Material 3 Expressive

> Expressive design makes you feel something. It inspires emotion, communicates function, and helps users achieve their goals.

I sometimes wonder if the people writing this sort of thing really believe what they're writing?

Their case study is mostly just "make buttons that people use a lot stand out". Oh wow! Such emotion! Much feels!

Especially since it feels so bland and "corpo safe" - the only thing I have feelings about is selling this as expressive :D

Also known as marketing. I don’t know why they need it here so much.

No but look

> We found a 32% increase in subculture perception, which indicates that expressive design makes a brand feel more relevant and “in-the-know.” We also saw a 34% boost in modernity, making a brand feel fresh and forward-thinking. On top of that, there was a 30% jump in rebelliousness, suggesting that expressive design positions a brand as bold, innovative, and willing to break from convention.

I was positive that this was satire, but no that's genuinely right there in the post.

> willing to break from convention

By following this new shiny convention!

Google became a trillion dollars satire

I assume not only do they believe what they are writing but would believe you and I just don't "get it".

To be fair, there are things I am really into that seem just as ridiculous to an outsider/non-connoisseur. Microtonal music for example. I have seen youtube comments before on pieces I really do love saying that people must be pretending to like this music because it sounds so awful to them.

Or wine tasting comes to mind. I love wine but the wine tasting connoisseur seems ridiculous to me. We really are having two different experiences though.

The writers probably are perceiving these things and not just making them up.

Depends on how deep you want the belief to be, but a lot of people will hold weird beliefs. I've seen colleagues express so much pride, joy and pleasure for things that I consider bogus at best (and totally detrimental if I'm being harsh), so I wouldn't be surprised people who live in UX land to be in that kind of bubble. The worst part to me .. is the blend of cutesy-butterfly projects with "scientific study" practices. So now they have stats on how their emotion framework is the best for the future.

I am a little afraid to ask but what is a "jump in rebelliousness"?

I doubt it's actual people writing it anymore, probably something from Gemini. All the emotions, none of the feels.

I unfortunately think this is a case of manufactured consent:

> You don’t say something because it’s true; you say it because you believe it—and you believe it because it’s what gets rewarded.

I notice that Google's design never speaks for itself. It's always married with overbearing verbiage that sounds like it was penned for a Will Ferrell film.

Since a few years I can't tell if these things are satirical or serious, a lot of people working for FAANG are completely delirious and barely connected to the reality of 99.999% of the population.

> M3 Expressive designs were rated higher across desirability attributes, including “modernity,” “subculture,” and “rebelliousness.”

What does it even mean ?

Truly is amazing how capitalism just consumes and repurposes everything.

Ah yes, our subculture is so rebellious as we use a product created by the fifth largest company in the world by market cap that makes $100,000,000,000 in profit annually.

We need détournement back.

Rebelliousness appears to be one of the emotion metrics they used to score the designs.

The thing is I can understand wine tasting, or microtonal music, or poetry, or lots of other things. I don't really "get" those things either, but I can see how it's something that other people do "get". I do understand it on some level.

But this kind of stuff ... I don't really understand how anyone can say something like that with a straight face. But maybe that's just a failure of empathy on my part *shrug*

This reeks of "Defiant Jazz"

It's the new way hipsters use their fingers to push the buttons with their fingers. It's magical or something.

It means a trillion dollar company is affirming people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo for even more $$$.

You assume it's people writing it. It was probably written by AI. Nobody cares.

I heard recently from a professional Marketer/Behavioral Psychologist is one of the things he learned that was a gut punch was the things one holds most dear are generally commodities to almost everyone else.

While destroying the meaning of rebellion - which we could use a bit of right now.

And they quantified each of those gains down to two full decimal places of precision!

It doesn't look bland to me at all. Most of the examples look like a failed Linux rice.

As a UX designer, I assure you there are still some of us that are cynical about all this BS.

In my experience, the one thing that people care about feeling when using some GUI is that they are on the right track and are closer to accomplishing whatever task they are performing.

I’ll say this though, the UX designers who speak in flowery bullshit like that tend to get noticed more and climb the career ladder, because it’s what everyone wants to hear. It’s this kind of stuff that made disillusioned me and made me hate the work.

I think some really do believe it, and I think others will just say whatever they think someone wants to hear.

The colors scheme are like the definition of bland, theres zero punchy contrast, there's nothing popping. They show super smooth squiggly line as a "contrast" to a straight line in the play progress. Wow so brave, much courage

Feels tame and bland - and I have no problem with, in fact I don't really want my phone OS GUI to be radical. But just don't sell me BS about how this is bold and how it induces emotional response :D

That's disruption, baby!

So google has been tracking rebelliousness since when that today they have a 30% historical comparison?