Overcoming the New Visual Studio UI

by Telerik Marketing Blog | Comments 78

A blog by Doug Seven, Executive Vice President at Telerik. (Original post here)

In a blog post last week, Monty Hammontree, the Director of User Experience for Visual Studio, announced the UI refresh for Visual Studio. This is a project that I had some involvement in (mostly as a reviewer) while still at Microsoft, and have been waiting patiently for this announcement so that I could talk about it.

iconRefreshPersonally I love the new UI. Sure, its not perfect, but it is a huge improvement over where Visual Studio has been for the past ten years. What is surprising to me is the amount of negative reaction the blog post has gotten. 

Some of my favorite comments from the blog post are:


"Okay, i get wanting to reduce distraction and “lighten” the UIs feel… but GEEZ! Why do good ideas always get taken too far? This UI is SO bland and SO dead, I’d be afraid of it putting me to sleep on the job as opposed to reducing distractions. ICH!" – Aaron – 23 Feb 2012 10:20 AM


"Is it a desktop app? Is it a metro app? Decide and stop mangling the two UIs together. The capitalized titles hurt my eyes. They’re distracting and out of place." – Mike – 23 Feb 2012 10:26 AM


"…While I do like introducing simplicity, I won’t be installing this if there is no option to replace these very low contrast lay-outs. And I’m pretty sure other people will don’t want to upgrade to this either, which will cost you some Metro developers in the long term…" – Tom Wijsman – 23 Feb 2012 10:31 AM


Windows 3.1 is back? – Andrey – 23 Feb 2012 10:52 AM


"The monochromatic color scheme is so bad it is distracting. Instead of staying out of the way, my eyes are drawn to just how bad it really is…It is so bad and so distracting that a new word should be created to describe how bad and distracting it is…like baddistracting or bastracting. The monochromatic scheme is bastracting and should be stopped." – jparramore – 23 Feb 2012 11:38 AM


Anyway, you get the point. There is a lot of negative reaction to the new UI. But is the new UI really that bad. Is it possible that it is actually a significant improvement, and we, the develoeprs who use and love Visual Studio, are just not ready to accept change?

A Bit on Metro

The Metro design echoes the visual language of an airport or metro system signage in both its design and typeface. The goal of the Metro design style is to create contextual relevance through content – primarily icons. Icons should be clear and understandable, and leverage real-world metaphors that are familiar to users. They should have simple geometry and limit the amount of fine detail.

Simplicity is the key. Every icon should be as simple as it can be (and no simpler). The primary purpose of the action the icon enables should be clearly and cleanly represented by the icon.

420.xamlLook all around your life and you will find these icons. They are not only on airport and metro signs, they are on your electronics, your clothing tags, and the dashboard of your car. You are so used to seeing Metro style icons, that you have developed an ability to quickly understand instructions and information based on a simple icon.

Metro style’s main goal is to make understanding information and instructions at a glance easy. The challenge is always balancing what you need to know with how much you can consume. For example, look at the laundering instructions on a piece of clothing. There could be 5 or 6 icons there, some of which you may not understand. That is likely because they are not within your domain, or context. I guarantee you that anyone working in a dry cleaning facility understands them all at a glance.

A Good Metro Implementation Focuses on Content

I think of the dashboard of my car, an Audi A6, as a great Metro style implementation. It provides me easy access to the information that I need in context, and easy way to switch context (e.g. between audio entertainment and navigation), and draws my focus and attention to the content that matters (speed, RPMs).

IMG_0087-2

Most command buttons have an easy to understand icon (seat heaters, parking brake, fans, etc.). Some things use text (On/Off, Nav, CD/Aux, etc.) instead of icons. In either case it is easy to quickly infer the meaning and intent of the button. All of the command buttons and interfaces are the same color – white icons and text (redish backlight if its dark) on a black button. Essentially a monochromatic UI that makes finding and using the commands easy, but focuses my attention on the important stuff – warnings and content.

  • Warning information is indicated with a different color than the rest of the UI. For example the “Passenger Air Bag Off” warning and the check engine icon are both yellow.
  • Content that requires my focus and attention is white, such as the speedometer and tachometer, and the navigation screen (which includes a small set of other colors to indicate route, landmarks and warnings).

I can’t imaging how distracting it would be to drive my car if every icon and button were a colorized button. It would make finding and focusing on the important content much more difficult. As it is, I know to focus on the white content, and pay extra attention to any yellow content.
The new Visual Studio UI is attempting to do exactly what my Audi dashboard does. Make it easy for you to find information and commands, but draw your focus and attention to the content that matters most (aka your code).

Resisting Change

The fact of human psychology is that we tend to resist change before we embrace it. This seems to be the tone of many of the comments on Monty’s blog post. Many people are likely going through the stages of grief – Shock, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

Many people seems to be in the first four or five stages.

Shocked by the change.

"WO WO WO. Let’s get one thing straight. There had better be a GIANT button in there to “MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT USE TO.” – Don’t “Windows 8″ me!" – 27 Feb 2012 3:07 AM


Denying the change.

"Why not keep the current GUI? it seems that your vs11 will be the worst design ever… please, see all these post, reconsider your transition…" – ammin – 26 Feb 2012 5:15 AM


Anger toward Microsoft for the change.

"I assume these god damn awful UI changes are meant to hide the lack of real changes over VS2010?" – Steve – 27 Feb 2012 10:56 AM


Bargaining with Microsoft regarding the change.

"Folks, we need to organize & mobilize to fight this: talk to your co-workers, give them link to this page, ask them to comment here." – Dee – 25 Feb 2012 9:32 AM


Depressed about the change.

"Don’t care. It is what it is and nothing anyone says here can change that." – Not Anal – 27 Feb 2012 12:12 AM


Its not clear to me that the mass of Visual Studio developers will reach acceptance of the new UI, nor is it clear to me if the bargaining will result in change. I like to believe that both will happen.

The Path Ahead

My opinion is that this is a step in the right direction. Of course, its near impossible to actually tell if its an improvement with out extended usage of the new UI, to see if it improves my productivity or not. This means that for many people there is likely a step of “testing” that must occur prior to acceptance. The testing may be challenging at first because we have to unlearn a few old things in order to learn some new things. Like the Audi dashboard example above, this happens almost anytime you buy a new car as well. Basically things work the same – there is a speedometer and tachometer, although they may be in reverse positions from what you are used to; there is a console for controlling audio, heat and AC and possibly navigation; and there are warning indicators, but possibly different ones, or they are in different positions. Testing the change requires a little patience in order to fully determine if the change is manageable – that is to say, you may not be able to affect the change, but you can determine your acceptance of the change.I encourage everyone to withhold judgment until you’ve had a chance to try the new Visual Studio UI. Once you’ve given it a fair chance, provide actionable feedback to the team via Monty’s blog (e.g. “There had better be a GIANT button in there to “MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT USE TO.” isn’t really actionable).

As someone who leads product development, I can tell you that there is nothing more important than hearing from customers. It is the challenge of the product development team to determine actionable, real feedback from shock, denial, anger and depression driven feedback. A good product development team will be innovative and creative, and it may not immediately resonate with the customer, but if they’ve done their job right, the customer will accept and embrace the change in the long run, and have a better product experience as a result.

My favorite Henry Ford quote:


"If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse."


Henry Ford went on to introduce a radical change and innovation, that was met with both immediate acceptance and criticism. Can you imagine if that change had not been widely accepted?

Posted in: visual-studio-11 metro metro-ui microsoft

78 Comments

Randy
There is no reason why a Visual Studio 2010 theme can not be added. Microsoft has had a great track record in the last ten years of listening and responding to it's customers. I hope it is not returning to the bad old days of being the 100 LB gorrilla and telling it customers that THEY know best and customers should just shut up and say "Thank You". UI is a personal thing and there is no "right" way to do anything. "Experts" are legends in their own mind but no one else.
Roland
My guess is that it will be slow anyway.... I usually work with large projects on top of the shelf machine. VS 2010 is sluggish here and I don't have many addons.
I don't really care how it looks like. The editor will still be a big white window with code. Make it run faster.
David Ching
This is prepostreous:  "We have to unlearn a few old things in order to learn some new things..."  This is a dev tool, which if it is any good, should feel natural and welcoming from the first minute, and grow ever more comfortable as time goes on.  It's not like classical music or spinach that is an acquired taste!  If it is, it is MS's job to give us a VS 2010 theme or something and let us gradually experiment and try to win us over, not just dump this latest result of some far fetched "usability" study on us with no alternative.  I will reserve further judgement until I give it a fair try and probably can work with it well enough.  Still, MS is in no position to tick devs off by telling us what's good for us.  Heck, MS doesn't even know what's best for itself these days!
liviu
I have the same problem with Adobe toolset. Every command image looks the same, it is very hard to find your way in a monochrom universe...
I would have expected to see real inovation, look at http://vimeo.com/36579366 for what inovation means.
Chris
Change is hard...
Lionel
Well, when I read the article, apart from the my reaction looking at the new interface, I have been quite satisfied by the new improvements. This time they really focused in making Visual Studio more productive. The ability to search the solution explorer alone will dramatically improve productivity in large codebase. Looking back, the previous Visual Studio release did not brought much novelty in terms of improving user productivity and workflow. It was just enhanced extensibility and a WPF interface. Here the new features are much more exciting.
But, concerning the new UI, I really do not agree with the monochromic style. First it is sad. Secondly, common icons have a color code that made them popular and easy to recognize. If you open a file you search for the yellow folder and if you want to save you search for the blueish floppy disk. I understand that it helps developer focusing on the content but we must not forget that users have habits. Changing the looking of the "Open file" command is surely not gonna improve productivity on a small or large time span.
Concerning the glyph style. The car dashboard metaphor explains pretty well the need of simple icons. But the difference between a car dashboard and the Visual Studio interface is that 50% of those icons are commands on a car dashboard, the rest being informative icons, and 90% of those icons are commands in Visual Studio. Also the quantity and complexity is different. I can't really tell how much command there is on a car, but it is surely much less than in Visual Studio. I don't know how I could count them but there is probably about a thousand of commands in Visual Studio. "Copy" is a simple action but how would you represent "Debug Unit Test of selected items"? Can you make a monochromic glyph for this command that the user will be natural to the developer? In my opinion it will be hard. I really fear that switching colored icons into monochrome glyphs will turncommands into hieroglyphs!
I am really looking forward to test Visual Studio 11 but I also wish they will make those monochromic glyphs more comprehensive by adding color and a bit of detail. The first comment you quoted made my point. It is a great concept but it has been pushed too far. And objectively, if you look at a VS2010 screenshot and compare it to VS11, you cannot say that VS11 looks sad.
Pete
Not bothered about colors or icons. They need to sort out usability - tab management, window management (still rubbish on multiple monitors) and most of all performance (for non-trivial solutions).
Mike S.
tl;dr: "If you think you don't like the new UI, you're wrong."
Dan
I don't see it as that big a deal, except in the solution explorer where I use ankh svn.  It's very easy to see that things are changed if they're orange or red if there's a conflict.  Same thing with TFS.
Alex

well, first of all, they have done a poor job at the ui "improvement", and call it pretty, is like: "VS11 is as visually appealing as a soviet-era apartment-block suburb" 

Colors matter! They can justify with any text the change, but it does not change that result is just a bad UI!

Anyone who had any UI knowledge, will just shove this design back to drawing board, when he will see:

1. Lack of color (without any particular meaning)

2. ::::::::: TOOLBAR :::::::::

Thats just it! Anyone, who are saying that those things are good, are just don't know nothing about usability. 

And also take into account large amount of people, who commented it, and said its bad! Customers cant be wrong. 

Another topic, is the leaked Office 15 images. How come Office 15 is always a good looking piece of software? Couse it has tons of usability experts and designers. What has VS? Developers! 

To put it simple, MS just didnt plan it, and all designers/ux experts were allocated to office 15/metro/windows 8, leaving changes for VS11 to the VS team itself. 

Alex

Please, take a look at this mockup :)

http://i.imgur.com/VL1Qd.png

John Meyer
The VS2010 and VS2011 interfaces are obviously on completely opposite ends of the spectrum, but personally I believe the best UI is somewhere in between.  I also think the 2010 UI is far worse than the proposed 2011 one.  Far too much visual clutter.
3 actionable suggestions:
1. icons should be consistent across Windows products, Save is Save is Save, whether in Visual Studio, Office, or whetever else.  being different in this case is VERY bad
2. separate UI elements should look like separate UI elements. there must be contrast between tabs and the background behind the tabs, otherwise you only find the tab if you guess that it's there.  UIs should be obvious and discoverable, not hidden and cryptic
3. all caps is a bad idea, and is an inadequate fix for the problems in #2 above
Dan
Alex, where is that from?  That's what it should look like.
Alex

@Dan, exactly!! 

Well, you can find it on twitter, but this guy have created an entry in vs uservoice

http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2623659-go-all-in-with-a-zune-style-metro-ui-see-my-makeo

ray
Sometimes people aren't resisting change, sometimes what they're looking at really is just not that good of an idea. Why did everyone fight SOPA? Purely because it would introduct change to the internet or because it is a terrible idea? You tell me.
mbz
I happen to like VS2010, the only thing I dont like is the sluggishness so correcting that (an absolute productivity enhancer) should be the first priority. At first glance the new UI is just plain ugly. I don't know how nice tabs and colored  buttons that provided users a visual cue were productivity killers, but apparently that is the Kool-Aid these days so drink up . OH YEAH 
Ken Stone
I think it's great. I love change while still being able to do the same thing I was before. It's why we get new cars, clothes, and repaint our houses. It enlivens me and keeps me from feeling bored. 
I don't understand how people can say this is "bad" or "ugly". Ugly how? Bad how? Aesthetics are all in the eye of the beholder and this beholder says "Bravo!!" for being bold, putting themselves out there, and trying something new.
radioman
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, piece of crap, at least for now
Robert
OK, design looks nice. But color is a bit (or byte ;) of information that our brain uses quite effectively. Why would you ignore it?
gunteman
Dismissing the resistance as simple "change resistance" is too simple. I can't promise that the new GUI won't grow on me, but so far I think it's a concept taken much too far. Or maybe not far enough. If the visual distinctiveness of the GUI is so extremely reduced, it would also call for new ways of interacting with it.
I think that Lionel is spot on with his reaction to the car dashboard comparison. It just doesn't fly.
Here's hoping that this will be sorted out with a new, more colorful default theme.
Mohammed A. Fadil
I am really really really disappointed from the new visual studio UI, its the worst metro style app ever and forever, its so lame and gloomy :'(
I hope there will be improvements on performance other than this fail!!
bobby
Time will tell whether this is good or bad. I just don't see why I should have to look at the equivalent of a cold dead corpse on my monitor for 8+ hours a day.
Lo Zeno
Your Audi A6 car doesn't have a monochromatic dashboard. It has a small palette of colours, sure, but it's not monochromatic. And not grey. And Icons are not black-on-gray, icons ALWAYS have a color: green color for the "lights on" icon, red color for any "warning/danger/heat/CHECK THIS DAMMIT" icon, blue for "all is ok/cold", white for "informational only". Do you know why? because simple colors deliver information faster than a picture.
Think of traffic lights: green -> go, red-> stop, yellow->careful, red is incoming. For your brain, color delivers informations faster than picture, because abstract pictures (icons and glyphs) need to be "picked apart" from others. In the new VS11 ui I see al ot of square icons, but I can't tell them apart at a glance, I need to look at each of them to find the "DockPanel" one!
On the other hand, you can't use colors to deliver ALL the informations, because you'd be forced to using hues, and hues.... well, make for a lot of confusion, like "wait, is that ochra or... earth?" So, that's why we developed our interfaces to use few simple and distinguishable colors (red, yellow, green, blue...) to deliver the "group" information, then icons to deliver the rest. If I see a white icon next to a red one, I know that I have to check red first because red = danger/warning/important, for example.
Also: monochromatic icons do exist, but they are LARGE. I mean, WAAAAY LARGE, like traffic-signal large, and they usually have a color-coded background (look at any traffic signal, and notice how each background color tells you immediately if the traffic sign is a danger, a direction, a speed limit...). Not small, indistinguishable black-on-gray icons which are even hard to read if you don't have a perfect sight!
Lo Zeno
Your Audi A6 car doesn't have a monochromatic dashboard. It has a small palette of colours, sure, but it's not monochromatic. And not grey. And Icons are not black-on-gray, icons ALWAYS have a color: green color for the "lights on" icon, red color for any "warning/danger/heat/CHECK THIS DAMMIT" icon, blue for "all is ok/cold", white for "informational only". Do you know why? because simple colors deliver information faster than a picture.
Think of traffic lights: green -> go, red-> stop, yellow->careful, red is incoming. For your brain, color delivers informations faster than picture, because abstract pictures (icons and glyphs) need to be "picked apart" from others. In the new VS11 ui I see al ot of square icons, but I can't tell them apart at a glance, I need to look at each of them to find the "DockPanel" one!
On the other hand, you can't use colors to deliver ALL the informations, because you'd be forced to using hues, and hues.... well, make for a lot of confusion, like "wait, is that ochra or... earth?" So, that's why we developed our interfaces to use few simple and distinguishable colors (red, yellow, green, blue...) to deliver the "group" information, then icons to deliver the rest. If I see a white icon next to a red one, I know that I have to check red first because red = danger/warning/important, for example.
Also: monochromatic icons do exist, but they are LARGE. I mean, WAAAAY LARGE, like traffic-signal large, and they usually have a color-coded background (look at any traffic signal, and notice how each background color tells you immediately if the traffic sign is a danger, a direction, a speed limit...). Not small, indistinguishable black-on-gray icons which are even hard to read if you don't have a perfect sight!
jasper
if i get into a 30 year old mercedes benz the important controls (lights indicators and wipers ) are all in the same place as in a modern mercedes benz, and have always been in the same place and operated the same. When I get into a toyota i have to re-learn where everything is and this takes a few hours. I would not expect to have to relearn my environment every time I get into a different mercedes benz. Microsoft make us re-learn everything every few years. I wouldnt expect that from one product. I dont have time for this, Ill stick with VS2008 until microsoft re-introduce support for windows mobile. Theres no ways I can switch between the two VS versions 4 or 5 times a day and not have a reduction in efficiency.  By the way, how long did it take you to get used to the "Ribbon" in Office? Probably about 2 years, just in time for the next release.
Jonathan Dickinson
My VS10 already looks largely like that (except it's white and teal).
I changed my color scheme to be **completely** flat and bland. I have tab-hidden all my tool windows (solution explorer etc.). I have hidden the menu bar. Toolbars don't exist. I have it full screen. I get more work done. 
If you want your tools to excite you go work at an arcade. If you want to get more work done make sure your tools get out of your way - this is why Vim is so widespread with *nix hackers; because they care more about the efficiency of their tool than the aesthetic of it.
I am in complete agreement with you: this is a step forward. I can't wait until I can use VS11 in my job.
http://imgur.com/QwcoP
Andy
This monochromatic thing has just one reason...To sell us a new colorful vs2013 Hand colorful Windows9.We had this thing, remember?
Gary Wheeler
It's a simple fact that the new UI is difficult to read, especially for middle-aged users like myself with age-related vision problems. Any moron with experience in UI design knows that color is a useful component. Removing that component indicates that Microsoft doesn't intent to serve anyone but the twentysomething developer audience.
It's readily apparent to me that the choice is due to the same kind of agist bigotry as is prevalent in the Expression team.
Groooo
The TOOLBOX (didn't mean to shout) demonstrates the fallacies perfectly. It is useless. I cannit believe how no usability expert mentioned how much the color is important to the human mind for quick classification and searching.THAT makes developers more productive. Faster UI response, faster locating of commands. I wonder if there was a single developer which found the VS2010 design "distracting". That's ridiculous. Distracting how? Do you really have clear evidence that any number of developers had a hard time keeping their eyes on the code in VS2010? It's not like they are over-saturated light bulbs popping out of the screen. I find your "stages of grief" comment slightly offending, especially since there seems to be a lot of denial from your side. This is a tool for professionals, and yet you seem to be imposing your subjective opinions.
Groooo
The TOOLBOX (didn't mean to shout) demonstrates the fallacies perfectly. It is useless. I cannit believe how no usability expert mentioned how much the color is important to the human mind for quick classification and searching.THAT makes developers more productive. Faster UI response, faster locating of commands. I wonder if there was a single developer which found the VS2010 design "distracting". That's ridiculous. Distracting how? Do you really have clear evidence that any number of developers had a hard time keeping their eyes on the code in VS2010? It's not like they are over-saturated light bulbs popping out of the screen. I find your "stages of grief" comment slightly offending, especially since there seems to be a lot of denial from your side. This is a tool for professionals, and yet you seem to be imposing your subjective opinions.
Groooo
The TOOLBOX (didn't mean to shout) demonstrates the fallacies perfectly. It is useless. I cannit believe how no usability expert mentioned how much the color is important to the human mind for quick classification and searching.THAT makes developers more productive. Faster UI response, faster locating of commands. I wonder if there was a single developer which found the VS2010 design "distracting". That's ridiculous. Distracting how? Do you really have clear evidence that any number of developers had a hard time keeping their eyes on the code in VS2010? It's not like they are over-saturated light bulbs popping out of the screen. I find your "stages of grief" comment slightly offending, especially since there seems to be a lot of denial from your side. This is a tool for professionals, and yet you seem to be imposing your subjective opinions.
mar
Admit it, you only wanted to show that you have audi:-p
Bob
What a bunch of whine bags. If you don't like it, code your own. If any of you are developers you should know that you can't please everyone. And I bet most of you can't be pleased at all. You're going to end up being that grouchy old guy that is constantly yelling at little kids to stay off your lawn. Nice life you've chosen for yourself. Think about it. And then, to prove my point, give me some blistering come-backs and whack me with your cane!
gunteman
It's the tool many of us work in 8+ hours a day. We're allowed to whine.
PhilB
I always customize my visual studio to basically just be a big code window anyway.  I've found that using the keyboard shortcuts is much more efficient than using the mouse to click on all the icons.  As a result I hardly even notice the new UI
rb
Well, I've read a few of these blogs now, and a lot of the comments.  For me; I will absolutely NOT install this on my computer until some enterprising person(s) or the ms dev team creates a theme that allows use of color AND a different icon set.
If that does not happen, I will gladly stick with both VS 2008 and VS 2010!!!!
CrayDev
So, basically, "You developers are a bunch of whiners. You just don't get it yet - get over it, we're right?"
I agree that special design elements should be reserved for true "problems" (ie, Bright Red, Pop-ups), but that doesn't mean you should cut the rest of the color spectrum and design just to highlight these. You used the Audi's color-singularity (which, by the way, I can spy blue, white, yellow, and multiple shades of red on your image) as an example, yet you failed to acknowledge that what it lacks in color it makes up for in size, location, and proximity. Seeing as a developer's UI can't afford to give up real estate to these design elements, the natural attention-grabber is color, followed by iconography.
You seem to think developers need "simpler." I wager that developers can actually handle even MORE data from color, proximity, iconography, etc, than in previous years.
Seth Godin wrote a great blog on quick-scanning of information here:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/02/we-can-handle-information-density.html 
CrayDev
So, basically, "You developers are a bunch of whiners. You just don't get it yet - get over it, we're right?"
I agree that special design elements should be reserved for true "problems" (ie, Bright Red, Pop-ups), but that doesn't mean you should cut the rest of the color spectrum and design just to highlight these. You used the Audi's color-singularity (which, by the way, I can spy blue, white, yellow, and multiple shades of red on your image) as an example, yet you failed to acknowledge that what it lacks in color it makes up for in size, location, and proximity. Seeing as a developer's UI can't afford to give up real estate to these design elements, the natural attention-grabber is color, followed by iconography.
You seem to think developers need "simpler." I wager that developers can actually handle even MORE data from color, proximity, iconography, etc, than in previous years.
Seth Godin wrote a great blog on quick-scanning of information here:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/02/we-can-handle-information-density.html 
Robert S.
@Ken Stone, if you'd read the comments, you wouldn't have to ask "Bad how?"
And ol' @Bob just dismisses us all as grouchy whiners, and, like MS, dismisses our reasons, many of which come from usability experts and expertise gained over several decades of GUI design.
Like almost every software product out there, some people like the new UI, others will have difficulty working with it. So the question is why do software designers and developers too often fail to apply what we've learned from the past, and at least give the end user a choice, give us ways to configure the UI to our own, personal needs? And why does Microsoft, that has used up a lot of ink and webspace promoting concepts such as familiarity in design across different applications, rarely follow it's own preaching?
NedPat
Looks great except for source code which is out of a 3 year old's paint box
randy
I like the Audi dashboard, but I bet you wouldn't have bought it if the whole dashboard was gray
randy
I like the Audi dashboard, but I bet you wouldn't have bought it if the whole dashboard was gray. But I guess if it was ten that would be a good metro design because the content you should be focusing on is out the windshield
Feng
I seem to see MS is re-defining the word "GUI" from "Graphical User Interface" to  "Grey User Interface". What is behind the story of being "Grey"? We are getting old...
Max
I'm with Jasper - I'll stick with VS2008.  I write mostly business intelligence code and desktop stuff anyway so retooling is something I'm going to not do again; I've done it enough times in the last 10 years.
How many industries besides software are there where everybody has to refit their shop every 2 or 3 years?  I guarantee you that your local body shop doesn't re-purchase their equipment that frequently.  Sorry ... I'm sitting this one out.  My tools do the job and I like them.
Parrotlover77
Forget Visual Studio, why is this blog so unreadable?  On my mediocre monitors at work, I can barely make out the light grey text on white background.  If you can't even make your blog readable to the masses, why should I listen to you about UI layouts in Visual Studio?
Speaking of Visual Studio and Metro, your Audi A6 is a great example of Metro.  But then why does Visual Studio fail in every way that the A6 succeeded?  Notice that the A6 is not monochromatic and low contrast.  It makes excellent use of color to distinguish between different content (ie, the speedometer line is red and the digits are white, so it's easy to see where the line is in relation to the digits).  The LCD screen near the gauges has two background colors to distinguish digital speed from whatever else it is displaying.  While all the non-critical iconography is red, that is the only spot where there is even a hint of monocromatism.  Most importantly, it's high contrast!  (Bright illumination vs dark background.)  Where can you possibly draw a parallel between the A6 cockpit and Visual Studio?
As surely as the human species resists (some forms of) change, arrogant UI designers and their fanbois force unwanted changes that provide no usability or productivity gains upon the public, just because it's the current fad.
Anand
I have trouble wrapping my head around this line: "The Metro design echoes the visual language of an airport or metro system signage in both its design and typeface." --- Can you please provide some details on why such a choice was made? I mean, why did you choose the visual language of an airport to a software product targeted for developers? The design and typeface in airports should help any traveler (especially the new) to easily locate things in the airport. That is a 3 dimensional space crowded with lot of stuff. How does that apply here? But a big chunk of the users that's going to use VS11 are the ones that are going to migrate from an older version of VS.
Good to know that the new UI concentrates on the simplicity. It will be nice to see if the UI provides lot of space for the "content creation" a.k.a coding rather than providing lot of "admin debris" (in the words of Prof ET).
In my view, if you have to write a blog post to convince developers about the new UI using a fact of human psychology, that itself gives a negative impression about the product no matter how good it is.
Parrotlover77
@Alex - I like your mockup!  Just turning the grey into white makes the UI a lot easier on the eyes.  I really like how you even managed to preserve the easily recognized primary color of classic icons. The "open folder" is yellow, the "save" disk is blue. Nice job!!  Now that's a Metro I can get behind!
Logan
Quoting Henry Ford here does not seem appropriate. The quote is often used to illustrate that customers do not know what they want until you invent it for them. But correct me if I'm wrong, after introducing the automobile, did Ford's customers riot and demand instead a faster horse?
Ford was not saying that he knows what's best for his customers even if they don't agree with him!
studio user
Both the displayed UI of the new studio and this blog are both pretty bad examples of design. Even worse, comparing visual studio with a car dashboard pretty much dooms the entire blog entry to irrellevency. Doug Seven uniquely illustrates how vastly unqualified people remain employed when he should in all honesty be on a street corner selling pencils.
Nando
You are not Henry Ford, and new Visual Studio is not such a great innovation to start a new era, so stop quoting Henry Ford and try to evolve, instead continuosly redo from scratch. We are not driving a car, we are look at this fucking icons 8-9 hours per day and I will not look at that infinite gray, never.
And my car has colour in icons, too.
SpaceDoc
I'm not pleased with the new interface.
I'm a visual person and utilize the colors of the icons to help me understand what is going on.  Such as the icon showing deleting a file/project having red tells me that I SHOULD NOT DO THIS unless I'm really sure.
But the truth of it all, we'll get used to a variety of changes just because we are going to do development and so far Visual Studio is a good tool to do that - barring stupid changes in 2011 I expect that to also be true.
The real issue with all of this is when is Intellisense going to be extended to C++. It was a great feature in every form of Visual Studio prior to 2010 and then it went away in 2010.
I'm a programmer that does a lot of mixed coding in C++ and C# and find the distraction (or lack of help) of not having Intellisense available in C++ almost too much so have switched most of my development to C#.
C# is not the language that some of my projects should be done in but nevertheless I go for my highest productivity and am willing to sacrifice other aspects of my code (such as speed). The industry I'm in allows me to do this but most don't.
There are numerous other features that Visual Studio developers could be focusing on - Why waste your time changing the UI.
Kelly
I didn't even know that my productivity was being hurt by the color of the VS buttons.  I'm glad that Microsoft told me because I probably would never have known that.
SpaceDoc
I'm not pleased with the new interface.
I'm a visual person and utilize the colors of the icons to help me understand what is going on.  Such as the icon showing deleting a file/project having red tells me that I SHOULD NOT DO THIS unless I'm really sure.
But the truth of it all, we'll get used to a variety of changes just because we are going to do development and so far Visual Studio is a good tool to do that - barring stupid changes in 2011 I expect that to also be true.
The real issue with all of this is when is Intellisense going to be extended to C++. It was a great feature in every form of Visual Studio prior to 2010 and then it went away in 2010.
I'm a programmer that does a lot of mixed coding in C++ and C# and find the distraction (or lack of help) of not having Intellisense available in C++ almost too much so have switched most of my development to C#.
C# is not the language that some of my projects should be done in but nevertheless I go for my highest productivity and am willing to sacrifice other aspects of my code (such as speed). The industry I'm in allows me to do this but most don't.
There are numerous other features that Visual Studio developers could be focusing on - Why waste your time changing the UI.
Parrotlover77
The Henry Ford quote is particularly amusing because how much has the automobile's "UI" really changed since his day?  If MS's current crop of UI experts were car designers, every three years the entire operation of the car would change.  They would reinvent the steering wheel into a steering stick.  The pedals would be moved to the sides of the seat.  The scenery outside the window being too distracting would be replaced by a monochrome LCD monitor that displayed a wireframe model of the outside.  When customers start freaking out, dingdongs like Doug Seven would rush to the defense of the new car UI, telling everybody that they are living in the past and need to embrace the future for their own good!
Aaron Smith
I'm actually somewhat taken aback that you are telling people that use your product on a daily basis that they are just resisting change and don't want to accept it. What happened when VS2010 came out? Everyone loved the look and feel. No one resisted that change. Look at what people are telling you and quit being so ignorant to the needs of the people who use this every day. Metro is not the end all be all of UI design. Yes, it works for cars, and subways where it's trying to tell people something, or give them information. This is not the airport. We are using TOOLS, not looking at signs.
I think you need to step back and get down off your high horse for a minute to listen to the people that use your product. I looked at the feature list before looking at the UI and liked some of the new features... But then I looked at the screen shots and then shared it with our team. The overall feedback I received was "do we have to upgrade or can we just keep using 2010?" I need to keep my developers happy. We may not be upgrading at all this time around, and that will be a first for us.
Aaron Smith
I was also mistaken, for some reason I thought this was a microsoft blog post defending their UI. Didn't realize this was Telerik, but my thoughts are the same.
Kipp Woodard
- Why does an improvement need to be overcome?
- Who was calling for these sorts of improvements? 
- How do you measure the improvedness?
- What IDE UI are you competing with?  Lame-ass Eclipse?
- A car cockpit is not a computer screen.  You're not going to crash your computer if you take extra time to glean more information from the screen.  The extra info in colored icons does not bombard the user.  It is mentally ignored until there is a need to focus on that particular item.
- More color is more information.  It can be overused, but that doesn't mean it is not useful.
- A good (slaveish) Metro interpretation/implementation does not equate to making the UI better.
- This article treats us like we're knee-jerk morons that don't know what is good for us.
Robbie
Software interfaces are like librarries - some people remember the call number of subjects, some where they sit in the library, and others by the people who frequent the subject area.
Change the look and feel and for some of us we have to learn an entirely new langauge just to keep doing our jobs.  I lose about 2-3 weeks of productivity at each upgrade because I think C# inside a specific ergonomic environment.
stevyrino
This blog is hard to read (grey on white) just like the grey-ish  VS11 UI. Whoever thought this up has no clue about what works across the age range of developer population.   Metro will be hot today .... but gone tomorrow .... just like pretty much everything else in the tech world.  So there is no point about getting all juiced up about stuff that is transitory anyways!!  With Microsoft it always has been about "trying to catch the falling knife".
Cygnus
The problem with using metaphors in designing software (i.e. the "Metro" style interface) is that they are frequently overused or beaten into submission by oversimplification.  How many things do you need to track in your dashboard?  Five?  Add climate control and you have about ten.  Now, how many things can you do in program of even moderate complexity?  And you want to put a Fisher Price interface on that?
Think of an auto mechanic's workshop?  How many tools does he have?  How many diferent things can he fix?  How does he find his tools?  How should they be arranged?  I'm not an auto-mechanic.  Should it be easy for *me* to find and use the tools?  I probably don't know how to use half of them.  Should we just get rid of them or not care if they're easy to find?
Fads come and go.  This, too, shall pass.
The Old Guy
The metro stuff is meant for the METRO screen.
Let's face it Metro is for full screen apps that are just as at home on the PC as they would be on slab or mobile device - ideally for techy - teens.
Dev tools are for professionals who will be launching and using the tool only on a PC, and only from the traditional desktop.
The desktop is where metro does not fit - and hence it is not required for the VS UI.
Simple solution - just stick with VS 2008 and skip the next two or three versions, and MS will have to re-think what they are doing.
The fact is metro is very cool - But only in the metro environment. Keep it away from the traditional desktop where the real work is done and you end up pleasing both the Techy-Teens and those whole actually use the PC for work.
J Williams
The glyph idea is intended to echo the signage in airports. and on buttons in our cars. Great idea, but Visual Studio doesn't have 5 or 10 different functions, it has *thousands*. Judiciously applied colour is a very useful way of differentiating and grouping icons. (Note "judiciously" - most of the old VS icons were awful too). I would also point out that cars are actually a fabulous example of places where a bunch of meaningless icons and words can often be found, and this serves to disorientate the user. Your example picture of a car also uses quite a lot of colour - not a single bit of bland grey in sight. 
I'm not actually bothered about the icons though. To "reduce distractions" I've been deleting all but about 5 buttons from my toolbars for about 20 years. Frequently used options are on hotkeys; infrequent ones are on menus. It's nice to see MS finally get the idea that the mad proliferation of useless buttons (and now tabbed ribbon bars so they can fit in even more buttons!) should stop.
My problem with the VS11 UI is not the icons. It's that the whole window is bland and gray and *flat* colour. You don't get flat colour much in nature. The eye finds gradual subtle changes in shading natural and relaxing, and I find the new window borders stark and dull, punctuated only by all-caps text that breaks all the typographic rules that are normally applied to make non-distracting easy-on-the-eyes publications like books and magazines.
And why do I need to remove distractions? I've been using VS for 20 years, so I don't see the chrome when I'm working. There is an underlying assumption that every programmer using VS is designing pretty websites (so it should work more like an art package, let's copy Photoshop's greyness), but the reality is that most of us are writing code, not designing art. We look at ranks of dull text all day, and this form of editing is not affected by colours around the borders in the way that an image is.
Beyond the ui stuff that I will no doubt get used to after a few days, VS 11 looks great - finally some effort on bots of the UI we use every day (search, solution explorer, pending changes, hoorah!). I just hope the 10 second delay every time I break into the debugger has been fixed...
jko
IMHO Microsoft should split Visual Studio into two tools:
1) Newest fashion trend metro style VISUAL STUDIO for all "software" developers that actually are artists painting UI. They really need that Visual Studio look match most recent fashion trend of UI designs, otherwise their soul will get hurt and they will not be able to express themselves.
2) Tool for real Software Developers who write code and design algorithms - you can call it Microsoft DevStudio. This group need speed optimized reliable tool which consist of code editor with syntax hilighting, intellisense, static code analyzer, class viewer and intellitrace debugger, multimonitor support etc. This group really appreciates backward compatibility of the interface, especially keyboard shortcuts. Writing good code is hard enough without relearning of new fancy tool interface.
Skins/schemes or whatever you call it are out of interest.
Car interface IMHO is bad example here - as J Williams mentioned.
R.B. Davidson
"As someone who leads product development, I can tell you that there is nothing more important than hearing from customers.  "
It may be important to you, but you seem to have trouble believing what people are telling you.  Namely that the new design is an eyesore.  My gut reaction upon looking at it is "I don't want to work in that environment".   A good design should not ask or expect me to overcome instinctive revulsion.
Daniel
I perfectly agree about the points that inspire the Metro concept, namely simplicity and clarity. I also agree with not using so much in-your-face white for the background - if I'm looking at a screen for 8+ hours a day I don't want the experience to match staring at a bare fluorescent ceiling light for just as long.
But let's look at what makes the Audi dashboard more appealing than the Visual Studio grey interface (in addition to colour, which many others have discussed) - the use of light. Our eyes are drawn to light, so it makes sense for the content (the glyph-style icons) to be a lighter colour than the background. This doesn't mean that they should be super-bright nor compete for attention with the main content (the code). I've found that having a lighter background forces extra mental effort to make sense of the darker content.
In fact, I use a modified Zenburn-style theme for Visual Studio. I've also enabled similar themes in two other IDEs I use - Eclipse and WebStorm, as I could not comfortably develop with so much full-white in my face. Even when using Borland C++ I was using their classic syntax highlighting scheme (yellow text on dark blue). The only thing I wish for is to have the other windows and toolbars in a similar colour scheme with the icons adorning a dark canvas.
Simplicity doesn't necessarily mean only two colours, it means getting away from too much detail with fancy gradients. We're not wanting a recreation of a scene from a Pixar movie, just a simple graphic (including use of primary & secondary colours) that quickly and clearly communicates what the icon is all about.
johan
We make our customers accept our changes...
Adam
Worst interface ever. I'll be sticking with VS 2010 if there's no classic theme.
Ken Cox
The use of ALL CAPS in labels violates known good practice because it removes the "shape recognition" our brains get from lower and mixed case.
The rest of the UI will likely be customizable using add-ins so it's not such a big deal.
Gonzalo
lol.... so they build a theme that most people think is ugly, and this is what they come with!?
"The fact of human psychology is that we tend to resist change beforewe embrace it. This seems to be the tone of many of the comments onMonty’s blog post. Many people are likely going through the stages of grief – Shock, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Many people seems to be in the first four or five stages."
I wonder, Vista in which stage got stuck?, at least in mexico all the people i know didnt like it and most of them jumped from XP to 7. And from what i have read on the net isnt a isolated case.
johan
We make our customers accept our changes...
Srikanth
It sometimes reminds me of Expression blend, I was expecting office like ribbon in the new UI
Nelson
I'm still not sold on this.
Yes, there is some merit to the "content before chrome" debate, but chrome still matters.  When applied properly, chrome gives the different UI elements the proper weight and helps imply grouping / hierarchy / relationships between items.  For a tool-set as large as Visual Studio, not getting this right is clearly a mistake.
I'll repeat what has been said already and state that this has been taken WAY too far.
Gp
We never asked you to redesign UI. We asked to dramatically speed up VS, Fix bugs and improve documentation. You listen to customers? You must be joking. Should I behave like you do I would have no more customers. Stop wasting time. Listen to us.
BP
If you did not go look at the picture, shut up!
I showed my dev team (11 people) the picture. 5 devs, 5 test, 1 build/co-ord guy and me (OK, 12 if I am a person, debatable) the picture for ONE MINUTE on a projector screen.
Gut first response (under 10 seconds): yecch!
Considered response (30+ seconds): you know, I can understand EVERY icon up there
Final response (10 minutes of discussion): We are migrating when the product is final and will have two beta machines for a dev and test who work on a "side" product that can miss a deadline without a problem.
TRY IT WITH YOUR TEAM LIKE THIS!
Disclaimer: I have been a blue AND orange at MSFT and still love the company
Martin
One good thing about the colourless icons... Suddenly all your add-ins with colourful icons stand out ten fold.
Martin
And even if MS sticks with the colourless glyphs, I'm sure someone will put together an vsix to replace all the glyphs with coloured ones again.
Martin
And even if MS sticks with the colourless glyphs, I'm sure someone will put together an vsix to replace all the glyphs with coloured ones again.

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