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Flat design - hay còn gọi là thiết kế phẳng - đang trở thành xu hướng thiết kế UX/UI trong một vài năm gần đây. Xu hướng này thực sự bùng nổ khi Microsoft cho ra mắt phiên bản Windows 8 với phong cách thiết kế Metro design - tiền thân của Flat Design - và khi Apple trình làng iOS 7.

Hiện nay, xu hướng thiết kế phẳng đang có một tầm ảnh hưởng rất lớn đến ngành công nghiệp thiết kế, khi mà càng ngày có càng nhiều người ưa chuộng phong cách này. Để có một cái nhìn cụ thể hơn về xu hướng thiết kế này, hãy cùng ColorME phân tích 5 đặc điểm nổi bật của Flat design nhé.

1. Không hiệu ứng

Flat design, giống như tên gọi của nó, tất cả các thành phần của bản thiết kế sẽ chỉ nằm trên một mặt phẳng, không hề có những hiệu ứng tạo cảm giác 3D như đổ bóng, dập nổi, chất liệu,... Hoàn toàn không có bất kì chi tiết nào khiến cho bản thiết kế trở nên "thật" hơn, sống động hơn.

Tuy nhiên, với việc không sử dụng hiệu ứng như vậy thì điều gì khiến cho Flat design nổi bật đến vậy? Flat design mang đến một cái nhìn và cảm giác riêng biệt. Nó dựa trên các sắp xếp các chi tiết thiết kế sao cho người đọc dễ hiểu và tương tác tốt hơn. Chính vì vậy nên Flat design đang được sử dụng rất nhiều trong các thiết kế UX/UI.

2. Chi tiết đơn giản

Flat design chỉ sử dụng những yếu tố giao diện đơn giản như các button và icon. Các nhà thiết kế sẽ đưa vào bản thiết kế những hình dạng đơn giản, ví dụ như những hình kỉ hà, hoặc những hình đa giác đứng tách biệt, những hình này có thể có đường viền hoặc được bo góc.

Với những hình dáng đơn giản và tách biệt như vậy, Flat design khiến người dùng tương tác một cách dễ dàng hơn rất nhiều.

3. Tập trung vào Typography

Chính vì lí do những chi tiết trong Flat design quá đơn giản nên phần Typography đặc biệt được chú trọng. Các Font chữ được sử dụng trong Flat design thường không cầu kì và có những nét rất đậm, chủ yếu là các font Sans Serif (font không chân), nội dung của phần typography sẽ đi thẳng vào vấn đề.

Với những ai đã sử dụng Windows 8 và các hệ điều hành Windows Phone có thể dễ dàng nhận thấy sự đặc biệt của cách sử dụng typography trong thiết kế của chúng. Việc có thể đọc được thông tin của từng ứng dụng mà không cần phải mở ứng dụng đó lên thật sự là một trải nghiệm thú vị mà chưa có bất kì phong cách thiết kế nào trước đây thể hiện được khi đưa vào UX/UI.

4. Màu sắc

Với Flat design, màu sắc là đặc biệt quan trọng và đóng góp không nhỏ cho sự thành công của phong cách thiết kế này. Nếu như với các phong cách thiết kế khác, số lượng màu được sử dụng chỉ dừng lại ở con số 2 hoặc 3, thì với Flat design, con số này tăng lên gấp đôi, thậm chí là gấp ba, từ 6 đến 8 màu. Đặc biệt, Flat design sử dụng những tông màu sáng, sắc độ màu sống động, những màu mang hơi hướng retro như cam, tím,... được thấy rất nhiều.

Cách sử dụng nhiều màu sắc như vậy khiến cho Flat design có thể phân cấp thông tin và phân chia khu vực chứa thông tin một cách rõ ràng nhất.

5. Khắc phục điểm yếu của thiết kế mô phỏng (Skeuomorphic)

Skeuomorphic vốn là phong cách thiết kế sao cho những chi tiết được tả thực hết mức có thể. Tuy nhiên, cách thiết kế này lại đem lại khá nhiều điểm bất cập khi đưa vào UX/UI:

- Giao diện đôi khi khó quan sát và theo dõi do có quá nhiều hiệu ứng

- Tốn nhiều không gian cho những chi tiết trang trí không cần thiết

- Hạn chế tính sáng tạo của Designer do Skeuomorphic vốn là cách thiết kế mô phỏng lại hình dạng trong thực tế, vì vậy thay vì sáng tạo phá cách ra khỏi khuôn khổ, các nhà thiết kế lại phải tập trung làm sao để tả được vật thật nhất có thể. Do đó xuất hiện nhiều ý tưởng trùng lặp với nhau.

- Việc thiết kế với quá nhiều hiệu ứng, khi đem vào UX/UI, sẽ khiến cho các thiết bị yếu về phần cứng gặp khó khăn về thời lượng pin cũng như tiêu tốn nhiều tài nguyên để hiển thị được lên màn hình.

Ngược lại, với sự đơn giản, rõ ràng và tập trung nhiều vào sự tương tác với người dùng, Flat design đã khắc phục được hết tất cả những yếu điểm của thiết kế mô phỏng, để trở thành một trong những xu hướng thiết kế UX/UI hiện đại được ưa chuộng bậc nhất hiện nay.

Sounds like the usual adulation for a gadget from Apple. In fact, they’re actually accolades for a new product from Microsoft.

Microsoft?

Exactly. Long ridiculed as the tech industry dullard, Microsoft actually has a hit, at least with the technorati. It’s cellphone software called Windows Phone — and they need it to be a blockbuster here at Microsoft Central.

Yes, Windows and Office products are ubiquitous and highly profitable. But they’re about as inspirational as a stapler. While the likes of Apple have captured our imaginations with nifty products like the iPhone, Microsoft has produced a long list of flops, from smart wristwatches to the Zune music player to the Kin phones. Steve Jobs used to deride Microsoft for a lack of originality. In his opinion, the company didn’t bring “much culture” to its products. With Windows Phone, though, Microsoft is finally getting some buzz.

“I am a devoted Apple fan — I was in line for the iPhone,” said Axel Roesler, assistant professor for interaction design at the University of Washington in Seattle, but Windows Phone “strikes me as quite different and an advance.”

Windows Phone, which began appearing in devices in fall 2010, certainly stands out visually. It has bold, on-screen typography and a mosaic of animated tiles on the home screen — a stark departure from the neat grid of icons made popular by the iPhone. While most phones force users to open stand-alone apps to get into social networks, Facebook and Twitter are wired into Windows Phone. The tiles spring to life as friends or family post fresh pictures, text messages and status updates.

Even so, relatively few consumers have been tempted, and sales have been lackluster. A big problem is that, initially, the handsets running Microsoft’s software, made by companies like HTC and Samsung, were unexceptional. Even more important, wireless carriers, the gatekeepers for nearly all mobile phones, have not been aggressively selling Windows phones in their stores. Most promote the iPhone and devices running Google’s Android operating system.

And so Microsoft has struck a partnership with Nokia, and executives at both companies have high hopes that their handsets will catch on with consumers. On Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nokia plans to introduce a sleek metallic Windows Phone called the Lumia 900 that will be sold by AT&T in the United States, according to two people with knowledge of its plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the product has not yet been announced. Unlike other handset makers creating devices with Microsoft’s software, Nokia is not also developing Android phones.

“We are doing our best work for Windows Phone,” said Stephen Elop, the chief executive of Nokia and a former Microsoft executive.

While the customers’ verdict is still unknown, the group that developed Windows Phone has already profoundly affected Microsoft itself, influencing work on other consumer products. The next major version of software for PC’s, Windows 8, will look a lot like Windows Phone, which Microsoft hopes will help it work better on tablet devices. A Windows Phone-like makeover was also part of the new software update for Xbox, which along with Kinect is one of Microsoft’s few consumer hits.

Bill Flora, one of the designers of Windows Phone, said the care that Microsoft took in designing its products had changed vastly since he joined the company out of art school in the early 1990s.

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Terry Myerson, Microsoft vice president for phone engineering, with a robot in a the company's phone-testing lab.Credit...Peter Yates for The New York Times

“Now, instead of 80 percent of its efforts being unenlightened, just 20 percent are unenlightened,” said Mr. Flora, who recently left Microsoft to form his own design firm in Seattle.

THE tale of how Microsoft created Windows Phone starts with the introduction of the iPhone, in 2007. To Joe Belfiore, now 43, an engineer who oversees software design for Windows Phone, that was the spark.

“Apple created a sea change in the industry in terms of the kinds of things they did that were unique and highly appealing to consumers,” Mr. Belfiore said in an interview at Microsoft’s campus here. “We wanted to respond with something that would be competitive, but not the same.”

Microsoft had been an early player in smartphones with Windows Mobile, software that ran on devices made by Samsung, Motorola and others. But one word describes its early effort: complicated. Windows Mobile had a complex array of on-screen menus, including a start button for applications that was borrowed from Windows PCs. The software ran on sluggish devices that had physical keyboards and, in some cases, styluses.

Once the iPhone exploded into the marketplace, Microsoft executives knew that their software, as designed, could never compete. So in December 2008, Terry Myerson, who had just taken over engineering for the mobile group, convened a meeting that members of his management team came to call the “cage match.”

With a prototype of a new Windows Mobile phone on a table, Mr. Myerson, a no-nonsense engineer , led a heated debate over whether any of the software could be salvaged. No one was leaving the room until the issue was resolved, he said.

Seven hours later, the meeting finally adjourned, after Mr. Myerson got a call from his wife saying a pipe had frozen at his home. By then, a consensus had emerged that there wasn’t much technology worth saving. “We had hit bottom,” Mr. Myerson, who is now 39.

“That frankly gives you the freedom to try new things, build a new team and set a new path,” he added.

The decision was to start from scratch, a move that had serious consequences. Not only did it delay a Windows phone, it gave Google an opening to woo Microsoft handset partners to Android.

Charlie Kindel, a longtime Microsoft manager who joined its mobile team in early 2009, compared the pain caused by starting over to the predicament of Aron Ralston, the hiker who amputated his own arm in 2003 after it was it pinned under a boulder in the Utah desert.

“This boulder comprised of Apple and Blackberry rolled on our arm,” said Mr. Kindel, who left Microsoft last summer. “Microsoft sat there for three or four years struggling to get out.”

Mr. Myerson also had to rebuild the mobile team — and Mr. Belfiore was his first major hire.

Mr. Belfiore is a rare breed of Microsoft executive: he joined the company in 1990 fresh out of college and stayed, even as others fled to work for companies with more pizazz.

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A Nokia Lumia 800, which uses Windows Phone software. Sold in parts of Europe and Asia, it's indicative of the sleek design coming in the 900 model.Credit...Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

For much of his career, Mr. Belfiore worked on the design of Windows and Internet Explorer, the kind of Microsoft software that is everywhere but not always admired for innovation. But he was also known for spending hours testing Microsoft technologies outside the office to see how they could be simplified.

In recent years, Mr. Belfiore earned a reputation in the company for working on more adventurous projects, even if they sometimes bombed in the market. Before he joined the mobile group, for instance, he oversaw design of Zune, Microsoft’s ill-fated answer to the iPod. A version of the product released in 2009, the Zune HD, was praised by reviewers for its spare design that featured elegant typography and snappy, animated screen transitions as users flipped around music collections. But the Zune HD came out years too late, well after the iPod had cemented its lead.

Mr. Belfiore took over the mobile group in early 2009, just as designers were finishing up the earliest prototypes for Windows Phone. In those prototypes, Mr. Flora drew inspiration from the signs in airports and other transportation hubs. He borrowed the emphasis on clarity, clean typography and broadcast-quality transitions between screens from Zune, which he had worked on with Mr. Belfiore. The ideas gradually gelled into a software design language that Microsoft calls Metro.

But there were challenges beyond design. Microsoft had to take a fresh approach to working with phone makers so it could have its slick new software function properly. Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t make its own hardware. Before it restarted its mobile strategy, Microsoft did little to ensure that its handset partners were putting its software on devices that could run it well.

No longer would that be tolerated. Microsoft gave its handset partners detailed specifications of the types of technical innards required, including processors with certain amounts of power and screen technologies. Handset makers grumbled about the rules, but the result was phones that ran better.

“It’s not just about software,” said Albert Shum, general manager of the design studio for Windows Phone. “It’s about the whole end-to-end experience.”

When senior executives got their first look at the software, Mr. Myerson said, there was “some hesitancy.” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, didn’t like that the first screen that appeared after turning on the device contained oversized type that cut off the day of the week. (Wednesday showed up as Wed.) Revisions were made.

But the group was given its creative freedom. And the critics, at least, have approved the final results.

“It looks like nothing we’ve seen before from Microsoft,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, the technology research firm. “The company is being somewhat bold and saying what worked for them in 1992 won’t work now.”

Still, last summer, Mr. Ballmer told Microsoft investors that he was disappointed with Windows Phone sales. In mid-December, he named Mr. Myerson, the engineering head, to take full control of the group. He charged Mr. Myerson with improving the Windows Phone advertising campaign and relationships with wireless carriers. A software update for Windows Phones in the fall added a number of improvements to the product.

BUT this year is crucial; it will show whether a respected product is enough to help Microsoft make up for lost time. Even if it feels good to be a favorite of tech critics for a change, Microsoft needs a blockbuster in the mobile business, not a cult hit.

“Entering the market so late with this experience has created some special challenges for us,” Mr. Myerson said. “I think if we were there earlier it would be different.”

A correction was made on

Jan. 15, 2012

:

An article last Sunday about Windows Phone software misstated the timing of aspects of its introduction. The software started to appear in phones in the fall of 2010, not 2011, and the cut-and-paste function was released in spring 2011, not the fall.