
Google’s Quest to Write the Rulebook for Interactive Design - InternetGiant
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/googles-quest-write-rulebook-interactive-design/
======
i_am_ralpht
I love the way Material Design looks, but I think there's still a way to go
with how it responds to input. I made a prototype last weekend of a more fluid
Floating Action Button:

[http://iamralpht.github.io/fab](http://iamralpht.github.io/fab)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I love it also, but as someone who has owned a Nexus 10 for almost two years,
I really don't think I can justify another Android tablet. From an app
perspective, unlike the android phone experience, you feel second class all
the time. From Facebook to Twitter, the Android tablet version of those apps
are just terrible.

Amazon apparently has some war with google over its Fire line and making Fire
more attractive than Google products, so we'll never get Prime Video on the
Android tablet. Little things like the in-flight video on Southwest doesn't
work with android (although they give you hilariously outdated instructions to
use an android device with flash installed). I have a little remote control
Romo robot I use to videochat with my infant son when I'm at work, and they
gave up on their android app. Every startup launches an iOS app that's solid
and good looking with a "coming soon" Android app that either never gets here
or is a goddamn mess.

That's on top of the other tomfoolery with the N10 like the random battery
drains and random reboots, although this might just be old age. I just don't
feel the Android tablet experience is there yet and considering Apple's
dominance in this area, it may never be there. Developers just aren't making
it a priority and often we just get a stretched out phone app, if we get
anything. Its shameful how little this has changed in the past couple years.

~~~
badlucklottery
>we'll never get Prime Video on the Android tablet

You can now but it requires some user intervention.

Amazon's video app can't be installed via the Play store for whatever reason
but, if you select a video in the main Amazon app, it asks you to sideload the
video app by enabling non-store apps for a bit. Install it an everything works
as expected.

~~~
coldpie
Yep, it works great.

> Amazon's video app can't be installed via the Play store for whatever reason

Amazon has their own Android app store that they're pushing very aggressively.
When you selected the video in the Amazon app, it actually brought you to the
Amazon app store to download the video app. You have to enable side-loading
because the Amazon app store isn't the Play store: it's not allowed to install
stuff.

------
gavinpc
I prefer to call this "material modeling," because before you put a pixel on
the screen, you have to ask yourself how all the components fit together in
the state machine that you are building.

The analogy to the physical world breaks down, IMHO. Virtual space is
completely fungible, and we aren't ready to give that up (even assuming it
were a good idea): almost everything stretches, shrinks, mutates, appears and
disappears. I know part of their objective (which I applaud) is move away from
this kind of paradigm (or lack of one). But in practice, you have to stop at
some point and say "close enough." They say elsewhere, for example, that it's
better for transitions to be fast than smooth. It's in that little interval
that you can sweep the impedance mismatch (between the designer's model and
the user model) under the rug.

Anyway, I'm glad that we're talking about the _rational basis_ for one design
or another, rather than treating it as an impenetrable art.

------
mattmanser
I find the floating buttons a bit of a bizarre choice, to me they look like
they should be dragged, not clicked.

Then again, it's just a picture, but why should we listen to what they're
saying? They keep getting their own products wrong.

One recent example is the android gmail app, where it's never clear when it
last refreshed the data and you find yourself constantly pulling down to get
it to refresh, it says it has, but then a minute or two later suddenly emails
from hours ago appear. I've just switched to myMail and it's honestly a lot
better.

And the new maps interface is _really_ rubbish, you constantly feel like
you're fighting it, things have stupidly slow animations for no good reason,
it's not actually clear what's, what. And the navigation in FPS mode is so bad
and has been for years.

Hell, and this one has always bugged me, they _still_ after 7 years, hide the
really important apps you have on google apps for business in a stupid little
drop down hidden in a "more" link which isn't even clear it's a more link.
Meaning the "platform" it's supposed to be is actually just a mail app with
some links tacked on.

Like Apple don't say much, but then release something and nail it, while
Google talk as if they're an authority but consistently release complete
messes.

This is actually getting me pissed off. How can they be thought leaders? Even
their own site has rubbish UX choices:

[http://www.google.com/design/spec/components/buttons.html](http://www.google.com/design/spec/components/buttons.html)

Just look at the menu, it's a complete disaster UX wise. Click menu choices
just open accordion sub menus, they make the cardinal sin of forcing the user
to click again and do extra work. And one of them, the "Material Design", that
just opens another menu with just one, YES JUST ONE, option of "Introduction".
How can you call yourself thought leaders and yet get something as basic as a
menu so wrong? It's like some sort of joke I don't get. Did no-one at google
try and use their own site to see how useless it is? It's not a good UX. So
how can you design good UX for the rest of us if you can't get that right? And
they even have .html in their paths. Argh. Hello 1990.

~~~
cageface
Are we so used to praising Apple for design that we haven't noticed that their
last two releases of iOS have been a disaster from both an aesthetic and
usability point of view? They certainly haven't "nailed" much of anything in
UI design lately.

Personally I find Material much more thoughtful, rational and functional and
that's the same take I've heard coming from just about every professional
designer I've heard take the time to voice an opinion.

~~~
bluthru
I find iOS 7+ design language to be very clean and legible compared to iOS 6.
When screen real estate is limited, all of the bevels, divisions, and shadows
adds a lot of clutter where they can't be afforded.

This is a good example:
[http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3776/9025739956_f90cce7276_z.j...](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3776/9025739956_f90cce7276_z.jpg)

------
easytiger
> An excerpt from the material design spec, showing how raised buttons can
> enhance usability

I'm pretty sure that was worked out 30 years ago.

~~~
lnanek2
Indeed, I was reading usability text books in college many years ago pointing
that out. But Google threw all that out with flat design and now they have to
reinvent it. They always have been very bad at taking in external ideas, so
lets all just pretend they didn't just rediscover something everyone knew,
otherwise they will throw it out again under the not invented here heading.

~~~
Ensorceled
I was just thinking that. "It's still flat design but now with these usability
enhancing shadows, let's call it Material Design and this whole project a
Quest!"

It's a drop shadow and I spent days figuring out how do to the way our design
guy wanted it done in C and Assembler almost 30 years ago.

~~~
hahainternet
Could you point us to this user interface of yours that used drop shadows in
1984? I'm not even doubting you, just interested.

~~~
easytiger
This is the calculator from Apple Lisa in 1983:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#mediaviewer/File:App...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa#mediaviewer/File:Apple_Lisa_Office_System_3.1.png)

But borders basically are what we are talking about.

~~~
hahainternet
It's not really comparable is it? I mean yes, shadows have been around for
quite a long time, but Google's new design is particularly interesting I
think.

~~~
tsunamifury
Yes, just because something is conceptually the same doesn't mean it is
functionally the same.

A lot of reductionist like to state 'This was done before', and ignore the
subtle differences that make the implementation better and actually very
different in application.

For example, animations were no where near as smooth in the Apple Lisa days,
nor shadows able to show such subtle differences as to communicate 8+ layers.
Even just these two things combine to make a very different experience in the
real world.

~~~
pessimizer
Those two things also have absolutely no dependence on UI design, but are a
natural consequence of faster computers with more dense displays. I don't
understand what the obvious functional difference is between drop shadows
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Apple_Lisa_Off...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Apple_Lisa_Office_System_3.1.png)
here and drop shadows in any other application or webpage.

------
lnanek2
Sure would be nice if they started getting the basics right. When I moved all
the primary actions for my apps into the top right action bar, no colors no
gloss no 3d no labels as Google requires, users could no longer find them.
Complaints went up. Successful app metrics went down. User testing where you
have a user try to accomplish a set goal using an app had less completes.
Google is just doing whatever looks pretty and ignoring user testing.

~~~
thomasahle
I'm pretty sure the ... menu in the top right should be for the _least_ used
actions, not the most frequent..

------
gjvc
Add a data grid which isn't a complete pain in the ass, and people will bite
their hands off. Much of the the user end of "Enterprise IT" is glorified form
fill-in, and the web does it really terribly. It's been about 20 years -- why
are the simple things still disproportionately difficult to do well on the
web? Like, you know, tabulate, sort, and filter data?

On a positive note, the documents at
[http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-
design/introducti...](http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-
design/introduction.html), show how much consideration is required to just do
the basics well, for example buttons
[http://www.google.com/design/spec/components/buttons.html](http://www.google.com/design/spec/components/buttons.html)

It's not that the good stuff on the web is so bad, it's that the lowest common
denominator is just far too low.

------
VeejayRampay
Well, I'm not sure I want them to write the Rulebook for anything, the more
competition and the more variety the better, but one sure thing, I do like the
looks of the apps redesigned to stick to the new set of conventions for their
"Material Design". It somehow combines the minimalism and simplicity of the
"Flat UI" fad with the more sophisticated aspects of more modern interfaces.

I wish I could get a taste of it on my Nexus 4 with Android L but I guess
that's not happening.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
N4 is getting lollipop.

~~~
divegeek
OTA update should be showing up any day now. I don't think specific dates for
specific devices have been given, but it was supposed to start rolling out
yesterday.

------
fdej
Every few years, a new generation of design graduates will enter the industry
and "rewrite the rulebook" by simply doing the opposite of what the previous
generation did. We will thus have to live with the five-year flat/unflat
fashion cycle for the foreseeable future.

~~~
Animats
This may get to be a cycle, like the cycle of consumer electronics through
beige, black, white, gray, and back to beige again. That used to be
coordinated by the Color Association of the United States. Here's a 2005
report for HP, announcing that green was out and white was coming in:

[http://www.hp.com/large/ipg/assets/bus-solutions/color-
trend...](http://www.hp.com/large/ipg/assets/bus-solutions/color-trends-in-
the-corporate-world.pdf)

------
Animats
"What’s a key attribute of a good UI?

It disappears.

It does not draw attention to itself.

It enables the user experience, but is not itself the experience."

\-- Kathy Sierra, Serious Pony

That's the problem. The functional purpose of the UI is to get you to the
content or let you do something, then get out of the way. The business purpose
of the UI, though, is to get customers to buy the thing. "Sell the sizzle, not
the steak". That's the driving force behind this endless tweaking of graphic
elements.

Here's another kind of UI - automobile dashboards.

[http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2012/05/car-dashboards-as-
wo...](http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2012/05/car-dashboards-as-works-of-
art.html)

This is worth careful study. Match up the dashboards with various computer
UIs.

------
drewblaisdell
Here are the actual Material Design specs:
[http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-
design/introducti...](http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-
design/introduction.html)

~~~
bsimpson
It's great to see they're being updated. They were embarrassing for the first
4 months, with obvious typos and duplicated content.

------
sanketdasgupta
Even though material design looks really good, it will really take time to get
acquainted and running in the app ecosystem. I hope all new apps follow this,
then the bigger players will also follow. Otherwise, this is going nowhere.

------
wmeredith
Oh lord, I hope they don't succeed. Google seems more intersted in their
products looking "cool" than being easy to use. Search is awful compared to 5
years ago. Gmail is worse. Google documents has turned into a real mess.
Google Analytics has one of the most impenetrable dashboards I've come across.

Exacerbating all of this is the fact that they won't stop redesigning their
shit. Their interfaces change monthly. Now, I'm not a user who demands nothing
ever change, but I can't even learn any of this stuff before it's "new and
improved". Blegh.

~~~
debaserab2
I can understand the negative impression of the recent GA, drive, and Gmail -
but how exactly is search awful compared to five years ago? Unless you're
referring to the algorithm changes, I don't see the argument that the
interface itself is harder to use now than five years ago.

~~~
wmeredith
Seriously? Google's SERP pages are now 75% ads above the fold. Hell, on a
netbook you may not even see ANY organic search results. A couple quick
examples: Google "work at home" (no quotes) and you'll see eight sponsored
results and three organic results. Google "credit card" (no quotes) and you'll
see NINE sponsored results and TWO organic results.

This is on a Macbook Pro 15" running Chrome. it's also worth noting that
Google's current gen algo with hit you with a penalty if you "run too many
adds above the fold".

They also have carousels, maps and product photos. Google has fully become the
search engines they used to despise. It's basically a paid directory. I'm a
power user so I scroll down, but the first content listing will see 33% of the
clicks on the page. 40% of Google users don't know the ads are even ads.

Further reading... [https://econsultancy.com/blog/62249-40-of-consumers-are-
unaw...](https://econsultancy.com/blog/62249-40-of-consumers-are-unaware-that-
google-adwords-are-adverts)

[http://www.anticareer.com/google-tells-you-to-do-one-
thing-b...](http://www.anticareer.com/google-tells-you-to-do-one-thing-but-it-
is-ok-if-they-do-the-opposite/)

[http://www.affhelper.com/googles-hypocrisy-
exposed/](http://www.affhelper.com/googles-hypocrisy-exposed/)

[http://www.branded3.com/blogs/will-google-penalise-itself-
fo...](http://www.branded3.com/blogs/will-google-penalise-itself-for-
excessive-ads-above-the-fold/)

~~~
debaserab2
I suspect I don't notice this as much because I'm rarely googling highly
ranked keywords - usually if I have to google something, it's specific and
more educational or a news items.

I can see how some of the contextual interface stuff would be annoying, but
some of it I actually like. For example, when googling for a sports team name,
if they are playing a game at that particular time, the first thing you'll see
is the game score.

------
snowwrestler
This picture is meant to show the value of drop shadows as a guide to
interactivity:

[http://www.wired.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/MD234.jpg](http://www.wired.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/MD234.jpg)

Yet arguably the most important buttons--the persistent OS navigation at the
bottom--do not have drop shadows or any other kind of affordance. So which is
it? Are drop shadows essential to interactivity or not?

~~~
bjz_
The other thing to consider is that the persistent navigation should recede
into the background - drop shadows on everything would detract from the app's
content. I would assume that the affordances are also less necessary because
the persistent navigation is more commonly used.

Anyway, this might not be the reasoning by the designer, and it might not
actually work in practice, but it could be one justification... rules are
there to be broken.

