How Google’s Material Design is changing things

During Apple’s recent conference we were introduced to Yosemite and their decision to move further forward in their flat design 2.0 direction.

Having caught ear of the trend earlier on and seeing Microsoft’s success with it over multiple platforms, Apple took it and made it very much their own, introducing opaque windows, clever little transitions among a plethora of other things.

Yet even with the furore over this change, it is in fact only a simple aesthetic b-road in a new direction, it’s nothing significant or innovative, in my eyes its not what Apple have become known for. Whilst the Apple brand has been easing their foot of the throttle with forward thinking ideas, the new kids on the block, Google (well not new kids but you know what I mean), might now have something that could change everything for users and designers alike.

Material Design is the new philosophy Google are throwing at us with their upcoming Lollipop Android release. Its’ the first OS the Google team have spent so much time on and worked on ground up, its an OS from a tech giants perspective rather than a brand invested in aesthetics, like Apple. So what does Material Design that is so innovative and different to what we’ve become used to? Well theres quite a lot actually.

With the release, Google also made a pretty hefty document available that acts as a guide to designers working with the new software. Having gone through it myself, below you’ll find some of the things that caught my eye…

Variety is King

When it comes to mobile OS’ variety is a word that only gets whispered around, it’s something that the big three never wanted to make you accustom to, but now Google have changed tact. Material Design is ALL ABOUT variety.

Any designer will tell you how annoying it is to botch certain aspects of an interface just because you couldn’t be creative and create numerous versions of one item. Now though, you are able to work with buttons (for example) that have multiple states (floating, flat and raised), giving whatever your working on more depth and personality as well as creating a more cohesive experience for the user thanks to the fact associations are now possible.

Attention to detail

Something that has down-right annoyed designers up and down the country and the world is the lack of control over the little things. Elements such as pop-ups, warning messages and dialogue boxes (among other things) have often been out of reach for creative’s and in result creating disjointed user experiences.

Thankfully Google have put it right with their Material Design release as it gives you unprecedented control over all those elements you never could really touch. If you take a pop-up for example, you can control almost all aesthetic elements behind it (from the type and colour to certain interactions) as well as the way the element is composed.

Multi screen, multi-purpose elements

This new philosophy has moved Android’s trajectory into an all encompassing environment that should in theory be endlessly adaptable. A good example of this are the tabs in the new release. Not only do they act as a navigation element, but they can be purpose filled with other features, such as a search, overflow menus and scroll-able tabs.

Google themselves said behind the thinking, in particular with the tabs was to use them only as a route to navigate, rather than the only route. This ability to tailor a specific item such as a tab, changes very little visually but from a UX stand-point it gives a designer so much more control, on how they want their users to interact with an application.

Snackbars and Toasts

No I’m not kidding you… within the lengthy Material Design doc, we find a section called Snackbars and Toasts and no it’s not the holy mix of Nutella and Toast. Although these are brand new terms to me (and I imagine yourself) they are actually just glorified notifications… well notifications with a difference.

These notifications are fully editable and able to be used in numerous ways, as not only can they simply be used as notifiers, but as interactive notifications that allow you to perform certain functions, such as undo/delete when having sent an message for example.

This essentially adds a brand new element for designers to play with to make experiences in app even more personal, interactive and fun, giving us the ability to highlight information never before possible.

Animations

The biggest change and departure from past Android and iOS releases is how animation heavy Lollipop and other future Android Os’ will be. The detail shown in the documentation around this subject only gives you an insight into what you are allowed to do.

Each and every touch element within Material Design has a reaction you can potentially design and personalise. This ability to re-affirm a users action, could potentially be a new way of psychologically directing users through a journey, using these animations as feedback (be it good or bad) and therefore creating brand new experiences.