Tschumy advised developers that, whenever they have a design question with Windows 8, they should think "content before chrome."

One company embracing the new design paradigm is SAP. The ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) vendor plans to release six applications in the next few months that embrace the new Windows design rules, said Fred Samson, SAP vice president of mobility and innovation, in another session.

"We tried to leverage as many Windows 8 features as we can," Samson said. The new interface allows SAP to build applications that are more immersive and interactive, he said. Users can move about a document by scrolling rather than paging, data can be displayed on maps instead of lists, and documents can be identified by images instead of names.

Samson demonstrated one application, Financial Factsheet, that allows users to view data from a customer database in graphical ways. For instance, it allows the user to query a database for contacts within a 50-mile radius, and have the results appear on a map.

"Users don't have to learn a new language. They don't have to open a filter, select an attribute, filter by the attribute. It's all laid out for them," he said.