Material Design from a UI/UX Perspective

Skywalk Engineers
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

What is material design?

Material Design is a language created by google in 2014, it’s “an adaptable system of guidelines” to assist designers and developer create easy to use, to have consistency when moving from one device to another when building applications and the list carries on (Material Design, 2018).

Material Design comes pack with guidelines for the environment you designing for, Layouts, Navigation, Colour, Typography, Iconography, Shape, Motion, Interaction, Communication, and how designers and developers should implement them. These components build the foundation of Material Design (Material Design, 2018).

Industry Focus

With assistance from our business analyst we decided to create a material UI kit for a trip planner mobile application. Tourism being one of the largest industries around the world and is regarded as a driver of growth, it is also a key sector with high potential growth and job creation in South Africa. We felt this would be the perfect industry to design for. As our company main focus is making Africa great.

Process

Before any interfaces are designed User flows, Sitemaps and Wireframes are planned mapped out to get an idea of what screens can be designed for the material UI kit. Once these are sorted a Low fidelity prototype get created.

With Material Design components I designed a standard UI for a trip planner mobile application using Adobe XD before I added any identity of the applications

Now for the fun bits adding the identity (Brand) of the application.

Google has simplified creating UI for material design and it give it a set look and feel, this creates consistency throughout the applications, the only downfall to this is applications using material design start looking similar and loses its identity.

Skywalk Engineers

A technological hub offering innovative and disruptive technological solutions to The African Market.

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