New in Design
Why You Should Explore Material Design Trends in Your Work
Written by Mijyo Sasaki | March 2021
video source: Google material.io
Ever since Google’s coining of the design system “Material Design,” we’ve seen a huge shift in the way that people have been thinking about their own work. It’s completely changed the way that we experience interfaces.
-When something has been designed by Google, you can recognize it immediately. Think about it: What does Google do with their interfaces that makes it a "Google" product or service? If you take a look at any of their applications, their design team loves to use cards, white space, and layering. There's a beautiful unity across all of their ranges, and an ease of use due to the familiarity. And since 2014, they've introduced the language of material design.
So, What is Material Design?
Google created Material to, “ help teams build high-quality digital experiences for Android, iOS, Flutter, and the web.” Inspired by real-life phenomena such as textures, lighting, and sound, designs that use the principles of material design guide the user to make meaningful decisions. It also focuses on the foundations behind print design: designers should focus on typography, scale, color, grids, space, and imagery to make intentional designs and build hierarchy.
In the digital space, designs can come across more intuitively when they mimic real-life experiences. Simply clicking a button and having the button appear as if it is sinking deeper into space, and lifting up after clicking can help make our actions within a webpage more apparent. These kinds of effects can be achieved by adding drop shadows and changing the on click attributes of specific items.
Material Design, Revised
Now, as great as material design was, there were still problems. The original guidelines that Google produced for designers to refer to were too restrictive. This caused many designs to shift the focus from aesthetics to purely functionality, and designs tended to look very similar. Since there was an inability to differentiate in the original set of guidelines, Google made revisions in May of 2018 to allow for more creativity in what material designers produced.
Additionally, no design is perfect. As time passes, the needs of the user can change, and the design will have to evolve. One example of a component of material design that has been updated is the text input field. Google conducted research, and after conducting a study invplving 600 individuals, they came to the conclusion that the design of text inputs needed an update.
Image source: Medium.com
This is the text-input field back in 2017, before the redesign.
This is the text-input field after the redesign.
At UpNComing, we encourage you to fact check our information. Find our sources to this article below.
“Material Design.” Accessed April 9, 2021. https://material.io/design/introduction#principles.
Sinsabaugh, Nathan. “What Google's Material Design Is Really About.” Wired. Conde Nast, August 7, 2015. https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/12/google-material-design/.
“What Is Material Design?” The Interaction Design Foundation. Accessed April 9, 2021. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/material-design.
