brettbergeron

mind = blown

I think this author has some fair criticisms of the Metro desktop experience, but is sadly ill informed about the decisions that drive Metro's design. It is very far from "undesigned."

For one, remember that Metro is deeply driven by touch devices. As a general approach, Microsoft's designers made the decision to avoid skeumorphism by making _almost everything touchable_. It's a great philosophy for touch interfaces, and it works quite well on today's windows phones.

Another piece of the puzzle driving metro is Kinect. Since Microsoft uses the same design language on all its platforms, the XBox shapes the desktop. Since the Kinect has trouble reading vertical hand gestures, the designers push for most desktop screens to lay out horizontally like the XBox.

With just those two small examples, you can see why the Metro desktop experience is both flat and horizontal (in many places, not all), which this author interpreted as thoughtless.

To reiterate my point, I think the Metro language is very well considered for devices that ask users to complete one task at a time (mobile, tablet, television). It's not so great in a multitasking environment, perhaps because Microsoft is trying to make their cross-platform experience too consistent.

In my mind, Flickr is to Facebook what Vimeo is to YouTube. It's a community, not a storage system.

I think the pro and "prosumer" photo community is plenty of room for a cool product with features targeted at their niche audience. Curation, craft, camera nerdery, etc.

Flickr just isn't evolving their product as well for photographers as Vimeo is for video folks. It's sad, really.

Nice work dude! This is like 4chan, but real-time :D

Sorry if I missed it, but it looks like the real victim of plagiarism would be: http://drawar.com/

Honestly, nothing about the design or user experience of Svbtle was unique. There have to be more examples, at least by coincidence, of other designs that show prior use of similar typography and layout.

So really, this whole debate of originality seems moot.

The animating sidebar and kudos buttons are cute the first time around, but annoying when I start to try and move around the site with real intent.

Overall, it feels like the designer is wagging his/her tail in my face.