Gadgetory

what if we could design for the materials of the future instead of the materials of today and that future is right around the corner google has a new design language it's going to be use across all its products going forward starting with Android but it's more than just a new idea about how software should look it's a new idea of what software actually is it's called material design what if pixels didn't just have color but also depth what if there was an intelligent material that was as simple as paper but could transform and change shape in response to touch and this led us to a way of thinking that we call material design material design started with Google's designers thinking and debating what the look and feel that software what they asked would happen if you treated the bits on the screen as more than just a cons and show information what if they are real things that's where it started the idea actually came from a discussion that John Wiley and Nicolas jitka were having when they were really asking themselves in one of their explorations what happens when you slide this surface out of the way what's underneath and they're like well what is underneath well I don't know what's it made of and it sounds like an innocent question and yet it was such a powerful spark we didn't realize its power until we kind of started using it leaned into it but the metaphor helped bring everybody together it starts with these pretty high-minded ideas creating a metaphorical substance that defines the rules for how software looks and acts but in practical terms it doesn't seem like that radical of a change we're seeing it first on Android L and Android wear and it amounts to clean white cards that you can move around like paper bright colors animations that give you a sense of location in space and yes consistent drop shadows it will come to all of googles products and even third-party apps but it's going to take a while in the meantime Google's design team is trying to spread the word of what these design principles are so that everybody can learn how to design with material the metaphor was not just useful for unifying ourselves and how we thought about doing stuff we could say hey wait a minute that doesn't feel right not because it violates paragraph C sub clause a of our design philosophy but because it just doesn't feel right it also means that we use that metaphor to connect with our audience a human mind is built to build models that's what makes us capable of being in the world and learning and doing things and putting people on the moon building smart phones and so we're constantly building models of the world and predicting how that world will work when you have a digital world that has no rules where every time you do something it behaves in a new and different way it's surprising it's also really stressful your mind can't build any models makes makes it hard right everything is a an adventure but when you're just trying to get something done you don't want an adventure right you want things to behave in a predictable way be like sometimes I put something on the table instead of sitting there it flies up to the ceiling you know what material design is more than just a set of physics for software elements this paper is able to morph itself into different sizes with animations designed to help you understand how software transitions from one thing to the next and back again we're not hurtling you through space you know at high speeds we're not puncturing your hand with you know invisible impossible surfaces we're trying to limit animation to kind of a depth that is appropriate to the thing that you would hold in your hand we're trying to make the motion be just enough to help you understand where things have gone and where they're coming from beyond animation this metaphorical material has other abilities it's smart based on google mouths ability to know what you want to see and when you want to see it it means you have to trust Google with all of your data and hope that it turns into something you want it's all done in the name of simplicity instead of making you hunt for information it just gives it to you well I think we're approaching it and that we want to have the the system as intelligent as possible in terms of ranking information so if things you know seem to be out of out of order that's you know mistake of the system that we need to rank it better as opposed to approaching that the problem is we're going to solve it by just requiring the users reorder things we did it in order to come up with the most simple solution one of the design practices that we like to follow is try to design the simplest possible thing for the user first see if you can get away with that prove that you need more complexity before you just add it material design is all about algorithms doing the work finding and presenting the information you need instead of making you look for it you know we could have said we want to unlock this by giving you control over how you're going to rank things but instead we've said it let's enable rancors to exist let's create an ecosystem where rancors can get to know you learn you and help you not have to put in that effort elevate the things that you should care about suppress the things that maybe can wait for later and I think that's the key to unlocking this like seeming conundrum between power and simplicity we want to find ways to do more be smarter but at the same time put less burden on the user reasons is a perfect example of how material design is software that involves things that feel real but follow their own virtual rules instead of trying to directly imitate physical objects there's logic but it's not based on things that came before it's native to now to whatever device you're holding in your hand the brilliant work that Xerox PARC did with with Windows that could overlap and mice that can point and click groundbreaking it really helped people use computers and part of the way it helped is that it had object relationships some people didn't understand actually I'm not sure anybody understood why that was valuable the reason why the computer desktop works with overlapping windows representing documents is not because it looks like your physical desk but because when you work on your physical desk the same physical things happen right you know you put the important things on top because those are the ones that you're paying attention to then you're like oh wait I need something else you pull that out it sits on top now it has your attention right so it's it's a it's an interaction congruity it's a functional congruity it happens to have a visual congruity as well but that's not the essential part so as we come to the smaller screens we want to actually have that same congruent the things that you've used recently are at your fingertips whether material design turns out to be the most radical rethinking of what software represents since a desktop or if it's just a fancy term for drop shadows it has given Google a fresh way to think about its products it's added new metaphors new possibilities but most of all new constraints and it's that last part that's most intriguing design is all about finding solutions within constraints right if there were no constraints it's not design it's you know art you