That UI looks like the entire design team spent the first part of the day snorting lines of gratuitous whitespace off an iPad; slammed out a half ChromeOS/half OSX cargo cult job during lunch break; then dedicated the rest of the day to the loving organic detail that only mysterious inconsistencies can provide.
Why do all the windows have slightly rounded edges except if they are “windows widgets” in which case they have sharp corners? Because reasons in the finest tradition of human factors engineering.
Why are “Top apps” made vividly(?) visible(?) with a white-on-mostly-white-kinda-transparent contrast scheme; while “recent” and “quick searches” don’t even have the subtlest of edges? Because Sir Jony Ive’s true mistake during the depths of his brushed metal and grey-on-grey period was not going all in, that’s why.
Why does half of the Microsoft Store have a white background around it to provide enough room for the teeny grey scrollbar to hide in; then there’s just a pixel-sharp transition to an area where the background is just a totally different color that happens to merge a bit into the desktop? Telemetry and machine learning with Azure Cognitive simply proved that was the best way.
Why is the Xbox app (despite presumably being a default appx application) handling its own updates rather than using the Microsoft Store’s much-vaunted update mechanism? Why is the “Xbox needs an update” half of the window solid white; while the other half(horizontal abrupt transition rather than vertical, because bold innovators are not afraid to mix it up) transparent-ish with blocks of text that look exactly like the unbuttons that are in fact buttons from the start menu; except these are unbuttons that are not buttons? I don’t even know.
Why does the Xbox app, once finally updated, have a ‘drawer’ thing on the left-hand side(seen nowhere else; despite the obvious commonality of purpose with something like the store app; or the opportunity to bring this new UI element to the left-hand widget of file explorer if it’s so cool)? Why does that window have visually distinct ‘window’ stuff at the top; but absolutely nothing setting off the scrollbar area from the background?
All in all, it’s pretty much a perfect candidate for the Samuel Johnson assessment, when considered vs. windows 10(if one is feeling particularly charitable about win10’s UI):
“Your [user interface] is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.”
