You can look at it in much the same way that the early versions of Windows enabled programmers to build applications that looked exactly alike. In much the sam

You can look at it in much the same way that the early versions of Windows enabled programmers to build applications that looked exactly alike. In much the same vein, Material's "paper" concepts are designed to minimise confusion for lay users - i.e. "What does clicking the '+' button do?". Once you standardise the symbols and appearance of certain widgets, it removes the "have to think about it" barrier. You could argue that EVERYONE who uses a Windows computer knows what the [x] on the top right corner of every window does. And like Windows, I think you will eventually see developers modify and extend Material to make applications stand apart from each other while maintaining some sort of consistency of the UI. But like windows, you will eventually get to the stage that developers corrupt simple things like checkboxes to operate in non logical ways (e.g. as radio buttons), or you end up with a screen where every conceivable square millimetre of the window is a 'hot point' that does something when you touch/click on it! (I/m looking at you Excel etc.)