I remember Windows 2000 feeling like the height of Windows UI. Changed the gray color theme to a oh so slightly brownish gray which just seemed classy. That oh

I remember Windows 2000 feeling like the height of Windows UI. Changed the gray color theme to a oh so slightly brownish gray which just seemed classy. That oh so subtle drop shadow on your mouse and other UI elements. Retaining all of the psuedo-3D box rendering for windows, buttons, borders, etc. Helpful and consistent signifiers revealing UI functionality at a glance. Then the new-wave of UI designers decided all of this was 'ugly' and needed to be cleaned up. Maybe the new stuff is 'prettier' (subjective) but we clearly took many steps backward with regard to usability. When Win 3.1 and especially 95 were developed, a lot of focus and testing was done on usability because it was expected that a lot of people wouldn't know how to use a GUI. Concepts of 'this is a button, you move the mouse pointer over it and you can click it' would be novel to a lot of users. All the signifiers had to be on point and consistent. All of that has gone out the window. I blame 1) Mac OS X, because it was pretty it made classic Windows UI look ancient and obsolete and 2) smart phones with UIs so opaque that apps often include little tutorials showing you how to use the UI, basically giving up on trying to be intuitive.