Wood din't go away in the new design. It hasn't been the default background for a while. But you can select it.

I think that many designers adopt it with a lot of questions but also a lot of answers. Flat has it's advantages that overweigh the disadvantages in specific cases. Especially if you let the users decide.

I agree on many points. Working in a company that has millions of people using our products, it's about solving the problems on a grand scale that includes a lot of different types of people. So the question of which tool to use to solve that problem becomes an important part of actual solution.

It is not easy to express an opinion about this, especially a strong one. So thanks for the encouragement. Will give it some though and respond :)

Great article.

It was always interesting to me how they defended their point of view on this justifying it by not wanting to follow trends but creating long-lasting solutions. Was it always obvious for you that flat web was a big deal?

That's a good point. The problem I see with this, however, is that flat design did affect the usability. For a long time people outside the industry did not understand it (at least in my surroundings) and it took a while. There is a lot of complaints and negativity attached to flat design based on it's lack of affordances and usability in general. So maybe it's not just a trend?

I agree, the old version seemed perfectly fine to me. I do like the new one too though :)

You might be on to something with the Microsoft. It was a little unexpected to see this new design.

In my experience it almost always improved the result when working with more people. But that depends on many things, sometimes other designers just slow me down or, like you say, the final result is not 100% satisfying to me. I feel that in the end, it's all about the team and the connection and dynamics in it. I worked with designers who didn't inspire me and I also worked with designers who motivated me to be a better designer.

Also, with more experience I find that working alone on some things I know very well is just faster and with good results.

What I would suggest to you is maybe to be more flexible with the process and try out different things before settling on a specific one. For example, create initial ideas before discussing the approach and present them to beach other. You can also try pair designing at different stages of the design or vice versa - separate the work.

Hope this is helpful. Have a good Sunday!

Thanks John! I too see value in it but I heard a different opinion as well. Do you find that it also helps to keep all the different teams aligned? Or do teams quickly forget about the existence of personas?