Material Design makes more sense in mobile apps. It meant for extremely simple UX/UI which mobile apps are naturally fit for. Thanks for the great work!
inline ask-HN : Do you guys really prefer it for complicated web apps ? Do you think it provides better user experience ? is everything flat and chromeless better on eyes when there is so much stuff on screen?
I hate it for web apps. Material design is designed primarily for simpler interfaces with a small screen and imprecise inputs, yet I use most web apps from my desktop or laptop where I have a large screen and very precise input methods. You cannot consolidate the two.
I'm not a fan of material design for mobile applications either. I find the animations obnoxious and annoying. It has also been my experience that mobile applications tend to have incredibly low information density and they require jumping through tons of hoops to perform even simple tasks. If I have the choice of installing a mobile app or using its website I always use the website.
Good. Whether it’s on a device or on the web, I find material design to be a terrible aesthetic. Any kind of flat design in general is often very difficult to understand, the UI components blend in with things that are not interact-able.
As a long time Android developer I find material design to be actually good, esp. since Google offers a lot of it out of the box for us. What I find disappointing is the world jumping on it and then clinging to it as if this is it and that's it. I have noticed a lot of apps have kind of stopped (not universally though) going for new, unique and innovative designs.
Agreed. I think Material as a design is flawed because the affordances to discover features are limited. It's OK for phones with small screens, but Material on a website on a desktop puts everything inside a hamburger or a gear.
Great point and I can confirm this. Working on enterprise apps in the past and seeing design teams choosing something like Material Design for those web apps, even though it's not suitable for those apps, especially because the information density is poor when using MD.
IMO Material Design is going to have the same problem as Bootstrap. There will be so many apps and websites with that look and feel that the spec will become boring in no time.
For a serious app I'd never use plain MD, the same way I never use plain bootstrap. Each web/app experience should have its own identity. When everything looks and feels the same way, the "wow factor" disappears.
Nothing to do with this project per se, but I still do not understand the deal with material design on the web. I can understand the case for it's use in small screens and maybe falling back to it based on media queries makes sense but I'm yet to see a good looking website on a laptop using material design.
Has there been any research on whether Material Design has superior UX for desktop use?
I've just tried the new settings screen on Chrome 59, and personally I find it far, far worse than what it was previously. I hate this trend of hiding essential top-level navigation behind a hamburger menu, especially on desktop.
The demo looks great! When I think of Google's material design, however, I always picture Android's rather flat and blockish UI. Am I the only person who doesn't think material design is attractive? Maybe this is what material design really should be! Congrats!!
Material design isn't very suitable for the desktop web... and I'm not even sure it will work on mobile but let's hope it will.
Firstly, it's too constraining, too specific, this style could get pretty boring and bland if every app uses it. And for lots of apps (and majority of webs), different spacing, structure, etc. is optimal – forcing them to use a different spacing would lead to worsened usability and ugliness.
Secondly, the animations can get annoying and distracting quickly.
I agree. I'm not a big fan of Material design either. Too flat and I find the color palettes a little odd.
One thing that really bothers me is Google designing their iOS apps with Material design rather than using the system iOS design. They just don't feel like they're part of the iOS ecosystem with how jarring their design is.
"Flat design and its more popular successor, Material design, have been dominating the web UI for quite some time, featuring a minimalistic aesthetic that eliminates visual clutter and favors user experience."
Yeah. Unfortunately not everyone is masochistic enough to enjoy the Flat or Material design.
Ideally (IMO) you want your app to be recognisable - using plain material design feels bland - sort of like programmer art - as a user I'd gravitate towards a more custom/tailored look - when done well it communicates effort and thought was put into something (at least to me).
inline ask-HN : Do you guys really prefer it for complicated web apps ? Do you think it provides better user experience ? is everything flat and chromeless better on eyes when there is so much stuff on screen?
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