My guess is that the GDS (Government Digital Service) has been swapping notes with folk at Microsoft about their Metro "interface design language" (?) - the implentation of which can be seen, and no doubt admired, across recent MS GUI's. whistle

As I mentioned before, less clutter. MS refer to the concept as "content before chrome", apparently. On which point I can only concur.

See here for more on Good Design (is it just me, or does it seem to be in short supply these days?):-

1) MS Design Principles
2) MS Modern Design

And Saul Bass - clever, no doubt (sparse, even) - but perhaps not to everyone's tastes.

Looking at some of that MS stuff ... I can't help but be reminded of Good Old DOS (aka the text [or character] -based command-line interface). It doesn't (didn't) get much more "clutter free" than that! smile