Material Design - new Google design direction that will revolutionize

Matias Duarte, vice president of Google's design, explained the basics of the new direction of the company under the name Material Design, which is to give all users an idea of ​​how it should look and work program security.

Google design team has long felt the need to create a specific set of rules the behavior of software that would work for all of Google's products, starting with Android, Chrome finishing OS. Rather than start with a single color palette, and a similar appearance, the Google team is asked a fundamental question: "What creates the software?"

Matter and Form

The answer came from the department of design, in which John Willie, a leading search engine designer, and his colleague Nicholas Dzhitkoff, considered ubiquitous cards that Google started to use in google Now. And then they had a question: "When you remove using swipe the last card that remains at the bottom?"

"It sounds like an innocent question," - said Duarte, - "and yet it is for us to become a powerful spark." This led the team to a new way of thinking about the software elements that we encounter on a daily basis. Instead of talking about pixels or abstract layers, the team imagined these cards and surfaces as a real tangible objects. And if these cards were material, with all the inherent physical properties, they needed to the rules under which they have to work and move around the screen.

In general, the team proceeded to the creation of this material, which was a bit like a magic paper. It is flat and is located just above the rear screen background, which is usually painted white. It falls from different angles and light, of course, displaying shade. The latter should not just disappear, but move at a surface motion.

In combination with a bold and bright colors, this new material became the basis on which later grew up the rest of the developed design. Its first implementation you can see already in the Android L: bright colors and cards sliding over each other.

Willie and Dzhitkoff said that the new aesthetics - it's more than just the evolution of Google design. In 2012 and 2013, Google launched a design project called Project Kennedy, who started the process of unification of design. With the advent of Material Design, the company has made another big step in that direction.

Creativity and limitations

«Material Design brings us together in our thoughts," - says Duarte. - "This is an absolute limit." Due to these constraints easier to act consistently and in concert. "Design is pushing to ensure that the search for solutions to the restricted conditions", - said Duarte. - "If there were no restrictions, the design would not be art."

Comparing the new material with iOS, Duarte said that the company is "not rushing you through space at high speeds, and makes you feel an invisible non-existent surface."

Google designers are stubbornly refusing to name the new voice of the fictional material that simultaneously gives them more flexibility and gives mysticism new substance. But, despite the fact that this material has physical properties, it does not fall under the old skvemorfizma trap. The new material - is not entirely an imitation of paper, but rather something "magical."

His is what will never be able to make plain paper, for example, expand or shrink instantaneously. The feel of a material similar to what we see on stage: all actions are carefully planned, and each of them has its own meaning.

materialization

Another important thing is that this material appears instantly in the moment when you need it. Instead, to enable users to keep track of your data, the Google has shown that they need at a particular time.

That's why software Android Wear It does not provide users with many features, but only replies to notifications. Designer Alex Faaborg said: "After securing the clock, you do not want to constantly play with them. You just want to look down, to get information and give a voice command quickly. "

This largely applies to the new Google material. "We created it because we wanted to get the simplest solution. One of the design methods, which we want to follow, is to create the simplest things for the users. "

Future

This is more than a single style of all the software and web-services Google. This is more of Android L, more than Android Wear. This interaction metaphors that we use in thinking about computers and technology that helps them work.

Google team believes that we can move one step forward in user interaction with the virtual world. We are now available a number of technologies: touch screens, gestures, voice commands. Google's designers believe that all this should combine to give us an understanding of how the software works. It is necessary to implement a function on all devices due to her intuitively work with all what we face in everyday life.

Material Design - a new framework, which is the Google believes, and will create the intuitive model. This revolutionary product is the same as, for example, iPhone from Apple. It combines the flexibility and simplicity to help deal with the new technologies. And if Google will keep his promise, and can bring this technology into all of its products, including the web, Chrome OS, and Android, it really helps us to understand the technology, and deliver us from the need to adapt to the different model.

Now Material Design - it is only an idea, and it will remain so mysterious, is not yet to be introduced to the basic Google products. "We are only at the beginning." On the question of what, if we are able to develop materials of the future, not today, Duarte said, "The future is just around the corner."

via The Verge