Material Design v1 cracked it. It was simple to implement, simple to understand and simple to use. Minimal overheads with a clear content-first approach.
"It's time to move beyond “clean” and “boring” designs to create interfaces that connect with people on an emotional level."
I don't want websites and apps to connect with me on an emotional level. I want to turn my phone/computer on, use the app/program to achieve what I'm trying to do, and turn it off again, so I can get back to the real world.
> I don't want websites and apps to connect with me on an emotional level. I want to turn my phone/computer on, use the app/program to achieve what I'm trying to do, and turn it off again
Building a B2B SaaS app one of the most refreshing thoughts I've had about it was: "people don't like using my app". The software I'm building nobody wants to use, but they have to use it for their work.
Given that I try my hardest to make the app as efficient and as fast as possible so that people can go in, do their thing, and get out. With things like design's I'm very careful to preserve the button layouts of all the UI's because I know my customers have largely memorized where they are.
I could see adding some "flare" like this in lower touch points in my app but I would not do this for high touch points. Those places need to be fast and predictable, a customer won't look too kindly on any redesign if they now have to spend an extra second or two looking for an action or waiting on an animation.
In terms of MaterialUI though, my app actually uses M2 (via the React MUI lib) and I'm pretty happy with it. I wish like hell Google would finish their M3 web implementation so I could hop on that instead of using a 3rd party lib but it seems Google has gotten M3 to where they personally want it and just kinda abandoned development.
My best experience with job-related software was a data entry program (I forgot the name). It had a windows classic UI (on windows 8) and fully keyboard driven. After a few days, I could just look at the paper form and enter the data without looking at the screen. Very usable on a 11inch screen.
These days, I mostly reverted to a Emacs/TUI workflow. Padding and animations makes everything less usable.
> Material Design v1
I think it was the worst one. At least from an interoperability perspective: sure, a giant floating "+" in a circle in notes app on a mobile device is alright CTA to add a new note, but on anything bigger than that (even an iPad screen) it's bad.
Apps and websites using it felt like "Work in Progress, we will style it later" except there was no later it was already styled and was just ugly.
> sure, a giant floating "+" in a circle in notes app on a mobile device is alright CTA to add a new note
No, it’s not, because it floats over the actual content, which means that the user can neither see nor interact with the content under it. Of course, no one carefully designs the rest of the UI to make sure that content doesn’t get stuck under the floating button.
> No, it’s not, because it floats over the actual content, which means that the user can neither see nor interact with the content under it.
1. How narrow is your screen? The FAB is typically used over scrollable full-width list items.
2. Using a design system does not release the app author from their UX duties, like making sure the UI works as best as possible.
It’s remarkably common for some floating UI element to obscure the bottom portion of something scrollable. You can’t work around this by scrolling because, if the region in question is on the screen at all, it’s at the bottom.
Even Mobile Safari messes this up on occasion — sometimes the URL bar at the bottom obscures the bottom of a page, and, while one can temporarily reveal it by dragging up, the content rubber-bands right back down when the user lets go.
You're talking like Google isn't a ad company trying to keep you staring on your screen.
No see "today, people increasingly see their devices not as tools, but as extensions of themselves."
We are merely catering to those needs. It is philanthropy really. A kindness.
/s
I had the same reaction when they said that "younger study participants had the most enthusiastic preference for M3 Expressive." Could it be that young people are most likely to be impressed by pretty bullshit, and the whole point of this redesign is futile?
Insert Principle Skinner: "Am I out of touch? No, its the young people that are wrong".
Material design v1 is the reason we have extremely low information density and extreme whitespace everywhere.
Just compare the original Gmail UI to the one Google has now. Or original Adwords admin page to the one they launched 2-3 years ago. Its a regression in every possible way.
And apple is also not far behind in enshittyfying their UIs in order to merge the Desktop and the Smartphone paradigms into one.
This is the worst phase in UX/UI history we have ever witnessed.
I don't entirely agree. This mentality is what leads to brutalist architecture offices that suck out the soul of all who work in them. People "live" and "work" in their apps and should feel alive while they do that. (That said, I don't think this new material style is necessarily the way to achieve that...)
It's effectively designing to maximize attention retention, or however you want to call it. Keep the eyes at your product for as many seconds as possible, to increase profit.
I mean... to make a dElIghtFul eXpEriEncE.
I must be going through some mental changes nowadays. I just want my computers and software to get their job done and go back to the real world as soon as possible. I feel sad about all the time I lost staring at screens growing up. I wonder if this will be widespread opinion someday.
The quicker the phone is back in the pocket, or the computer is turned off again after using it for something (that it does better than I can) the better.
I'm going through the same thing. Grew up dreaming of having a pocket computer. Nowadays you can basically live your entire life on the internet, as others are doing the same; people (think they) get their social needs met, buy food, do their work, find partners, anything. And it seems like a big part of the younger crowd wants (?) this trend to continue.
I don't want to speak for you, but I think there's a big crowd that's unique here: we have one foot in the "old world" and got to experience that, and now we see the "new world".
If you grow up with basically a phone in your hand, and you see how big a part of your life it is, I think you're way more inclined to appreciate these changes. After all, their phone is an extension of who they are, it's part of the whole picture, the outfit.
Thanks for writing this. It's refreshing to see there's a bunch of us in the same boat.
I think you've hit the nail on the head about the two worlds. My phone sits in my pocket most of the day and just comes out when I need it. Every day I see people looking at their phone as they walk through busy streets, walk their dog, pushing prams, at the gym on the treadmills, bikes and on the machines. Especially jarring to see when it's a rarish sunny day and all that changes is the brightness setting on their phone.
Yeah, my phone is just an accessory I keep in my pocket, but only when I know I may need it for something, e.g. time or calls. Sometimes I do not even take it with myself. No reason for me to do that. I just hit 30.
I feel you guys, but do you read and write here from your laptops? I never come here from a desktop browser, only a smartphone.
> I feel you guys, but do you read and write here from your laptops? I never come here from a desktop browser, only a smartphone.
I do. I hate virtual keyboards and the typing experience on a phone frustrates me to no end, and the copy & paste experience is just as poor. During the workday I don't even look at or use my phone, I reply to messages from my Mac when needed.
Anything that needs more than a couple lines back and forth I do from my laptop. Having a full discussion or conversation using a phone virtual keyboard is such a user hostile experience to me.
> Having a full discussion or conversation using a phone virtual keyboard is such a user hostile experience to me.
Same - when I'm scrolling Reddit I often feel like I want to add a comment, but then think about having to "type" a few paragraphs on my phone, and just pass on it. However, I'm definitely on the older side, and I do understand that the younger generations have no such qualms.
Yup, pretty much my experience. There is no way I am going to write paragraphs on a phone. I do not know, I just hit 30, so I guess I am considered old? I definitely am old school, though! You know, nothing fancy, just Void Linux with i3, XTerm, etc.
You know what I wish I could get? A Blackberry phone with that keyboard (maybe KeyOne?). I wonder if there is anything like that still in production.
> You know what I wish I could get? A Blackberry phone with that keyboard (maybe KeyOne?). I wonder if there is anything like that still in production.
Yes! Before the iPhone came out my daily driver was a BlackBerry Bold. The keyboard was perfect, and it had the trackball (and later, trackpad) for text selection. Still not full size keyboard typing speed but pretty close. Then I switched to the first gen Moto Droid when it came out and it had the slide open landscape keyboard. Not as ergonomic as the black berry but it worked. Then after the first iPhone, everyone dumped physical keyboards and I'm still salty about it.
I wish there was room in the mobile space to break apart the Samsung/Apple duopoly. Would have loved to see both Windows phone and webOS succeed, and the variety of devices that could have brought.
I do not own a laptop, I get on HN from my desktop, never from my phone, although I do have "Hacki" installed, I just never use it.
> I feel you guys
contemplates life... I'm getting old. :D
It's good for you. It's not good for them ("them" being the people that make Scrooge McDuck amounts of money for keeping you staring at ads).
They have to pretend you want emotional designs. Because how would they keep their jobs? Every iteration of material design needs some bullshit improvement.
They managed to connect me to an emotional level that I just want to throw my phone away and get a phone that supports postmarketOS. I despise the new designs so much, they are so useless and try to take away important information on the screen for absolutely no reason. While making everything round and trying so hard to copy iOS, but making a shitty job at it.
But … that way phones would get obsolete much faster, and so you’d be able to buy an obsolete sluggish Pixel of two years old, and install something different on it! Like Lineage, Graphene, Postmarket.
> Material Design v1 cracked it.
And yet they had to have a study with 600 people to tell them that ... text fields have to look like txt fields. And they still failed to make textfields look like textfields