This prompted me to take a few minutes to finally try to see what Material Design is all about; my previous glances at posts resulted in little in the way of understanding. Now I understand why.
To me, the people on stage seemed genuinely uneasy at times and well aware that the concepts they were trying to communicate were difficult to get across.
These explanatory posts (all 3) are very well-crafted, if propagandistic. Same information that Google is providing, in more digestible bits.
My impression is that Google is trying to implement an industry-wide paradigm shift away from dense style guides, to a world where good design is signalled by intuition alone (which is referred to indirectly in the talk more than once). They are planning to do this by offloading design decisions from the developers as much as possible and creating an astonishingly homogeneous look and feel across apps. I predict a limited shelf life for this sort of thing. Novelty goes a long way. Mobile devices aren't desktops.
Firstly, I'm glad you found the posts well crafted, after spending hours on the documentation, the videos and having actually had the opportunity to talk to Googlers at I/O, I felt it necessary to clear the doubts I've seen most people have.
Regarding the part about creating a homogeneous look, I don't "completely" agree with that, I can understand that being a worry. Google's been quite detailed in terms of what is right, what is wrong from purely a keyline metrics perspective, and if developers follow them very minutely, I can see a situation arising where several apps look very, very similar.
Having said that, I think the core focus of material design is really going to be how different apps use animation in their experience, as well as how well they scale across platforms. Material Design apps should not be judged purely on the basis of a phone app, or a tablet app, or a website, but how a user who uses the app across multiple devices finds the experience.
Offloading design decisions for indie developers, however, could be very useful. Far too many simply haven't cared enough to get their metrics right, for example. Material Design gives them certain rules to follow, which if they follow, might not give them uniqueness but at least the users would find them easy to use.
2 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 12.1 ms ] threadI watched some of the Google I/O talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isYZXwaP3Q4
To me, the people on stage seemed genuinely uneasy at times and well aware that the concepts they were trying to communicate were difficult to get across.
These explanatory posts (all 3) are very well-crafted, if propagandistic. Same information that Google is providing, in more digestible bits.
My impression is that Google is trying to implement an industry-wide paradigm shift away from dense style guides, to a world where good design is signalled by intuition alone (which is referred to indirectly in the talk more than once). They are planning to do this by offloading design decisions from the developers as much as possible and creating an astonishingly homogeneous look and feel across apps. I predict a limited shelf life for this sort of thing. Novelty goes a long way. Mobile devices aren't desktops.
Regarding the part about creating a homogeneous look, I don't "completely" agree with that, I can understand that being a worry. Google's been quite detailed in terms of what is right, what is wrong from purely a keyline metrics perspective, and if developers follow them very minutely, I can see a situation arising where several apps look very, very similar.
Having said that, I think the core focus of material design is really going to be how different apps use animation in their experience, as well as how well they scale across platforms. Material Design apps should not be judged purely on the basis of a phone app, or a tablet app, or a website, but how a user who uses the app across multiple devices finds the experience.
Offloading design decisions for indie developers, however, could be very useful. Far too many simply haven't cared enough to get their metrics right, for example. Material Design gives them certain rules to follow, which if they follow, might not give them uniqueness but at least the users would find them easy to use.