Separate what you see on the screen from the working nuts and bolts of Windows. To toss in a NASCAR analogy, the car's body ain't what's under it.
The working parts of Windows have improved greatly since XP. As far as what we see on the screen, the 'Graphical User Interface', I'd say Windows 7 was the peak. W8 wrote in concrete the old guidance about skipping every other version of Windows. W10 fixed most of W8's interface mistakes.
W11 is really just an update of W10 with some new GUI unfamiliarities. Most of the changes seem designed to be more like Apple, or to enhance ease of use on mobile devices. Who the heck buys a mobile device running Windows? MS keeps trying to pretend they have a place on devices other than desktop, laptops, and to a declining extent, servers.