Metro (design language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metro (design language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Principles

The new Windows 8 Start Screen, making use of flat, colored live tiles and a laterally scrolling canvas as used in Windows Phone and Xbox 360 Dashboard.

The design language was designed specifically to consolidate groups of common tasks to speed up usage. This is accomplished by excluding superfluous graphics and instead relying on the actual content to also function as the main UI. The resulting interfaces favour larger hubs over smaller buttons and often feature laterally scrolling canvases. Page titles are usually large and consequently also take advantage of lateral scrolling.

Animation plays a large part, with transitions, and user interactions such as presses or swipes recommended to always be acknowledged by some form of natural animation or motion. This is intended to give the user the impression that the UI is "alive" and responsive, with "an added sense of depth."^[11][12]

Internally, Microsoft has compiled a list of principles as core to the design language.^[13]
Close to the official launch date of the product (Oct 25, 2012), more developers and Microsoft partners started working on creating new Metro applications, and many websites with resources related to this topic have been created, as well as the Microsoft's UX guidelines for Windows Store Apps.