What is Google Material Design and how it will change our lives

What will happen if human childhood will be held under the film, where Poumnevshie computers inevitably killed all mankind, and a little matured, the same person will be reading about the NSA and other villains that the clock read his SMS and send them to USA? He will be wary of Google.

Not so long ago the Good Corporation showed the world his vision of the future of user interfaces. Material Design - a common concept of building the logic and appearance of services and applications, unifying all Google products with a view to their possible easy and intuitive perception users.

The idea is so broad that will transform not only the appearance of all of Google's products. With the advent of the new concept will change the role of the company in people's lives.

What will Google?

Yes, so far Google - it's just a bunch of services. However, with the "material" design company actually creates a second reality inside our computers and mobile devices. With its own logic, with its own rules and laws, and his physics.

When you create a physical thing, you are relying on the millennial human experience. But the software design is in its infancy. We looked at all our software and ask yourself what it is made of? John Wiley, chief of Google search design

What are now the Google services for people? This search string, which lives in the browser? Or is it your mobile Android-powered device?

Google can give a variety of definitions, and many of them are true. This company has created a system of services that have become the foundation of our digital infrastructure.

But in the near future, Google will no longer be seen simply as Chrome or Android.

Individual services and Google products are evolving into a single information channel, where relevant to the human data simply appear on the right screen at the right time.

When you look at the clock on the w / d station, you will see on the screen of your time of arrival of the next train. However, these same hours will inform you of an important letter from the leadership, if you look at them on the job. These watches will replace your password to log in to your account on the computer screen which immediately displays the body of an important letter from the chief. An urgent need to move and do not have time to finish the text of the answer? No problem, because on your smartphone or tablet has opened mail interface with nedopechatannym text, and even the cursor is in the place where you left off.

The working day is over and you go home. The same screens are now performing a completely different function. They will remind you about the to pick up the kids, buy food for dinner, and will notify the release of a new series favorite series.

This incredible variety of functions and tasks performed will work in a single intuitive user digital environment, gradually merging with the real world.

One of the key ideas of Material Design is to provide the user an intuitive sense of working with real physical objects within a digital environment. In fact, this emulation of three-dimensional space on the screen plane, but with all the advantages that can give a virtual environment. Like cardboard cards buttons and windows are able to increase and decrease, falling apart and rebuild.

The most impressive in this concept is that the properties and behavior of objects on the screen will be as predictable and understandable to a person, like any simple event in the physical world. In contrast to the existing interfaces, where pressing the button does not result in some changes in the the rest of the screen, any action in Android L causes a corresponding effect affecting the entire interface. Tapnite on a particular day in the calendar, and it will grow, pushing their growing volume and weight of the remaining days. Click the play button in the player, and it is like a candy wrapper, will unfold in the control panel.

This concept is the result of a careful study of the company, how the work with paper to reality. The team working on a project to create a physical application icons from the present paper. They wanted to see how light and shadow can interact with the flat (like the screen), but the real stuff.

Virtual environment, in turn, allows you to break the rules. Hardly anyone had seen the paper is divided into parts, pieces of which are rearranged and re-merge into a single entity. This gives additional possibilities, but there is a risk too create an unrealistic system, too distant from the physical laws. In order to preserve the natural intuitiveness, in the process of development has been thrown out the whole typography, images and colors. The team focused exclusively on the miracle of the paper.

No need to be a designer to notice violation of the rules of the real world. Paper falls to the table, like a piece of stone? Obviously, there is something wrong, and it will be appreciated by anyone.

Relying on such an obvious and clear to every law, Google team decided to use the real world as a basis for their concepts.

Given a sufficiently clear system of rules, it is possible to add new materials. The paper was an obvious choice because of the simplicity of its display on the screen. Without a pronounced texture, with virtually no volume. But try to imagine, for example, tissue or fluid.

The head then comes skeuomorph philosophy, which is actively used by Apple and eventually abandoned it, is not it? Apple's approach was also aims to make the digital world more understandable to the user, but compared to Google's decision, he looks pretty superficial. Skeuomorph Apple's only hinted at the similarity of applications with its real counterpart.

Google does not want to just spend some analogy for a better listening experience. Their goal - to explain to users what happens when a particular interface element appears or disappears from the screen.

Material Design - is not just an attempt to create the same services designed for different devices. Google creates a parallel world, each piece of which is a fragment of something material. When you get a message on your smartwatch from your smartphone, you see not just a dead piece of text. This is a piece of cardboard on which is the message, and this message came from your smartphone on your wrist.

The interaction with the digital world perhaps in completely different ways. This can be something round on our wrist or something rectangular in our hand. Material Design is focused on something that is guaranteed to provide access to the necessary and relevant data regardless of the combination of devices used by man.

That's right, without imposition and pressure, the company simply creates technology, based on the key principle of "Focus on the user and all else will come by itself."

We are interested in your opinion. Do you like the concept of evil or perceive such initiatives as a promising way to interact with the information environment in the future?