

Google Design - radley
http://www.google.com/design/

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lnanek2
As a user I've been really unhappy with their designs lately. I often have to
click around in maps to try to figure out how the heck to change it from one
type of nav to another, for example. There's also often tons of mystery icons
in their apps when I try to do something. It's very frustrating. The older
versions of maps with more controls were a lot easier to use.

Their design patterns fail in user testing too. Moving actions to an unlabeled
icon in the top right like they recommend to Android developers now instead of
a large clear button just causes users to never find the action.

The recent Android Wear release is similar. All notifications are stripped of
anything but text and an image and there's no way to put a button in where
users may want one like the notification API already supports with
RemoteViews. Google is forcing a certain look on the developers at the cost of
the users.

I think their whole design initiative is just trying to make things look
pretty and screwing over their users, personally.

~~~
bryang
I hate their maps UX now. Just trying to pull up traffic is incredibly
annoying! The whole auto drop-down thing is terrible.

~~~
erichurkman
They removed features, too. They used to have a feature that allowed you to
view traffic patterns at a future time of day -- what traffic looks like
during rush hour vs. weekends, for example.

~~~
bryang
They didn't but they re-named it. You have to click on "Typical Traffic" and
then adjust the time and date from there.

~~~
r00fus
So they've added it back in - that's good to know. It was missing ever since
the redesign last year until just recently.

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kreek
Tongue firmly in cheek; but does this mean they're going to start applying
design to their products? I could fill a book of examples just from Gmail
(settings screen, inconsistant placement of reply button, no option to reverse
converstation view).

~~~
cliveowen
GMail is often trumpeted as great example of a clean, well-designed web app,
but I find it downright messy, complicated and unnecessarily simplistic.
Everytime I need to do something simple like forwarding or adding a rule for
deleting emails, I have to waste a good 10 minutes digging through that
horribly designed settings menu. And even the main screen isn't that good, for
example, there's no way to delete every email from a given contact, or at
least not an obvious one. I try to use GMail as little as I can, because every
time I do it's a real nightmare.

~~~
keevie
I've had the opposite experience. To delete all emails from a given
contact....search for from:contact, select all, delete. Idk how that could be
more intuitive?

~~~
wodenokoto
More intuitive would be not having to know the command. Is it still "from" if
my gmail is set to German or French?

Anyway, I do think google solved this in to ways: type contact and
from:contact is suggested

If you rest the curser over a contact name, a box with an option to see all
conversation appear.

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Angostura
If only they could describe their simple intuitive design goals, in simple
intuitive language

> A material metaphor is the unifying theory of a rationalized space and a
> system of motion.

~~~
illini123
Apple isn't much better:
[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556)

~~~
rrrx3
In both cases the idea is to obfuscate the complexity - remove it from the
user's view to make it effortless. UX is not easy. What you are looking at is
the "how," not the "what."

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bennettfeely
Last October I made a CSS3 demo where the three-bar navicon icon transforms
into an arrow. I'm very excited to see Google adopting it to their new
designs.

[http://codepen.io/bennettfeely/pen/twbyA](http://codepen.io/bennettfeely/pen/twbyA)
[http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/delightful-
detai...](http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/delightful-details.html)

~~~
zghst
I highly doubt Google adopted this from your demo.

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clarle
Isn't material design basically re-invented skeuomorphism?

From Google's Material Design guide:

"...visual cues that are grounded in our experience of reality. The use of
familiar tactile attributes speaks to primal parts of our brains and helps us
quickly understand affordances."

~~~
randomfool
Skeuomorphism is adopting the style of physical incantation of an object for
its digital display. Material design dictates a single physical incantation
for the UI- everything should feel like paper.

A contrived example of this is a skeuomorphic car dashboard display would have
photo-realistic guages with lighting reflections from the cover glass,
detailed bezel, etc. My read of a Material design implementation is that it
should have a flat design with lighting and depth effects for contrast and
shape recognition.

~~~
wavefunction
I don't see the ultimate difference between the skeuomorphism of Apple (which
was extreme) and this. It's applying "physical" properties to the digital.

I'm gonna pass, and slag this "material design" every time it comes up.
Clownshoes design philosophy, though I suppose I'm not surprised. Look how
many steps it takes to "logout/login from a different account" now.

~~~
rbanffy
The icons on your desktop do not have any physical existence or properties
beyond what we assign them. It's not even a desktop. If you really want to
experience the true self of your files, you'll see a visual representation of
the zeroes and ones that represent them, for even then they are nothing more
than ghosts frozen in electrical charges.

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gavinpc
Edward Tufte tells us that we should strive for information-dense,
multidimensional visuals. Bret Victor says, "What he said," and adds that
these visuals should exploit the magical potential of dynamic displays.

As several have remarked, the principles in the OP tend to yield low-
information interfaces. Colors, sizes, and spatial relations are not used as
variable axes because they are subservient to visual appeal and
"responsiveness".

I suspect that the Tufte-style displays (besides being difficult to craft in
the first place) are difficult to suit to _doing_ a lot, and the "material"
style visuals are difficult to use for _conveying_ a lot.

This has inspired me to work on an "almost-almost-flat" design that is high on
information _and_ affordances, while teaching itself.

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dmalik
These new "Material" design guidelines are great and I hope that we see
designers start adopting them. I also hope developers start adopting Googles
great animation guidelines. The added depth combined with the animation
provides a great UX. Start of the next trend in UI for sure. Albeit a
combination of skeuomorphism and flat.

Reminds me of this post -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7555012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7555012)

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fidotron
This really is print design tyranny. When one of the leading web companies
distributes their design guide as pdf . . .

Google, historically, has benefited from immunity to design nazis, but it now
looks like they've completely taken over.

~~~
21echoes
wait, what? there's one downloadable pdf for offline viewing, the main version
(bigger, literally the first thing listed)is not pdf:
[http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-
design/introducti...](http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-
design/introduction.html)

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XorNot
Some day I'm hoping Google will deal with the 960px gap, but judging by
YouTube and gmail not any time soon.

1920x1080 is a common form factor, yet for some reason they are allergic to
the idea (as are a lot of other people) that their web-apps should not break
when split to half the screen size.

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kin
I like that they've released all resources. This means 3rd party apps could in
turn apply these same layouts and principles, creating a consistent user
interface where it won't matter as much how unintuitive it is.

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ThomPete
I worry that this color scheme is very hard to maintain. It's a very
opinionated color and heavy color scheme rather than a more generic supporting
color-scheme.

It feels like at design style rather than a design framework.

~~~
hhsnopek
They aren't any color schemes that they show... They show some examples and
give advice on how to make your apps and sites aesthetically pleasing. They
give you a pallet of colors
[[http://www.google.com/design/spec/style/color.html](http://www.google.com/design/spec/style/color.html)]
that should be considered. This isn't a design framework....

~~~
ThomPete
Yes and it's that pallet I think is problematic.

~~~
hhsnopek
How is it a problem when you have hundreds of colors to choose from? If you
really wanted to you could choose your own...

~~~
ThomPete
You don't have hundreds of colors to choose from.

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r00fus
The "Surface Reaction" responsive interaction pattern just seems superfluous
and distracting. I care that the button I hit was hit, not where I hit it.

Very similar to how in Windows7 the task bar follows your cursor with a
glowing highlight - which I found very distracting and useless (not unlike the
OSX dock magnify-on-mouseover). At least in Windows and OSX I can turn that
off - since these are guidelines for new apps, I don't think Android users are
going to be given those options.

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hhsnopek
Material Design Reel Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8TXgCzxEnw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8TXgCzxEnw)
There are soft button differences when they display the nexus devices, could
these possibly be part of Googles Re-Design for the next Android release?

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zghst
The Material Design PDF seems like it's nothing but pretty pictures with copy.
I think Google could do a better job of explaining the concept by using
examples from their redesigned UI.

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metaphorical
It looks nice. However, my biggest complain is that it's playing too safe. So
that it feels more like a style guide than a vision.

E.g. When the style guide talks about mass and force in animation, I was
expecting something much more than some recommendations on tweening. In many
cases, it feels like a shallow reference to the physical / material, not quite
the meaningful "metaphor" that it aspires to be.

Polymer, on the other hand, is pretty awesome.

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seanmcdirmid
Does anyone remember the TAT Foldout UI demo from way back in 2009?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtR_zA9elrM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtR_zA9elrM)

That was definitely way over the top, but there is a lot of potential in
naturalism (depth, lighting, shadows, paper) as well as natural motion in a
phone UI. I'm glad Google is going in this direction.

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arrrg
So … are they really still fully embracing the hamburger menu? That seems like
such a horrible design pattern to me.

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zan2434
I like that UIs are being given depth, but they should respond as physically
expected to, too. Why can't buttons move into the screen when pushed instead
of changing color and rippling?

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Grue3
Youtube is one of the worst designed, user-unfriendly websites ever. And it
only got worse with each update.

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basbas
Are there any other company design guidelines like this one that someone can
recommend?

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gress
"At Google we say, focus on the user and all else will follow."

Presumably they are talking about cameras.

~~~
vicbrooker
I just assumed this was a typo:

'At Google we say, "Focus on the user data and all else will follow"'

~~~
mrcwinn
Here we go:

"At Google we say, 'Focus on the user data and all else will follow.'"

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Colliwinks
Google "Design"

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aragot
From the website:

> Color is inspired by bold color statements juxtaposed with muted
> environments, taking cues from contemporary architecture, road signs,
> pavement marking tape, and sports courts. Emphasize bold shadows and
> highlights. Introduce unexpected and vibrant colors.

Is that announcing they're launching a text generator for design guidelines?

