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

venturebeat.com

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

#41

Post by currysausage »

Not directly related to Material, but to Android L: I always thought that the battery/antenna icons in the taskbar are way too bulky, which becomes more annoying as everything else on the UI is becoming thinner and thinner. Actually, I think this might be of the most noticeable design flaws in Android 4. I'm surprised that they didn't fix this in L, which seems very polished otherwise, and surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned that yet.

Edit: Look at this screenshot/mockup: http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/google-materi... - Battery and antenna certainly aren't the pieces of information we want the user to focus on, yet they really stand out simply because they are so bulky, at least compared to the other UI elements.

Edit 2: The screenshot also shows one of the things I like most about Material/L: Text elements are finally neatly aligned. Randomly aligned text elements are among my top pet peeves.

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

#43

Post by emehrkay »

I've always felt that iOS was more polished than android and couldn't quite explain why. Here is an example: open up mail in iOS and go to an inbox. Open up a message and slowing do the swipe right thing to bring in the previous screen. Look at the headings and how they move and fade into each other. The current Android doesnt have that little granular level of detail. Material does. I think it is exciting and it makes me want to design something

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

#44

Post by mirsadm »

zmmmmm wrote: post #21
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 be…

That's just not true. People forget that before smartphones we use to make applications that worked on lots of resolutions. It's not a new thing. In fact what Google is doing is fantastic. They provide the tools to make your app have different layouts on different form factors. Much easier than detecting when the resolution changed on a CRT screen and then trying to scale everything accordingly.

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

#45

Post by mynameisvlad »

derengel wrote: post #42

So I'm confused about this since google also has https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/ , how are they different or relate?

They're completely different. Web Fundamentals are good practices for web development, things like how to make a responsive page and what that means, etc., while Material is a guide and common elements for good mobile and web design.

A company can have several guides and guidelines on similar topics.

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

#46

Post by greggman »

I don't know if the Android camera app is considered to use "Material" but it's massively unintuitive to use. It's not obvious at all that to see a picture you just took you need to swipe to the left. Nor is it obvious that the small shutter icon once you have swiped means "edit" or "refocus" or whatever.

Google's opinion seems to be "It doesn't have to be intuitive because you'll eventually learn it".

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

#47

Post by rdtsc »

I like it! I am not a designer, just a user of Android and this looks good. I just never liked or bought the complete flatness idea. Maybe I am too brainwashed by skeumorphic buttons shadows and whatnot. But we just don't live in the 2D world, the world is 3D and shadows, textures, depths help us interact with the real world (it is there without anyone explicitly adding it in, as in objects in the world are inherently 3D).

This is sort of the middle ground. I think the pendulum has swung too far with the Windows and Metro design (and I do commend MS for being bold and going for it, that was fantastic I think). But now I think the pendulum has swung slightly back to a little more skeumorphic design, a little more shadows here and there, use some basic textures. Still flat not fake 3D buttons that look like ancient light switches but paper -- something in between.

I can't wait to see more.

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

#48

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#49

Post by NedStarkkk »

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 agree with you. Although Material is great, it doesn't mean the quality of Android apps will be improved quickly. Maybe google need to try harder to expand the influence of his guideline.

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

#50

Post by treenyc »

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 hardware is also different on each platform, e.g the iPhone hardware button layout vs android button layout. That effects the layout and user interaction.
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