
Material world: how Google discovered what software is made of - nkurz
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/27/5849272/material-world-how-google-discovered-what-software-is-made-of
======
pirateking
Software is made of a set of symbols unique to its particular function, and
user interaction at its most primitive is no more than the relationship of
those symbols to the ones present in the mind of the user.

The latest fads in user interaction design seem to ignore this perspective,
and instead treat "UI" as another abstraction layer of unique symbols on top
of software, then expecting all software to be designed top-down based off
this "unified design language". This approach unfortunately ignores the user,
providing further indirection away from the underlying software and it's
function, herding the user into a church of the designer's own construction
where they are now forced to worship interaction in the abstract as a
prerequisite to using the software (or at least blindly perform whatever
rituals it demands).

The aim of design unification is often a false path, born out of convenience
for the designer, and it's pursuit shows a certain level of disrespect to both
the user and other designers. Programming languages - arguably interaction
design in its purest form - are a more interesting path towards better
software (see Smalltalk, Swift playgrounds, and the work at VPRI).

Material is not what software is made of, but it is a pretty good sign of what
marketing is made of these days.

~~~
dingdingdang
"Material is not what software is made of, but it is a pretty good sign of
what marketing is made of these days." \--> this!

~~~
benihana
Quoting someone and then saying "this" adds absolutely nothing to the
conversation. An upvote is sufficient.

~~~
mgkimsal
Not, it's not always sufficient - given no points are shown, there may be no
visible way to see that anyone agrees (or disagrees) with a point at all.

I do feel that 'this' on its own is a bit trite, and doesn't add much, but it
doesn't add 'absolutely nothing' to the conversation - it's a bit of
seasoning, like a dash of salt or pepper.

~~~
raldi
More like a glob of processed cheese.

------
msane
I find a lot of the behaviors of these UIs to be surprising in an undesirable
way. When a UI does something unexpected I should be surprised by how much
sense the interaction has, rather than the novelty of it or a cool animation.
I should be able to anticipate the behavior in a future context.

They are touting this supposed underlying physical metaphor (almost as if that
is their own newly developed idea in UI), but it sure looks like a mask over
the fact that they just threw in a bunch of shiny animations everywhere with
much less regard for physical metaphor and reproducibility than one should
expect.

~~~
aviraldg
Could you be more specific? Which Material interaction do you think you could
improve upon?

~~~
specialist
Interaction is like dance: You just know when it's right. Even though there
are visual languages for movement, the best way to explain is by example.

~~~
magicalist
so asking for an example that's awkward would be right on point, then.

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metaphorical
I love the visual direction, and I think it will work very well for a diverse
set of Google products. The style guide is beautifully done and well
articulated.

In terms of interaction design, however, it doesn't break any new ground,
apart from better transitions (but at times, too much).

> So the team set about creating this metaphorical material, which is a little
> bit like magical paper.

A bit of nitpicking: "a bit like magical paper" can hardly be called a
Metaphor. It's just a loose analogy. In fact, I have to force my imagination
to see the paper-ness in the UI, otherwise it just feels like flat UIs with
realistic shadows.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
There is no interaction design in the document, it is purely a visual design
language. In general: look and feel, typography, layout, animation -> visual
design; story boarded user interaction flows -> interaction design (at least
in America, in Europe the terms are used quite differently).

I don't think the design language breaks any new ground so much as it sets a
strong set of guidelines for what an application should look and feel like.

All UIs are metaphorical, necessarily.

------
akkawwakka
>A material metaphor is the unifying theory of a rationalized space and a
system of motion. The material is grounded in tactile reality, inspired by the
study of paper and ink, yet technologically advanced and open to imagination
and magic.

What does any of that even mean?

~~~
manicdee
A cynical translation: "We finally realised that Apple was onto a good thing
with their minimalism, layered UI and UI as a metaphor for physically
interacting with your data. So we're putting a lot of fancy words together to
make it sound like we're doing something amazing and new, while all we're
actually achieving is explicitly stating what Apple has assumed to be common
sense for decades. After all if we want all these Android developers to
conform to a common human interface guideline ruleset rather than inventing
their own UI for every new application, we have to make that ruleset sound
sexy and awesome!"

I love how the guy presenting on stage starts talking about a new material
that will provide tactile feedback, as if Google is already launching phones
with shape-shifting screens. Some Android fans are going to be mighty
disappointed when we don't have tactile morphing screens in the stores for
Christmas.

~~~
DCKing
"Finally"? Apple announced iOS 7 barely a year ago, and they were far from
'minimal' before. Google has been using this design since Google Now was
launched a year before _that_.

~~~
juliendorra
I think the parent was making a reference to the original Macintosh GUI
guideline [1] (human interface guideline). They are quite famous in the UI /
UX community as being a pioneering way[2] of explaining and thus unifying the
look and feel of third party applications.

[1]
[http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf](http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf)

[2]
[http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/4p-guidelines.html](http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/bds/4p-guidelines.html)

~~~
DCKing
Oh I see. But that still doesn't validate his cynicism, as Google has been
doing that for quite some time as well for Holo [1]. It's not as if this is
the first time that Google has a "design language" for Android.

[1]
[http://developer.android.com/design/index.html](http://developer.android.com/design/index.html)

------
wingerlang
> You couldn’t do anything you wanted with them, just like you can’t just do
> anything with physical objects.

I find this pretty funny considering all the objects in the video(s) seem to
transform/split/create/shapeshift into new object all the time.

------
dsirijus
After reading this morning about it, going out, then getting back and reading
about it again, I still literally don't have a clue what they're talking
about.

------
echion
The title leaves a lot to be desired. "Software" is more than a visible
interface. "Discovery" is more than articulation.

~~~
dasil003
That's a very charitable comment. I was struck by the outright arrogance and
hubris of such a title. Of course I'm sure no one at Google would use those
words, it's just some tech blogger or editor with a knack for linkbait titles.

------
officialjunk
This seems to be more of an approach to UI design rather than software design
as a whole. Maybe they've "answered" what UI is, but for me this doesn't
answer what software is made of.

------
foxhill
specifically, the idea that UI elements should behave as if they were tangible
objects isn't a new idea. this is what apple have been doing for.. quite a
while, and honestly I didn't think this was breakthrough stuff - elastic
bounce on scroll views, smooth, clean, and consistent UI transitions, and
previously skeuomorphic design principle.. the idea that that interactions
with a interface should mirror our interactions with things in real life
doesn't seem like a shocking revelation.

what's worse is that they have had this epiphany, and then.. seemingly ignored
it.

~~~
andybak
I think the term 'skeuomorphic' has become a little muddled but for the sake
of argument let's distinguish between 'functional' and 'decorative'
skeuomorphism.

It was an excess zeal for the latter kind that Apple quite rightly got
criticized for. The green baize in Games Center and the leather-bound
notebooks in wherever.

UX/UI people have been talking about 'affordance' for years and if a button
looks raised due to subtle shading then that aids in recognising that it's
clickable.

Techniques such as this have been around since the birth of the GUI.

------
bavcyc
A little more complex version of hypercard?

------
Roboprog
The sample phone screen they showed gave me the creeps. All the little stacked
up sheets reminds me of a desk stacked with unopened bills. I can do without
that kind of real world clutter in my UI. It helps me to focus on one thing at
a time, not have a bunch of slivers beckoning around the edges of the current
"window", thank you very much.

