Has to be. I stopped believe long ago in visual changes in software being anything else than marketing done in "we do improve things" fashion.
I mean, just look at this video of Office icons: https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=VvOaGTtY6Y8 It's a new icons set and they're trying to portray it as a technological breakthrough.
Of course changes to the UI and UX are important and always interesting, don't get me wrong - I just despise the all that mindless fluff that always comes with it. Each time I'm having flashbacks of document by Arnell Group who introduced new Pepsi logo: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Oh my… the amount of BS that was written in that document was something truly enlightening. To think that BS cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars…
What do you think sells pepsi cans? Why are there only two brands in the United States that have meaningful market share in the dark syrup + water industry? Do you think it's because of something done by engineers in a basement with papers stacked up to the ceiling, or do you think it is possible that these two companies are global experts in capturing the attention and imagination of billions of people and have done so better than anyone else in human history using the shape of a can, a logo, and a font. If you don't buy the rationale provided in that document, fine, but rationality doesn't sell trillions of cans of syrup water, Vitruvian Man, Golden Ratio, Feng Shui, earth Geodynamo 'woowoo' does.
I think this comment helps me to finally understand the concept of memetic evolution - you are seeing intelligent design, but it's possible that this document just organically was chosen through its version of "natural selection" to be one that has propagated.
Fashion churn is probably part of it, but high-DPI screens are commonplace now and were more-or-less nonexistent when Calibri (which was designed to look good on screens of its era) was introduced. That alone seems like reason enough to have a different default.
The failure is mostly because there's no one left at Microsoft (or anywhere) to do the same research: gather and evaluate data over decades, make informed decisions, iterate on designs etc.
Has to be. I stopped believe long ago in visual changes in software being anything else than marketing done in "we do improve things" fashion.
I mean, just look at this video of Office icons: https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=VvOaGTtY6Y8 It's a new icons set and they're trying to portray it as a technological breakthrough.
Of course changes to the UI and UX are important and always interesting, don't get me wrong - I just despise the all that mindless fluff that always comes with it. Each time I'm having flashbacks of document by Arnell Group who introduced new Pepsi logo: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...