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

http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/27/top-designers-react-to-googles-new-material-design-language/

by harrisonweber • 12 years ago

158 78 12 years ago

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 also absent unless you're on a GPS device which can pinpoint your location.

I tried to use Bing Maps but they have been copying Google Maps too closely therefore have also removed the droppable pin (?).

hhsnopek• 12 years ago

I don't know what you see - I think the new Google Maps is wonderful. Download the are of the map your most in for offline usage. You can also just click on the spot you want to go and it gives you a details about it under the search bar. I don't use Street View at all, takes a little bit longer to load, instead I just use the flat colored map. Embrace the change or be let in the dust of old technology - I see a wonderful new UI that will attract more users and allow other to easily use Google Maps and other products. They have brought a new touch that Apple holds all of the time.

ewoodrich• 12 years ago

I mostly agree, but I've found many Google UI changes to be lacking in terms of discoverability. On both Android and web apps I've been baffled by icons and buttons with no hints or explanation. Through trial and error I'm generally able to grok the new conventions, but I still get frustrated initially when presented with opaque symbology.

alttab3• 12 years ago

Things I've hated the most about it so far:

- It trying to introduce me to hidden gestures for "see more results!" when I'm driving. Sorry guys, using maps is not really the time for a tutorial, I'm in the middle of a task! - Re-routing. The new maps seems to re-route me, more often, and more often incorrectly, than the old maps did. - It also gives me different route results on my Glass than on my Phone. WTF?

gone35• 12 years ago

I don't know what you see - I think the new Google Maps is wonderful. (...) I see a wonderful new UI that will attract more users and allow other to easily use Google Maps and other products.

Sure; to each their own and "wonderful" is a subjective notion, but it is a fact that the new Google Maps hid/removed functionality from the main screen [1].

It is also a fact that these design choices in effect force users to learn longer workflows/roundabouts for less functionality than before. And it is also a fact that some users are opting out as a result.

The tractable question then is whether the improved use cases you cite are so "wonderful" and valuable for a large enough set of users, they are worth the collateral damage imposed upon the broader userbase.

[1] http://www.digital-geography.com/short-announce-the-new-goog...

matchu• 12 years ago

It's not clear to me that flatness and the removal of the pin feature are related. It's very feasible to develop a pin-like icon that fits the current Maps design; the pin was probably dropped (heh) for other reasons.

eco• 12 years ago

There is no need to use Search Nearby anymore. Search just searches near whatever you are looking at.

awj• 12 years ago

Search just searches near whatever you are looking at.

...except for those times where it doesn't, and instead decides to return only the closest result for something. This is especially problematic for regional stores that have multiple locations. If I'm near one but want to meet someone at another Google apparently wants me to go to the close one and ask them for an address.

kevinwang• 12 years ago

What do you prefer to flat/minimalism?

lloeki• 12 years ago

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.

nemetroid• 12 years ago

This discussion refers to the redesigned Android app.

Also possible: type "restaurants near whatever", or simply "restaurants", which scopes the request on the current viewport.

This appears to work in the app as well, though.

Tsutsukakushi• 12 years ago

Google is the first big player to do flatness well imo.

psbp• 12 years ago

I remember thinking that Apple would introduce "ink"-like effects at some point after seeing their new design in iOS 7. I'm surprised that Google did it first, and actually did a great job with it.

Alupis2• 12 years ago

Maybe I'm nit-picking... but "Material" is not a language... it's a design guideline. (the article, and the articles the article link to repeatedly call it a language when it's not)

dag11• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_language

Alupis2• 12 years ago

I stand corrected. Seems wrong, but hey, I'm a programmer... not a designer ;-P

pervycreeper• 12 years ago

So much wasted space. Looks like any random "responsive design" website.

luke_s5• 12 years ago

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 consistency across platforms was going to annoy your users. Instead you should strive for _branding_ consistency across platforms and use native interaction patterns.

A significant problem for Android has been iOS designs just copied over without adapting to the platform. The apps look and feel weird. As a user I find them confusing and frustrating to use. However progress was being made and people were starting to understand that if you want to build for Android you are going to need to design for Android.

Material throws that out the window. It says it right there in the goals[1]: "Develop a single underlying system that allows for a unified experience across platforms and device sizes."

IF we take it as given that our apps should look the same on all platforms, then why choose Material? Because I know my customers are going to say: "We have this great iOS design sitting right here, that we have already paid to have built. Lets use that! Besides we don't want to re-code our iOS app to suit Android". Or, they will come up with their own cross platform design to "differentiate themselves" and stand out.

[1] http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introducti...

tesseract• 12 years ago

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

luke_s5• 12 years ago

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

dazzla• 12 years ago

I agree. From theverge.com article:

"The design team at Google felt the need to come up with a more coherent look and feel that could be applied across all of its products, from Android to Chrome OS to the web."

zmmmmm2• 12 years ago

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.

mirsadm• 12 years ago

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.

nostrademons2• 12 years ago

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).

luke_s5• 12 years ago

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.

MisterBastahrd• 12 years ago

I've got a couple of personal projects I've been in the planning stages for, and I decided that it was worth my time to get familiar with Material. I don't think it's too much trouble to have applications behave in consistent ways. One of the things that drives me nuts in the desktop app space is when I hit the 'x' to close a window, and instead it minimizes an application to the system tray. I was going to take the weekend off of designing and planning, but instead I'm going to be neck deep in layouts. :)

blub• 12 years ago

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

NedStarkkk• 12 years ago

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.

treenyc• 12 years ago

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.

gpmcadam• 12 years ago

    > 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?!

enraged_camel• 12 years ago

>Trying to achieve design consistency across platforms was going to annoy your users. Instead you should strive for _branding_ consistency across platforms and use native interaction patterns.

Yep. Case in point: the Windows 8 "Metro" fiasco.

Silhouette2• 12 years ago

I was wondering whether my general dislike of some current design trends -- specifically, flat design, use of animation for its own sake, and trying to present homogeneous appearance and behaviour across very different platforms -- was just a personal bias, a consequence of my general preference for "tried and tested" over "trendy but seems worse than before".

So, over the past few weeks I've been asking a few friends and family what they think of things like iOS 7, Windows 8, flat styling on web sites, and the like.

Quite a few responses to my completely unscientific study have been downright negative, such as "boring", "childish", or "dumbed down". "I can't find anything any more" was probably the most common form of complaint about behaviour rather than style, particularly regarding Windows 8 and the UI formerly known as Metro. Some people have been more moderate, for example giving two-way comments like "this might work well on a touch screen but it's awkward on my laptop" or "it's very simple".

Most telling to me is that absolutely no-one has actually come down in favour of either iOS 7 or Windows 8 overall so far, while I know at least one person who is trying to return a brand new iPad after a week because they "hated it" and several who have at some point in the recent past bought a device and either chosen Windows 7 over Windows 8 or actively downgraded after purchasing. People are literally avoiding or even returning or rapidly reselling new devices just to avoid these kinds of UIs.

I'm sad, though unsurprised, to see Google following Microsoft and Apple down this evolutionary dead end. As others have commented in this discussion, it seems like reducing everything to the least common denominator. To me, it also seems like promoting tools that make it cheap and quick to build software and web sites with maximum reach -- essentially, a direct commercial advantage -- rather than promoting tools that help you build software and web sites that are any good.

plg• 12 years ago

I sort of like the design. Too bad google's business model is still offensive though. At least with iOS I know the deal is: I give Apple money, they give me a widget. With Google the deal is they give me services, I give them ... gobs of information.

interpol_p2• 12 years ago

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.

luke_s5• 12 years ago

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.

interpol_p2• 12 years ago

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

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

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.

scotty79• 12 years ago

I thought it was going to be one of those videos that show people's horror and disgust at what they are shown.

ape4• 12 years ago

The Emperor has no clothes. I hate huge swatches of solid color that doesn't mean anything.

aashishkoirala2• 12 years ago

The first two reactions politely say that they essentially ripped off Windows, don't they?

aashishkoirala2• 12 years ago

Wow that was a speedy downvote. It's almost as if someone's got their finger on the trigger constantly. Stressed much?

CmonDev2• 12 years ago

You are not supposed to just go and say "The king is naked". Just politely say "iOS 7-8 and Android L are a nice spin on Microsoft's Modern GUI ideas".

currysausage2• 12 years ago

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.

alphapapa2• 12 years ago

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!

randomfool• 12 years ago

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.

currysausage2• 12 years ago

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.

MaxDPS2• 12 years ago

That may not be the final product. Here is a screenshot from my phone running stock Android L: http://i.imgur.com/Tu9Vqhc.jpg

As you can see, they are pretty compact. They even overlap each other, kinda.

derengel• 12 years ago

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

mynameisvlad• 12 years ago

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.

emehrkay• 12 years ago

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

greggman2• 12 years ago

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".

MaxDPS2• 12 years ago

After you take a picture you can see that the picture is "stored" to the right. There is a little animation showing where the picture is going. I dont think its as hard to figure out as you are implying.

greggman2• 12 years ago

I know it's hard because I'm actually an iOS user who happens to own a Nexus 5. I only use the Nexus 5 for testing. About once a month I pull it out to show someone the re-focus feature. It almost always takes me several minutes to figure out where it is. Finding the camera app is easy. Figuring out how to get to that feature is hard.

rdtsc• 12 years ago

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.

petilon2• 12 years ago

Agreed. Here's an article that explains this reasoning in more detail:

http://blog.tobiasandtobias.com/post/37179466962/in-defense-...

Excerpt: Even ‘digital natives’ live in the physical world. We start learning how it works before we ever touch a computer, and even the most dedicated nerd spends more time interacting with physical objects than with digital interfaces. It doesn’t take additional learning to know that an object casting a shadow on another is in front of that other, for example. Failing to leverage that existing knowledge is tantamount to shutting down whole swathes of users’ brains.

Illniyar• 12 years ago

Not a single negative reaction? that seems weird, surely there should be dissenting voices, what do they say?

gurkendoktor• 12 years ago

The best thing I can say about iOS 7 is that the information density is still tolerable. Now look at the Material address book screenshot... :|

yannis• 12 years ago

Certainly they can do better explaining the "design language". Cliches and corporate lingua such as: "... A material metaphor is the unifying theory of a rationalized space and a system of motion. Our material is grounded in tactile reality, inspired by our study of paper and ink, yet open to imagination and magic". Come again?

bane• 12 years ago

I'm guessing some of the weird explanation used to describe the new design language is some of the design world's terms of art bleeding out into layman-land where it sounds ridiculous, but may be full of meaning inside the design world. It reminds me of this

http://adage.com/images/random/0209/pepsi-arnell021109.pdf

which, while full of similar sounding "nonsense" nevertheless became Pepsi's new design.

dhruvmittal• 12 years ago

While I'm sure that was all super meaningful to actual designers, that was probably the funniest thing I've read all week. Particularly page 21's "magnetic dynamics."

petilon2• 12 years ago

Flat UI leads to usability problems. For example see Nielsen Norman group's report on Windows 8 usability: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/windows-8-disappointing-usab... Or read this site for iOS 7 issues: http://uxcritique.tumblr.com/

Now Google is acknowledging this deficiency of Flat design. See: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/... They have a page titled "Dimensionality affords interaction." Google is bringing back some dimensionality because a pure flat UI is harder to figure out.

CmonDev2• 12 years ago

"Some elements, like containers, feel almost like a direct copy of Windows UI, to be completely honest."

"I initially thought about Windows’ Metro design upon seeing the new UI, but it looks like they have added their own spin on it."

I am glad people are giving Microsoft a well deserved credit. And to think Google's top designer was bashing Metro in past. Now we just need Jonny Ive to confess.

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

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