The Windows 8 Metro interface has replaced icons with tiles to match the model created by the Phone 7 interface.
Thus, the problem with Windows 8 and Metro finally became clear to me when I was confronted by a wall of tiles and was lost. The sameness made it impossible to find anything. Why anyone would revert to vague and homogeneous tiles from highly identifiable icons is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps someone thinks it's more artsy.
People sense something is wrong. The miserable sales of the Phone 7 products reflect the user sensitivity. So what does Microsoft do? It pushes the same bad idea to the new OS. Win 8 will be a huge disappointment if Microsoft insists that these metro tiles are a good idea.
Let me pose a simple question: When you look at your desktop screen, how do you find the program you are looking for? You look for distinctive icons using your human ability to recognize patterns. It’s what we do best. You ignore the words beneath the icon. For example, you scan your desktop for a red flat cat, locate it, and click, knowing the program is Irfanview. We are so good at this that we can identify an upside down icon.
How is it a step forward to create a tile inscribed with the name of the program? An old alphabetized DOS listing is easier to navigate than a wall of tiles, on which nothing is immediately familiar. Our innate pattern recognition is short-circuited by similar tiles. You have to read text rather than react to an iconic image. And while colored tiles help a little, it's still problematic.
Icons are cardinal and we have only begun to explore their potential. Mac takes the icon approach to interesting and useful extremes. Even document icons are miniature and identifiable shrunken images of the title page. This is extremely useful.
It dawned on me that, while artistically interesting, the Microsoft wall of tiles presents a navigational dilemma. It's an out-and-out hindrance. As a user interface, it's actually a disaster. It's also a disaster for the Phone 7 phones. When I look for an app on my Android, I'm searching for the familiar icons. How is hunting for a tile with text on it an improvement?
Instead of going further in the direction of icon imagery, which the human brain seems to gravitate towards, Microsoft has stopped the bus and put it in reverse. The company should have pushed icons further, developing more complex and memorable shapes and forms. Moving icons, for example, have never been properly developed. There are endless and interesting possibilities never before explored. But Microsoft has essentially moved back to DOS and command line thinking. Text.
Some of the Linux community is falling into this sort of thinking and this includes a modified tile system with icons on top of tiles. Again, a tile is a tile with or without an icon on it. The brain is wired to find an icon against a neutral background in a sea of icons faster than an icon on a tile in a sea of tiles.
So why the tiles in the first place?
Few programmers are artists and few artists are programmers. Thus, we are getting the wrongheaded retro concept. This whole tiles idea looks good to someone who likes art. However, this design will continue down the road of ruin until Microsoft recognizes that people prefer the “traditional” Windows 7 GUI to Windows 8 Metro and also notes that sales aren’t reaching potential. The company will wonder why people are grumbling.
Well, I'm grumbling in advance and I know the reason why. Now you do, too.
I advise Microsoft to abandon this tile concept A.S.A.P., but it may be too late.