Creativity and constraint
Material Design "unified us in
our thinking," Duarte says, admitting that "it’s absolutely a
constraint." These constraints, he says, made design decisions easier
and more consistent. Take, for example, the idea of flipping a card over
to see what’s on the back. In Material Design’s world, that’s a cheat
that doesn’t work. It’s as if the software is actual, physical stuff inside these devices, and there’s not space inside a phone to flip a card over, so Google doesn’t allow itself to do it.
We’re hardwired to comprehend
physical things, Duarte says, and software all too often behaves in ways
that break with our models and expectations. Wiley thinks of it as
breaking the suspension of disbelief, as when something happens in a
sci-fi movie that doesn’t follow its own internal logic. Duarte is a
little more direct, with a subtle dig at Apple’s iOS and its flying
software layers: "We’re not hurtling you through space at high speeds,"
he says. "We’re not puncturing your hand with invisible, impossible
surfaces."
"Design is all about finding
solutions within constraints," Duarte says, "If there were no
constraints, it’s not design — it’s art."
"Design is all about finding solutions within constraints."
Google’s designers steadfastly
refuse to name the new fictional material, a decision that
simultaneously gives them more flexibility and adds a level of
metaphysical mysticism to the substance. That’s also important because
while this material follows some physical rules, it doesn’t fall into
the old trap of skeuomorphism. The material isn’t a one-to-one imitation
of physical paper, but instead it’s "magical," as Duarte puts it.
It can do things that physical
paper can’t, like grow and shrink with animations. Those animations
were important to Google, because they help users understand where they
are inside an app. "A lot of software … kind of feels like television or
film in terms of jump cuts," Wiley says, causing you to lose your sense
of time and place. For apps, you want something more akin to a stage
play. "It’s going from one moment to the next," he says, "that scene
change, and what’s happening onstage is choreographed and transitioned,
and there’s meaning."
Materialize
The other, more important
thing that this material can do is appear when you need it. Google has
been working on the algorithms behind products like Google Now for years,
and it’s become an essential part of this new design philosophy.
Instead of asking users to manage their data, Material Design is asking
users to trust that Google will show them what they need at the right
time.
"With watches, you don’t want to spend a lot of time interacting with it."
That’s why the Android Wear
smartwatch software doesn’t give users the ability to do much except
respond to notifications. Alex Faaborg, the designer for the platform,
says, "With watches, you don’t want to spend a lot of time interacting
with it. You just want to be able to glance down and see information and
quickly do a voice command." He says it’s "in the same spirit as a lot
of the work that we did for Google now, but it’s for the entire
platform."
That’s a lot of trust to put
into Google and into its magical paper material, but Duarte says there’s
a reason for that. "We did it in order to come up with the most simple
solution. One of the design practices that we like to follow is try to
design the simplest possible thing for the user first. See if you can
get away with that, prove that you need more complexity before you add
it."