>What do testing and studies show about this? I don't know if it was designed by focus group or not, but a lot of work went into flat design. It helps to star

>What do testing and studies show about this? I don't know if it was designed by focus group or not, but a lot of work went into flat design. It helps to start with understanding the reasoning behind Microsoft's Metro design language [1][2], which is one of the originators of the flat trend. In a nutshell, it's aimed primarily at touchscreen devices, but the principles that make it work there also happen to work on most other screens - remove all "chrome" (unnecessary shadows, 3D elements, etc) and focus on the content (strong typography, media, organized with whitespace). [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28design_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28design_language%29 [2]: http://www.microsoft.com/design/toolbox/tutorials/windows-phone-7/metro/ http://www.microsoft.com/design/toolbox/tutorials/windows-ph...