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Material Design Color Tool

material.io

21–30 of 95 posts

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#21
post #15

> (though anybody who has ever had to read a lot of dark gray text on a light gray background knows that this is an issue) On techcrunch which has...yep, dark gray text on a light gray background!

And then I read your comment on HN. It's dark gray on light gray all the way down!

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#23
post #14

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, yo…

HHGTTG. Excellent reference, if you're going to spend time on picking the 'right' colors rather than just any set of half decent colors and then move on you might miss out on that important little thing called functionality without which it really doesn't matter what color it will be.

Once you're established and you're tuning the last 0.3% of the market that you might catch if only you used the 'right' colors you can spend time on this.

It's another nice example of premature optimization.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#25

Imo Googles new material design is not impressive. It does however help developers who are not good designers build a cookie cutter app.

You can look at it in much the same way that the early versions of Windows enabled programmers to build applications that looked exactly alike. In much the same vein, Material's "paper" concepts are designed to minimise confusion for lay users - i.e. "What does clicking the '+' button do?". Once you standardise the symbols and appearance of certain widgets, it removes the "have to think about it" barrier. You could a…

Well, frankly there are tons of apps where I have no idea what the + button do until I click it. Many times, it's not what I would think it would do.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's as much a design for designers but a design for users. It's a guideline that all apps can follow so that the user doesn't have to relearn every single app and is more likely to know where to find stuff. As far as aesthetics go it's not the greatest yes, but it doesn't have to be. Having a good looking foundation on which to base your app is great. If you really want it can always be innovated. Ther…

As a user it's super un-intuitive, though. At least how gmail, calendar, maps and other google apps are on Android at the moment. I mostly click and pray.

It's interesting that lots of people on HN say the same thing: I don't know how to perform an action; there are no affordances in the UI.

But Google is a data driven company and they must, surely, have scads of data on this. They must know what their users are trying to do and how they're trying to do it, so why are Google interfaces so hard to use?

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#27
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's as much a design for designers but a design for users. It's a guideline that all apps can follow so that the user doesn't have to relearn every single app and is more likely to know where to find stuff. As far as aesthetics go it's not the greatest yes, but it doesn't have to be. Having a good looking foundation on which to base your app is great. If you really want it can always be innovated. Ther…

As a user it's super un-intuitive, though. At least how gmail, calendar, maps and other google apps are on Android at the moment. I mostly click and pray.

I think you are exaggerating a bit but there is some truth in what you say but that's not Material design's fault. It's Google's that doesn't follow their own guidelines.

Do not confuse "Material" with "Anything made by Google".

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#28

Imo Googles new material design is not impressive. It does however help developers who are not good designers build a cookie cutter app.

> Imo Googles new material design is not impressive. Agreed. I will add that I have seen some impressive designs that used the material design framework.

This is the thing. You need to invest not only in completely understanding how every aspect of material design works, you also have to understand that visual languages enforce strong opinion and aren't an expression of creative freedom.

So if you understand it well enough and if you have enough weight to ensure what you are designing fits into it then it might work for you and your users.

It seems to mostly be used like bootstrap thought and ends up being tedious and inconsistent. The worst kind of inconsistent as well, the one where you are mislead by familiarity that then doesn't turn out to be real.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#29
post #14

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, yo…

HHGTTG. Excellent reference, if you're going to spend time on picking the 'right' colors rather than just any set of half decent colors and then move on you might miss out on that important little thing called functionality without which it really doesn't matter what color it will be. Once you're established and you're tuning the last 0.3% of the market that you might catch if only you used the 'right' colors you can…

The legibility tab is more generally applicable though. " tuning the 0.3%" could be significant then that 0.3% are people with significant vision problems.

You still don't want to be spending more than a moment on that in early design, but with a tool like this covering the issue might only take that moment so you don't have to make alterations later when early design decisions/accidents are baked in and harder to change.

Re: Material Design Color Tool

#30
post #14

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, yo…

HHGTTG. Excellent reference, if you're going to spend time on picking the 'right' colors rather than just any set of half decent colors and then move on you might miss out on that important little thing called functionality without which it really doesn't matter what color it will be. Once you're established and you're tuning the last 0.3% of the market that you might catch if only you used the 'right' colors you can…

take a look at the drink buisness. the look of the bottle is very important. you can argue its actually more important then whats in it.
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