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I’m glad Material Design exists — iteration is important, and MD was a massive effort that provided useful insight. I hope future designers learn from its mist

I’m glad Material Design exists — iteration is important, and MD was a massive effort that provided useful insight. I hope future designers learn from its mistakes.

rat9988 7y ago
The question is why material design didn't learn from other people's mistakes. Design isn't a new field born out of itL
- munchbunny 7y ago
  Programmers make mistakes in the category of "why didn't they learn from other people's mistakes?" in large projects all the time. In any project of sufficient complexity (not exclusively programming projects), you'll inevitably find something that falls into that category. I've typically seen this type of error as the result of trying to balance trade-offs of the "you had to be in the room at the moment" sort, and then you fix it later when it's a real issue for you. I like that this post points out the issue, and I hope it gets fixed.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I think more importantly, given the growth rates of our industry, an average programmer or designer has less than 2-3 years of any kind of experience in building software, therefore they didn't have time to learn about, much less from, other people's mistakes.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > The question is why material design didn't learn from other people's mistakes. While reading the original material design spec, it seemed enlightened, but now its clear it's more of a standard than a best-practice. Its by no means the "best" design, just like the qwerty keyboard wasn't the best. However, due to a huge marketing push by google, it's now considered a standard and if you do not conform, you'll look weird. Not so different than in the 1990s, if you had a Windows application without a "file" drop-down menubar, you would also be considered weird. Material design should not be thought of as an optimal design approach, it should be thought of as a standard to rally behind. If you build something adhering to the standard, regardless of whether it's a good or bad design choice, users will understand it because they have already been it by Google. If you have something that's better, it may be rejected simply because folks weren't already trained on it.
  - mathw 7y ago
    Oh the number of applications which had (and still have) a File menu when they don't really do anything with files...
    - bitwize 7y ago
      Inside Macintosh explicitly told developers that the first two items in the menu bar must be File and Edit. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Apple's UI guidelines were considered best practice and widely adopted by other companies.
  - projektfu 7y ago
    Before Material Design, Android UI was highly inconsistent. I was used to the inconsistency on my Gingerbread phone but I really appreciated the MD upgrade. Using F-droid brought back all those old UIs.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > it should be thought of as a standard to rally behind. I won't rally behind it, personally. I'd rather rally behind a good standard. > If you have something that's better, it may be rejected simply because folks weren't already trained on it. That's fine. Such a loss may be mitigated to some degree by gaining users who really hate MD -- and there are a lot of them.

I’m glad Material Design exists — iteration is important, and MD was a massive effort that provided useful insight. I hope future designers learn from its mistakes.

rat9988 7y ago

The question is why material design didn't learn from other people's mistakes. Design isn't a new field born out of itL

munchbunny 7y ago
Programmers make mistakes in the category of "why didn't they learn from other people's mistakes?" in large projects all the time. In any project of sufficient complexity (not exclusively programming projects), you'll inevitably find something that falls into that category. I've typically seen this type of error as the result of trying to balance trade-offs of the "you had to be in the room at the moment" sort, and then you fix it later when it's a real issue for you. I like that this post points out the issue, and I hope it gets fixed.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I think more importantly, given the growth rates of our industry, an average programmer or designer has less than 2-3 years of any kind of experience in building software, therefore they didn't have time to learn about, much less from, other people's mistakes.
speedplane 7y ago
> The question is why material design didn't learn from other people's mistakes. While reading the original material design spec, it seemed enlightened, but now its clear it's more of a standard than a best-practice. Its by no means the "best" design, just like the qwerty keyboard wasn't the best. However, due to a huge marketing push by google, it's now considered a standard and if you do not conform, you'll look weird. Not so different than in the 1990s, if you had a Windows application without a "file" drop-down menubar, you would also be considered weird. Material design should not be thought of as an optimal design approach, it should be thought of as a standard to rally behind. If you build something adhering to the standard, regardless of whether it's a good or bad design choice, users will understand it because they have already been it by Google. If you have something that's better, it may be rejected simply because folks weren't already trained on it.
- mathw 7y ago
  Oh the number of applications which had (and still have) a File menu when they don't really do anything with files...
  - bitwize 7y ago
    Inside Macintosh explicitly told developers that the first two items in the menu bar must be File and Edit. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Apple's UI guidelines were considered best practice and widely adopted by other companies.
- projektfu 7y ago
  Before Material Design, Android UI was highly inconsistent. I was used to the inconsistency on my Gingerbread phone but I really appreciated the MD upgrade. Using F-droid brought back all those old UIs.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > it should be thought of as a standard to rally behind. I won't rally behind it, personally. I'd rather rally behind a good standard. > If you have something that's better, it may be rejected simply because folks weren't already trained on it. That's fine. Such a loss may be mitigated to some degree by gaining users who really hate MD -- and there are a lot of them.