Imo Googles new material design is not impressive. It does however help developers who are not good designers build a cookie cutter app.
But Google is a data driven company and they must, surely, have scads of data on this. They must know what their users are trying to do and how they're trying to do it, so why are Google interfaces so hard to use?
But I also have done a lot of tech support for senior citizens, who don't have the innate ability to stumble through bad UI like a lot of us millenial-types do. I feel like Google is talking to the wrong people.
I suspect that if Google UI designers spent some time in senior citizen communities watching people use their email, almost everything about how Google designs web pages would be thrown away.
Do not confuse "Material" with "Anything made by Google".
They couldn't get buttons right! The one button to rule them all thing was a flop that even their own apps have ditched, the only place I still see it is in myfitnesspal (and it's super annoying). It's surprising you can launch what's supposed to be UI/UX guidelines and get buttons wrong.
It was obviously untested and had no basis in actual UX satisfaction. They had an unproven theory at what a good UX would be and presented it as fact. I think because of that, the Material guidelines should be regarded as irrelevant. They were at best a designer's bad guess at what a good UX is.
In my opinion, there's loads of other components in there that are bad, for example the side menu, the experience of all material apps on desktops, it's a bad UX.
I don't think you should follow their guidelines.
I have just opened 4 random Google apps on Android (Search, Docs, Plus, Drive) and they all have the floating action button. Which Google apps have ditched it? The FAB makes a lot of sense on small screens like smartphones.
The original design was click the button and a load of small buttons appear.
Keep ditched it completely, Drive has a slide up, I think Clock used to use it, others have disappeared.
They've abandoned the original concept.
I like to look at the apps google builds with their own frameworks as a guideline for good examples. Like https://material.angular.io/ using angular material 2. I like it simple, clean, and easy to read.
In much the same vein, Material's "paper" concepts are designed to minimise confusion for lay users - i.e. "What does clicking the '+' button do?". Once you standardise the symbols and appearance of certain widgets, it removes the "have to think about it" barrier. You could argue that EVERYONE who uses a Windows computer knows what the [x] on the top right corner of every window does.
And like Windows, I think you will eventually see developers modify and extend Material to make applications stand apart from each other while maintaining some sort of consistency of the UI.
But like windows, you will eventually get to the stage that developers corrupt simple things like checkboxes to operate in non logical ways (e.g. as radio buttons), or you end up with a screen where every conceivable square millimetre of the window is a 'hot point' that does something when you touch/click on it! (I/m looking at you Excel etc.)
Simple is not necessarily better when making UI. A '+' symbol will always be worse than 'Add contact'.
Personally, I find a bottom navigation of primary functionality to be far more pleasing than having to tap twice. For example, on iOS Spotify was quite arduous to navigate when they tried simplifying the aesthetic by having all the navigation within side menus. Their later re-design to move content back into the bottom navigation was met with a lot of praise amongst users.
Funny, that sounds to me like a counterargument to the idea that this makes things look like they come from google.
Material is an Interaction Design play first, a design play second and maaaaybe a branding play third but whatever. If it makes apps and the web a better place because every Joe Schmoe dev can focus on functionality instead of design (which a lot of people simply suck at) that's great.
Agreed. I will add that I have seen some impressive designs that used the material design framework.
So if you understand it well enough and if you have enough weight to ensure what you are designing fits into it then it might work for you and your users.
It seems to mostly be used like bootstrap thought and ends up being tedious and inconsistent. The worst kind of inconsistent as well, the one where you are mislead by familiarity that then doesn't turn out to be real.
This application POV clashes with "web pages" being more a domain of print designers gone digital.
Tschichold or Tognazzini...
However I agree, there isn't much new and impressive in it and the evangelistic design chatter it created, much like the Flat Design trend, gets very stale and can stifle good conversation on the topic.
I feel like the creators of the Material Design site simply sought to formalize those principles and build upon them, which I think they have done a good job of.