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Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

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Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#21

Post by zmmmmm »

luke_s wrote: post #12

I think that material is great design, but terrible strategy and in the end may land up resulting in the Android design space being worse, not better. For years google (and many members of the design community) made a very successful argument that android apps should look and act like android apps, and iOS apps should look and act like iOS apps and web apps should act like web apps. Trying to achieve design consisten…

The same problem has plagued Android tablet apps. Google has tried to pursue the notion that you don't really need separate apps for phone and tablet; one single app can be made of fragments that rearrange in suitable ways to work on either phone or tablet. The problem is that this is only true if you accept a mediocre common denominator between the two platforms. If you are striving for pure excellence - the very best you can possibly create - then you really need to design for the ground up for every form factor. I think this is why even today people say Android doesn't have enough "tablet apps" even though it's objectively not true - it has the apps, but they don't feel superior enough on the tablet. It betrays to me an inferiority complex - Google doesn't believe people will invest the time to design apps from the ground up for tablet form factor. So they push this message that you shouldn't do that, and the self-fulfilling prophecy comes true.

Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#22

Post by luke_s »

tesseract wrote: post #19
luke_s wrote: post #12

I think that material is great design, but terrible strategy and in the end may land up resulting in the Android design space being worse, not better. For years google (and many members of the design community) made a very successful argument that android apps should look and act like android apps, and iOS apps should look and act like iOS apps and web apps should act like web apps. Trying to achieve design consisten…

I read "platforms" in that sentence as the different Google platforms: Android on phones, Android on tablets, TV, Chrome, etc.

Hmmm, funny I read it as the web, iOS and Android. I guess because google already uses their own look and feel for their iOS applications.

Though typically I disagree with what he has to say John Gruber of daring fireball seems to think the same way I do:

"If there’s a hitch, it’s that Google seems to be promoting this as a cross-platform design framework — a way to design just one interface for both iOS and Android. Google’s own apps for iOS already feel like weird moon man apps; now they’re encouraging third-party developers to follow their style rather than iOS’s."

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/25/google-design

Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#23

Post by nostrademons »

luke_s wrote: post #12

I think that material is great design, but terrible strategy and in the end may land up resulting in the Android design space being worse, not better. For years google (and many members of the design community) made a very successful argument that android apps should look and act like android apps, and iOS apps should look and act like iOS apps and web apps should act like web apps. Trying to achieve design consisten…

I think the idea is that there are ready-made toolkits for Material that will give you the same design across iOS, Android, and web, and so if it's easy to develop in, why not use them? As a startup founder, I have to say it makes a lot of sense. My core competency is finding & serving my own market, I don't have time to wrestle with designing for 3 platforms.

I'm guessing that the strategic advantage is to cut off Apple's knees. Apple's key differentiator has been design; this filters down into all the apps written for their platform, so that consumers say they choose iOS "because the apps are better-designed". Google wants a critical mass of iOS & web developers to choose Material instead, and make the Material design good enough that users won't prefer native iOS apps over Material apps. Then iOS becomes a fragmented mess of native, Material, and Cordova/PhoneGap apps, while Android is all unified Material design down to the OS, and mobile websites just look like Android.

IMHO it's brilliant strategically, though it's kinda dick-ish toward Apple. There are a couple huge unknowns though, like whether startup founders will adapt Material, whether those that do become large mobile successes, and whether Apple will even allow Material apps into the app store (they've been known to ban PhoneGap apps before for not following native look & feel guidelines).

Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#24

Post by interpol_p »

One of the things I noticed about Google's design demos was that they looked very bespoke. Each app had some really cool but very custom animations. (For example the play button in the music app jumping out and filling a rect with an animated circular fill.)

How have their APIs improved to allow developers to easily animate things in the way they demonstrated?

It's great to have a strong design direction, but providing the APIs to make it easy to realise that design is just as important.

Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#25

Post by luke_s »

interpol_p wrote: post #24

One of the things I noticed about Google's design demos was that they looked very bespoke. Each app had some really cool but very custom animations. (For example the play button in the music app jumping out and filling a rect with an animated circular fill.) How have their APIs improved to allow developers to easily animate things in the way they demonstrated? It's great to have a strong design direction, but providi…

Well, Disclaimer: I haven't actually used the API's. However on paper they look quite good:

http://developer.android.com/preview/material/animations.htm...

For example the play button jumping out would probably be a single call to ViewAnimationUtils.createCircularReveal()

One of the problems with the old Holo design language was that people were doing great things with it, but much of it had to be custom made. The API's simply weren't meant to be stretched and pulled in the directions people were going. At the moment it appears that this is one of the major problems Material is addressing.

Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#27

Post by [deleted] »

interpol_p wrote: post #24

One of the things I noticed about Google's design demos was that they looked very bespoke. Each app had some really cool but very custom animations. (For example the play button in the music app jumping out and filling a rect with an animated circular fill.) How have their APIs improved to allow developers to easily animate things in the way they demonstrated? It's great to have a strong design direction, but providi…

[deleted]

Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#29

Post by interpol_p »

luke_s wrote: post #25
interpol_p wrote: post #24

One of the things I noticed about Google's design demos was that they looked very bespoke. Each app had some really cool but very custom animations. (For example the play button in the music app jumping out and filling a rect with an animated circular fill.) How have their APIs improved to allow developers to easily animate things in the way they demonstrated? It's great to have a strong design direction, but providi…

Well, Disclaimer: I haven't actually used the API's. However on paper they look quite good: http://developer.android.com/preview/material/animations.htm... For example the play button jumping out would probably be a single call to ViewAnimationUtils.createCircularReveal() One of the problems with the old Holo design language was that people were doing great things with it, but much of it had to be custom made. The AP…

That's excellent to see, thanks for finding that.

Re: Top designers react to Google’s new ‘Material’ design language

#30

Post by luke_s »

nostrademons wrote: post #23
luke_s wrote: post #12

I think that material is great design, but terrible strategy and in the end may land up resulting in the Android design space being worse, not better. For years google (and many members of the design community) made a very successful argument that android apps should look and act like android apps, and iOS apps should look and act like iOS apps and web apps should act like web apps. Trying to achieve design consisten…

I think the idea is that there are ready-made toolkits for Material that will give you the same design across iOS, Android, and web, and so if it's easy to develop in, why not use them? As a startup founder, I have to say it makes a lot of sense. My core competency is finding & serving my own market, I don't have time to wrestle with designing for 3 platforms. I'm guessing that the strategic advantage is to cut off A…

Yikes! Its embrace/extend/extinguish applied to design, and we just hit extend :-)

Frankly though, I can't see any of your huge unknowns ever coming to pass. Almost all startup founders and designers I know use iPhones. Many still have trouble understanding why they should pay attention to Android design at all. If material ever does start to pick up momentum on iOS I can see Apple wielding the ban hammer liberally. Everything they have done in the past shows they are not shy about removing apps they feel aren't in Apple's best interests.

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