Material Design has been the centre of attention in the tech and mobile world as of late after Google unveiled it earlier in the year as their new design language. This week, it is making its debut on certain phones and tablets, and will eventually unroll to a huge array of android devices.

With it comes a whole new look for phones and tablets, but it is much, much, more than just a new lick of paint available for certain smartphones. It is, as explained by Google designers, an attempt to establish a certain set of ‘best practises’ for the world of interactive design, by combining rules from graphic design with fresh ideas on interfaces and input.

Whilst Material Design is a lot of things, including a stunning makeover of the current android system, it is also a flagship for how Google believe interactive design should behave. One of the best ways to make sites, apps, mobiles and computers all work in sync, and look visually uniform is to have a certain set of rules and standards for their look and interactivity – what is the best look to take ideas from? The real world…

The big difference with Material Design, compared to previous versions of Android, or any other system, is that the UI (User interface) elements get stacked and behave like real world elements across all dimensions. This mean that certain buttons will sit on top of other elements, and everything must come from somewhere, therefore making it more intuitive and understandable.

If you want to open an application at the moment, then pressing the button will most likely have the application just appear on your screen. There may be a transition, such as fading in, but it will most likely seemingly come from nowhere. With Material Design, Google wants to change this and have it behave like a real object. Coming up from the bottom, for example, and closing back into the same point upon exit.

 

Why should you care?

This is the question on a lot of people’s lips. If you don’t have the latest release of an Android phone, then why does any of this matter to you? In much the same way as Flat design did, around the time that Apple pursued it for its latest iOS release, Material Design will likely set the trend when it comes to design language, or at least influence it.

As a small business owner, having an up to date, intuitive and easy to use Website is an important tool in obtaining and keeping customers. At the moment, Material Design is making sense of a sometimes confusing world of buttons, pull out tiles and elements. The growth of Material Design might also bring with it an intuitive way of browsing sites. As Design and UI gets more intuitive and relatable to real world objects, old sites could quickly become outdated.

 

To learn more about the Material Design language, see here: http://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html

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