Material Design , Learning the Rules and Breaking Them

Can't agree more about the importance of breaking the rules. In my foray to Windows Phone development, I spent a lot of time customizing components to implement the design language well in Reitit [1]. The early Metro/Modern design language had next to no UI chrome, so many apps that didn't do their app specific design work ended up feeling very empty.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/reitit/9nblggh093vj

Really enjoyed this article, thank you for sharing. I've seen time and time again engineers arguing to use a certain technology just because it is 'the standard' or 'everybody else is doing it'. As you pointed out, the most important skill is to first understand the problem you are trying to solve and then come up with a solution that solves it.

A blanket solution "just do x" is never a solution.