Scott Guthrie, a man I deeply respect because of his technical chops, his dedication to his products, and his dedication to Microsoft stack developers, posted a blog about Azure which I have linked to below.

My feedback here is not about anything technical that Scott discusses in this post. It’s about confusion and inconsistency. It’s about the screen captures in Scott Guthrie’s post.

If you look at the screen shots, only two out of ten follow the same creative direction (for those who are counting, these are “virtual machines” and “web sites”).

Why is it so hard for a company with the resources of Microsoft to deliver a unified, consistent experience? By asking the question, I wonder if I’ve discovered the answer. It’s not about money. It’s about taste.

How do I know what will be in ALL CAPS versus what won’t? What will be white text on a dark gray background versus white text on a blue background versus black text on a light blue background versus blue text on a white background?

How do I know what really huge white text on a black background means in comparison to generally-accepted “large” text on a white background? How do I know how a gray tile with a tiny little white icon in the upper left corner is more or less important than a blue tile with a larger icon?

How do I know why “PHP” is purple but “.NET” and “other” are both blue? Do these purple and blue colors carry through to anything besides the one screen that The Gu captures here in his post?

I’m not saying anything specific is better than what Microsoft has done here in the screen shots that Scott has included in his post. I’m just saying that I’m confused. There is no consistency in the user experience here. There is no unified creative vision that I can determine. In this case, the users are theoretically quite technical in nature, but in my opinion that makes them no less valuable than John Q. Public.