Well there I was, thinking that maybe rejecting the free upgrade might have been a bit petty after all. I'm not a big hater of flat UI but phew, Windows 10 is u

Well there I was, thinking that maybe rejecting the free upgrade might have been a bit petty after all. I'm not a big hater of flat UI but phew, Windows 10 is ugly. Flat UI should have high contrast but with a feeling of lightness. For some reason Windows 10 went for a super dark palette: black, magenta, navy, blood orange etc. Sorry, not for my workstation. On the other side of the spectrum, plenty focus too much on being neat and consistent that they become greyish, bland and sacrifice usability. Good ones use colours, shadows and placements wisely so that navigation does feel lighter and the experience is more content-focused. Excellent ones do all that but without burdening the audience with that nasty aftertaste of pretentiousness. Learn the rules, then break the ones you can't agree with. It's the designer's privilege to be able to do this more often than developers can ;)