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Material 3 Expressive

(design.google)
332 points meetpateltech | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.647s | source
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freedomben ◴[] No.44005764[source]
I have two thoughts that keep jumping out at me from this. This criticism isn't meant solely for Material 3, but it does seem a good example.

1. Since the beginning of "mobile first" being rapidly shoved on us (and side-note, god our industry seems to love bandwagoning the new shiny stuff), I've noticed the slow but inevitable (with a northstar like that) decline and neglect of desktop interfaces. Viewing this website on desktop is a wonderful illustration and validation of that fear (though definitely take that with a grain of salt as it's heavily subject to confirmation bias).

2. The over-reliance on data. I am a big believer in data and data-driven decision making, but I think far too often we out-source our thinking to the data without ever questioning the data or our own methods for collecting and analyzing that data. I don't know anywhere near enough about how they gathered this to suggest that the data might be flawed, but I have seen (many times) reasonable, thinking people look at data and place complete trust in it without stopping to realize that at some point that data was defined and collected by another person. Even if the data is rock solid, there also seems to be rarely a thought given to the possibility of misinterpreting that data, or the possibility that the data doesn't provide useful insights in isolation. Some of the worst products I've used were the most "data driven," hyper-optimized to maximize on whatever the chosen metrics were. This seems especially subject to the fallacies of micro vs. macro when trying to optimize for populations over individual experiences. Likewise some of the best products I've used were built with little to no data, and progressively got worse the more they were optimized for "engagement" or whatever the goal is.

Now all that said, take my thoughts with a grain of salt because I am tired of having the apps I use constantly changing their UIs on me. If it's one app it's bad enough, but when you have to use a dozen or more and every one of them ships some radical update every 6 to 12 months, with typically zero user control of when that happens, it becomes maddening.

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1. idkalexj ◴[] No.44006002[source]
Im right there with you. I loathe the "embigification" guised as mobile first for desktop experiences. Mice are precise and allow for dense design (which i prefer).

Re the data point, what an amateur stance from the google research team... "found the button 4x faster" as their "look at how much better it is!" metric? If you make the button take up 90% of the screen and you will get the same result but even FASTER, WOW such productivity! What terrible methodology.

I also cant help but notice how much usable information space has now been gobbled up compared from left to right, hope you enjoy writing emails in tiny bubbles.

Also, the new problem they just invented is its now harder to decipher what is a ui element vs a graphic/decoration. I am all for seeing some risk taking but im not sure i agree with the basis for "why this is a good direction".

Google been taking a lot of Ls IMO on the design side, every new guideline push makes google things feel big and clunky. Best example is the google fonts website, the previous version was a work of art, now its just awful (functionally and aesthetically IMO)

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2. freedomben ◴[] No.44006976[source]
Could not agree more, especially "I loathe the "embigification" guised as mobile first for desktop experiences. Mice are precise and allow for dense design (which i prefer)."

It really is utterly ridiculous how much scrolling we have to do on desktop with these modern apps. Scrolling is a paper cut IMHO. There are obviously good cases for having to scroll, but we should rarely if ever have to scroll just to see menu options! I've built a lot of "modern" websites and built desktop UI apps back in the day too, so I understand the challenges of trying to build responsive UIs that work on different screen sizes, but optimizing for the tiny screen and almost completely ignoring massive screens isn't the answer.