, in that hamburger menu. While this point may sound like a fallacy as it is contradictory to the point I made in the previous paragraph, I will explain more later.

And as I mentioned about content is used to be king, the greatest atrocity, design-wised, Microsoft has commit in my opinion is the chrome. I can’t fathom how it’s the same company that pioneered in clean interfaces. From Windows Phone 10 (or Windows 10 mobile or whatsoever) to Windows 10, the experience is literally littered with chrome. No longer is the News app that only have news but there has to be at least a button somewhere in screen, whether it’s ‘Start’, ‘Cortana’, or ‘Task view’, because Charms are supposed to be hidden, and hidden means ‘low discoverability’. Every function has to have a button on screen now, because Microsoft fears of people who complain that there’s no ‘print’ in the photo app (there is — in the Device Charms).

It is also apparent that Microsoft is hugging to Mouse and Keyboard interface with these buttons. Instead of having, admittedly, awkward interactions with ‘modern’ OS elements (Charms), and double personalities, Microsoft now have a unified environment with its much welcomed ‘Continuum’. It’s heralded by almost every blog that is the most brilliant thing of Windows 10. Actually it doesn’t feel so for me; it jeopardizes touch experience painfully. Touch targets are painfully small. Text are agonizingly ineligible. Interactions are clumsily executed. Even in ‘tablet mode’ it feels like it’s working on a PC, not a tablet.

However, like the title of the this blog post was of any indication, it is for only one reason. Developers.

By missing the advent of smartphones, Windows ecology, both on Win32 and newer Silverlight/RT has lost a lot of developers to Apple and Google because market share alone. After half a decade struggling, Windows Phone hasn’t accounted for 3% of global sales and the biggest hurdle for anyone to buy Windows Phone is because the app gap. But developers aren’t interested in working on Windows Phone, primarily as they don’t see the potential rewards with such a low market share.

Style is a luxury that Redmond’s Giant feels unaffordable. Windows 10, in every way, is conformist. Both to users who feel Windows 8 is an abominations and to developers who feels Windows Stores are unworthy. It is a clear indication in the previews that Windows 10 caters to mouse and keyboard a-lot. That is reflected through their refreshed applications and new elements to the OS. Touch targets are painfully small as Microsoft struggles to find a middle ground between tablets-friendly and increased screen information density. It is an obvious indication

The hamburger menu, even though is a lazy UX model, is a very versatile menu that can span through many interaction paradigms without being too awkward and is familiar to greater number of existing technology users. The hamburger menu is easy to understand, easy to learn, has high discoverability. With Microsoft releasing a built-in control, in addition to use it most of their first-party app, developers are now encouraged to use the control confidently, not for porting their own applications from other platform but also encouraged to make universal applications.

Meanwhile, the pseudo pivot conforms to both current users as the interaction models (swipes) are the same, and to new users as the subtlety of ‘content peeking’ is considered not intuitive or hard-to-figure-out. It also resembles tabs interaction model in both Android and iOS, and so, again, more obvious to both users and porting developers.

However, Microsoft seems to be having a pause to choose between a combination of pseudo-pivots and tab controls in their built-in apps. I’d suspect that they are doing a lot of research on equilvalent apps on other platforms to make these decisions. In addition to that, app that is ‘phone-only’ such as, well, ‘Phone’ are using the tab controls. I also believe that third-party apps will encouraged to use the tab controls instead.

Again, the departure of spanning/panoramic experience that Windows 8 and Phone 8 being loved for will lower the app-experience bar for new developers that are already working in other platforms to start writing applications for Windows 10 without having to read a new, foreign guidelines. This makes jumping to the platform more appealing than before. Moreover, vertical scrolling will feel more accustomed for users that is new to Windows app, which Microsoft wants a lot, as well as more natural interaction with mouse scrolling.

Lastly, contents-over-chrome leads to one of the hugest criticism of Windows 8 — discoverabilities and intuitiveness, as well as more difficulty for developers to conform to these very specific guidelines of Windows such as Charms. Both users and developers are baffled by these uniqueness of Windows Store apps as complaints regarding existing functionality missing pile up and developers are confused with differentiated experience. The buttons-littered interface is now habitual to both users and developers — obvious and to-the-point.

With the above points, it can be concluded that Microsoft desperately wants new adopters from Android and iOS, and those required apps from developers. Windows 10 tries to break the repetitive cycle or app-gap/market by enticing both users and developers. However, it comes with a price.

Microsoft doesn’t have style anymore. Instead of being an industrial design leader, they are now conformist. It’s not like they can afford to be picky, but to a creative developer (me), Microsoft platform is no longer considered to have style, iOS is. Top developers for Microsoft have been insisting that the platform doesn’t need many apps but instead good apps, but decisions from Microsoft shows their minds are elsewhere.