Are you guys tired of the “Material You” design? I don’t really like the huge paddings on everything aspect of it. Also a lot of it feels too flat. What do you guys think?
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As a UI/UX designer myself (hobbyist, to be clear), I really like it.
There seems to be this notion in the homebrew/FOSS/Linux community that “wasted space” is always non-preferable. I can see this being true for some people, but I feel like a lot of people and band wagoning this opinion.
It’s pretty universally known and accepted in the design community that padding is extremely important when it comes to helping your brain read and separate content. And to be fair, most non-tech people prefer space and padding in their applications to make things easier to understand.
I can be entirely off base here, but TLDR: I like padding and it’s literally beneficial to helping your brain understand the layout of what you’re looking at better.
personal opinion, i think padding is worse for delineating objects than a bit of colour; or just, like, a line. look at this example - there are four distinct segments on the left, whereas on the right they all merge into one and a half
padding is really useful, yes, but if you put padding on everything then what’s there to be separated?
The one on the right looks like different buttons and that everything is clickable. A quick glance shows you different elements and you can easily find what you’re looking for. An example of form and function working together.
The one on the left looks like a text area showing different symbols. A quick glance shows you a blue area and a white area. Seems like you need that extra moment to find what you want because everything looks the same. An example of function over form.
Cramming a lot of things together isn’t always good (probably it’s just bad in general) because it just makes things confusing and ends up wasting time more than having bigger things but less of them.
meh, i’d say they’re obviously buttons from context (why would a calculator app just have a bunch of random unclickable symbols?). but assuming they don’t immediately read to you as buttons; md3 calc app only has 8 buttons:
AC,(),,÷,×,-,+, &=.the rest is just exactly the same mess of text randomly laid outedit 2023-08-03: i have now looked at this image on a better calibrated monitor. the numbers actually do have background circles (why did no-one pick me up on this). however, this does prove my point about the complete lack of any contrast on anythinghaving areas is good as it allows the eye to do a sort of binary search: if i want a scientific function i’ll look in the white on blue, operators in blue on white, numbers in black on white; then search for the exact button i want. without that, everything’s an unorganised mess (for instance why are brackets in the same section as operators?), with some functions hidden in the
vbutton at the top rightalso i’ve just noticed - how do the brackets work in md3? do you have to tap the button once to bring up a menu and then tap the bracket you want? or does it automatically insert one based on whether you’re inside a set? if it’s the latter, how does one do nested brackets?
The colors are auto-generated from your phone wallpaper. Maybe choose one that is less homogenous :)
Yeah, choose a wallpaper you like less so your calculator doesn’t suck!
As a UI/UX designer myself (non-hobbyist), there’s UI and there’s UX. What differentiates a good-looking design from a crappy-looking design, most of all, is space (or padding). There are many other factors, of course, contrast being also very important for example, but space is number one. But that doesn’t make a design good, just good-looking, which is a very different thing.
Adding steps to take a common action (turn off wifi or whatever) because you used to have a certain number of buttons and now you have to hide some to add space… That’s bad design. Good looking, good UI. Shit UX.
Space should be added when needed. And you need it, when you do, to make thinks clearer. You shouldn’t add space to make it look better if that’s gonna make the experience worse.
The number one rule of design is that form follows function. You should make things as pretty as possible until you find the wall of functionality, and then you stop. Going from six quick access buttons to four was breaking that wall. You wanna be just on top of the wall. Go to one side, you get a great looking interface people hate to use. Go the other side, you get an interface that’s dense and full of things you want, but looks like a piece of nerd shit.
I’m also tired of people repeating the same copypasted ideas about any new design system out there (as I’m sure most people are when hearing people talk about their area of expertise), but they are not wrong on that regard when it comes to material you. Shit name by the way.
There’s a fine line between desirable ‘white space’ and too much padding, which Google should probably do a better job at finding.
It’s nice to see your perspective on it, you make some great points.
Its funny how the places that I dislike the most (status bar toggles and recently google search) are used often and thus do not need the benefits of reading and content separation. You already know by heart what it says and where they are.
Maybe I would like it more if the big padding would only be used in places where I do not interact often with. This would make consistency difficult though.
Good point but just because you know where certain things are on screen, that doesn’t mean everybody knows. So you have to account for that too. Like design considering that that’s the first time someone’s looking at that screen.
I’m not upset by it because, like all Google design eras, nearly no one uses it uniformly.
I love it. Personal preference, of course. :)
No, not at all. I am really fond of Material You. I think it is a nice mix of modern and playful. The colors are great too. I seek out applications that adhere to the material you standards and allow for using system colors. I have a Pixel 7 and a Pixel Watch. I’m excited to see what Material You looks like on the watch when the Wear OS 4 update comes.
The only thing I hate about MY is its comically big quick settings. Give me back the Android 11 quick settings and it will be fine (the Internet QS be damned)
The dynamic colors are a fucking nightmare. No, I don’t want all my ui elements to be the same color as my girlfriend’s skin tone. And the worst is even if I change it, it resets every update. I also don’t like the new quick access controls in the pull down. This is really the first Android update that’s felt like a flat downgrade for me.
I still want Material back.
I’m not a fan of the huge padding or the “rounded edges” of it, much better during the KitKat days, in my opinion.
I’m personally not that fond of it, and kind of want it to blow over in favour of a new trend.
It lacks the charm, and neat little 3D effects that skeumorphism had, but that’s also not helped by it being implemented poorly.
I was offput by it so much on my last phone that I rooted it (first time rooting any Android) just to override it as much as I possibly could. For me, it wasn’t because of the flatness, but entirely because of the huge padding.
The volume slider, which was a thin stripe before, now looks like a comically large bar for no reason at all. Small circular icons on the notification shade which could fit 4 in one row, now only fit 2 in a row. Pulling down the notification shade still let you see the screen behind it, but now it grays it out entirely.
As for the custom color selection, the main gimmick of Material You, it is entirely hit or miss. On my own phone, Pixel 3, I used a red/maroon color, and on my new phone, Pixel 5, I use a mint green.
There’s situations where my chosen color looks really good, and others where it looks horrendous. As it turns out, having one universal color choice for things ranging from the notification shade icons, time display on the lock screen, calculator, etc. makes it difficult to find one color that looks good for all of them.
TL;DR: I hated it when it came out. I have gotten used to it now, but still dislike it immensely.
I’m pragmatic, as long as it’s easy on the eyes and conducive to read (in the sense in which you “read” an image, can’t think of a better word), I’m good. I have always tended to cram everything and the kitchen sink in one screen and the push for material you has taught me the importance of a clean composition.
For now I’m good, but I’m open to change.
My main complaint is the amount of padding everything has, it makes things feel so cramped, even on a big screen. Increasing the information density would really improve the design, imo. Making colors more saturated would be cool too.
But other than that, the design is growing on me.
Not “tired” of it, but I’m looking forward to more colour options rather than just pastel colours that sorta work half the time. I hope I can customize it a bit more in the next release.
Definitely not, first of all I love pastel colors and, on the more practical side of things, at least for touch interfaces I do prefer to have some padding: even on larger screens (my current phone is 6.7") I tend to prefer larger and more padded interfaces to avoid hitting the wrong one (and that’s the main reason why I don’t like to type on a phone that much).
So I might even be in the minority but having a control center with larger but less buttons on each page is exactly what I prefer, I don’t mind having to scroll if it’s easier to toggle what I need to.
I like it
