Comment by WorldMaker

A wall of post-it notes can be incredibly handy to the person that placed the post-it notes. The Start screen was never "random", it was designed for customization and personalization. Programs stayed where you told them to in the groups and sizes you wanted them to. Choosing a size would affect how much data an app could show. The program might provide a tile of new data it would show some of the time, but the program's name and icon would still show up in most of the tile variants (and hover tooltips worked on Desktop), and any app could only have at most 3 tiles at a time. The timing of tile flips was a bit random, but there was also a general rhythm to it you would pick up if you used it a lot. It was a very intentional "dance".

At least in my experience there was a lot of sense to it. I had a lot of data organized to my liking in Windows 8.