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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

#51

Post by higherpurpose »

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…

From what I gathered from all the material design videos (they have a handful of them on Youtube), they're providing everything to do what they did.

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

#52

Post by alphapapa »

currysausage wrote: post #41

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…

Your comment is an example of everything that's wrong with software and UI design today.

> Battery and antenna certainly aren't the pieces of information we want the user to focus on...

Stop telling me what I should be focusing on! Stop acting as if a simple icon is reaching out of the screen and dragging my eyeballs toward it, like I have to be protected from this horrible, "distracting" icon by sanding away all of its distinctiveness and making it blur into the background, making it useless!

When I need to know what my battery charge is, or what my signal strength is, I look at the icons, and they need to be distinct and clear! When I'm finished doing that, guess what--I don't look at them, and they are not a problem! It's not as if the stock Android battery and antenna icons are flashing and twirling around!

Stop it with this minimalist dogma! It's madness, and these self-appointed design "experts" are dragging the whole industry down with them in their mindless pursuit of blandness and their personal ideal of beauty--which they put upon an altar and worship, while ignoring usefulness!

A cell phone's screen is not a fashion statement, nor a work of art! It's a tool!

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

#54

Post by blub »

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…

Unless Google ports their UI framework to iOS, I don't see how iOS developers will use Material.

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

#55

Post by randomfool »

alphapapa wrote: post #52
currysausage wrote: post #41

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…

Your comment is an example of everything that's wrong with software and UI design today. > Battery and antenna certainly aren't the pieces of information we want the user to focus on... Stop telling me what I should be focusing on! Stop acting as if a simple icon is reaching out of the screen and dragging my eyeballs toward it, like I have to be protected from this horrible, "distracting" icon by sanding away all of…

The battery/antenna definitely do not irk me like the original, but I have to agree that in the screenshot linked, the size and color of these passive information icons are extremely similar to that of the interactive 'edit', 'back' and vertical '...' icons.

I'm not a visual or UX designer and don't have an answer, but these seem like two different categories of icons which could warrant alternate presentations.

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

#57

Post by gpmcadam »

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 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.
The Android design space has room to get worse?!

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

#58

Post by andybak »

mirsadm wrote: post #44
zmmmmm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep and apple are feeling the pinch of their strategy. New products need to either have a screen that is an even multiple of previous screen sizes - or they need to guide developers through a moderately painful migration.

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

#59

Post by lloeki »

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

The death of flat/minimalism cannot come soon enough. Unfortunately Google Maps seems to have been swallowed up by it. The current (new?) UI is simply unusable. All I wanted to do earlier was drop the pin at my current location (which Google Maps couldn't divine due to no GPS) and then "Search Nearby" for eating places. Well the pin has gone and now all you get is the street view thingy (yay?) and search nearby is al…

> All I wanted to do earlier was drop the pin at my current location (which Google Maps couldn't divine due to no GPS) and then "Search Nearby" for eating places.

    /me 
    goes to maps.google.com
    clicks on a random area of the map
    a "location" card pops up with lat/long and estimated name
    clicks on the card to validate the location
    a second card pops up below with a street view shot,
     "photos", "explore this area" with "search nearby" and
     "getting around" with traffic and travel options
    a third "quick facts" card is slid below
    clicks on "search nearby" and types "restaurants"
Also possible: type "restaurants near whatever", or simply "restaurants", which scopes the request on the current viewport.

Seriously.

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

#60

Post by currysausage »

alphapapa wrote: post #52
currysausage wrote: post #41

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…

Your comment is an example of everything that's wrong with software and UI design today. > Battery and antenna certainly aren't the pieces of information we want the user to focus on... Stop telling me what I should be focusing on! Stop acting as if a simple icon is reaching out of the screen and dragging my eyeballs toward it, like I have to be protected from this horrible, "distracting" icon by sanding away all of…

I believe your answer is a little emotional considering that I only suggested making three icons a little less bulky. Generally, however, I do share many of your sentiments towards today's UI design.

> A cell phone's screen is not a fashion statement, nor a work of art! It's a tool!

Exactly. And if the 4″ screen just threw all availabe information at you, lacking any visual hierarchy, it wouldn't be a very useful tool. Information design serves a purpose beyond making things look better.

And yes, good information design can mean making things look less slick. Helvetica Ultralight in iOS 7 definitely looks slick. And I guess we both agree that its readability is subpar. It is a very unfortunate UI design trend to value slickness higher than utility.

I don't want to make these icons any less useful, and I certainly don't want to hide them away. As a matter of fact, if Google were planning to do so, I would protest as loudly as you do. I'm not at fault for "everything that's wrong with software and UI design today." I'm just a friend of solid information design.

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