this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
56 points (96.7% liked)

Android

27901 readers
354 users here now

DROID DOES

Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules


1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.


2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.


3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.


4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.


5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.


6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.


7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.


8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.


Community Resources:


We are Android girls*,

In our Lemmy.world.

The back is plastic,

It's fantastic.

*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.


Our Partner Communities:

!android@lemmy.ml


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Are you guys tired of the "Material You" design? I don't really like the huge paddings on everything aspect of it. Also a lot of it feels too flat. What do you guys think?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] FVVS@l.lucitt.com 30 points 1 year ago (7 children)

As a UI/UX designer myself (hobbyist, to be clear), I really like it.

There seems to be this notion in the homebrew/FOSS/Linux community that "wasted space" is always non-preferable. I can see this being true for some people, but I feel like a lot of people and band wagoning this opinion.

It's pretty universally known and accepted in the design community that padding is extremely important when it comes to helping your brain read and separate content. And to be fair, most non-tech people prefer space and padding in their applications to make things easier to understand.

I can be entirely off base here, but TLDR: I like padding and it's literally beneficial to helping your brain understand the layout of what you're looking at better.

[–] rokzoi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's nice to see your perspective on it, you make some great points.

Its funny how the places that I dislike the most (status bar toggles and recently google search) are used often and thus do not need the benefits of reading and content separation. You already know by heart what it says and where they are.

Maybe I would like it more if the big padding would only be used in places where I do not interact often with. This would make consistency difficult though.

[–] wason@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Good point but just because you know where certain things are on screen, that doesn't mean everybody knows. So you have to account for that too. Like design considering that that's the first time someone's looking at that screen.

[–] Cosmic_Frog@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

As a UI/UX designer myself (non-hobbyist), there's UI and there's UX. What differentiates a good-looking design from a crappy-looking design, most of all, is space (or padding). There are many other factors, of course, contrast being also very important for example, but space is number one. But that doesn't make a design good, just good-looking, which is a very different thing.

Adding steps to take a common action (turn off wifi or whatever) because you used to have a certain number of buttons and now you have to hide some to add space... That's bad design. Good looking, good UI. Shit UX.

Space should be added when needed. And you need it, when you do, to make thinks clearer. You shouldn't add space to make it look better if that's gonna make the experience worse.

The number one rule of design is that form follows function. You should make things as pretty as possible until you find the wall of functionality, and then you stop. Going from six quick access buttons to four was breaking that wall. You wanna be just on top of the wall. Go to one side, you get a great looking interface people hate to use. Go the other side, you get an interface that's dense and full of things you want, but looks like a piece of nerd shit.

I'm also tired of people repeating the same copypasted ideas about any new design system out there (as I'm sure most people are when hearing people talk about their area of expertise), but they are not wrong on that regard when it comes to material you. Shit name by the way.

[–] Zeus@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

personal opinion, i think padding is worse for delineating objects than a bit of colour; or just, like, a line. look at this example - there are four distinct segments on the left, whereas on the right they all merge into one and a half

padding is really useful, yes, but if you put padding on everything then what's there to be separated?

[–] Virkkunen@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The one on the right looks like different buttons and that everything is clickable. A quick glance shows you different elements and you can easily find what you're looking for. An example of form and function working together.

The one on the left looks like a text area showing different symbols. A quick glance shows you a blue area and a white area. Seems like you need that extra moment to find what you want because everything looks the same. An example of function over form.

Cramming a lot of things together isn't always good (probably it's just bad in general) because it just makes things confusing and ends up wasting time more than having bigger things but less of them.

[–] Zeus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

meh, i'd say they're obviously buttons from context (why would a calculator app just have a bunch of random unclickable symbols?). but assuming they don't immediately read to you as buttons; md3 calc app only has 8 buttons: AC, (), %, ÷, ×, -, +, & =. ~~the rest is just exactly the same mess of text randomly laid out~~ edit 2023-08-03: i have now looked at this image on a better calibrated monitor. the numbers actually do have background circles (why did no-one pick me up on this). however, this does prove my point about the complete lack of any contrast on anything

having areas is good as it allows the eye to do a sort of binary search: if i want a scientific function i'll look in the white on blue, operators in blue on white, numbers in black on white; then search for the exact button i want. without that, everything's an unorganised mess (for instance why are brackets in the same section as operators?), with some functions hidden in the v button at the top right

also i've just noticed - how do the brackets work in md3? do you have to tap the button once to bring up a menu and then tap the bracket you want? or does it automatically insert one based on whether you're inside a set? if it's the latter, how does one do nested brackets?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

While you're here, I'm curious about your opinion on the latest Spotify client design. It feels like they want to bring the desktop design closer to the touch screen client (maybe to reduce the codebase not shared by the projects). Personally, having grown up with Winamp, I find it very uncomfortable how images are dominant in both list and grid views, and how much space is left (really wasted) around texts. I think it's just a very inefficient interface with way too much useless visual fluff.

spoiler

(the application on the left is a terminal-based client that really only needs a tiny corner on the screen)

[–] Coliseum7428@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Not who you’re replying to, but I don’t like the giant album art menus. Save that for a now playing screen that should still be able to be shrunk down.

[–] _thisdot@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

UI dev here. To add to this, good use of “negative space / white apace” is also beneficial in signalling abundance. The more negative space you can afford to “waste”, the more resources you signal to have.

Luxury brand ads are good examples. Compare this Citizen Watch ad (https://images.app.goo.gl/mALYonDz6qzKJjuJ6) to this (https://images.app.goo.gl/sTXzyrFXNDUxR8AR9)

https://boagworld.com/design/why-whitespace-matters/

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Widget@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

It's one of those "it depends" things. I've been working on a pretty data-dense webapp and as time goes on we've been shaving bits of padding off and instead relying on elevation and borders to signify the UI hierarchy of the app.

For normie apps where there's hardly anything to present, I think all the spacing helps people not get overwhelmed as much.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] MattyXarope@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I'm not upset by it because, like all Google design eras, nearly no one uses it uniformly.

[–] Zeus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

yeah, i hated material ew as soon as it was announced. so much padding everywhere, and so little contrast - to paraphrase the incredibles: if everything's orange^[1]^, nothing is. your eyes will adjust to it. i want actionable items to stand out, not be a slightly lighter shade of the same colour. it also looks rather like a fischer-price my first phone interface

i must say, if an app (for example, jerboa) uses material 3, i usually try to look for an alternative

[1] other colours are available, i just like orange


edit: some examples:

with material design, it's clear what's a header, what's a footer,^[2]^ and what each button's state is.

with all the padding, there's also less space; leading to less functionality

with material ew, it's much harder to tell at a glance what each app is, one has to scrutinise the icon rather than just tell at a glance by colour

i also really dislike monet; the way it pulls this horrible washed out sickly pastel colour from a wallpaper and washes it over the entire app. if i just pulled one accent colour, and applied that to, say, the header and main action button, i'd like it a lot more

[2] look at the lack of contrast on that "new post" button

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] chadmichael@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I love it. Personal preference, of course. :)

The dynamic colors are a fucking nightmare. No, I don't want all my ui elements to be the same color as my girlfriend's skin tone. And the worst is even if I change it, it resets every update. I also don't like the new quick access controls in the pull down. This is really the first Android update that's felt like a flat downgrade for me.

[–] T156@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I'm personally not that fond of it, and kind of want it to blow over in favour of a new trend.

It lacks the charm, and neat little 3D effects that skeumorphism had, but that's also not helped by it being implemented poorly.

[–] EveningNewbs@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I still want Material back.

[–] iliketurtles@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I find it and other modern designs to be boring, but I don't hate it.

[–] tentphone@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I like it fine, I just wish Google (and Microsoft, Apple, etc) would decide on a consistent UI theme instead of completely changing it every few years. They don't even have time get all their first party apps up to date with the latest design trend before they move on to a new one, and third party apps are even worse. I have apps on my phone in like 4 different UI styles now.

[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm over pastel colors, honestly. I want bold, vibrant colors. At least the option. It feels like Google is stripping more and more customizability with every update.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] AnalogyAddict@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

As a professional UX designer, the padding is the least of the issues.

I'm hoping I get used to it, but I miss more skeuomorphic design. It's like a designer wanted to push it to be edgy and forgot about real people using it.... which describes the bulk of Apple design, too, for that matter. I think we overshot the balance point.

Edit: forgot my real point halfway through commenting: I will say even that isn't the worst of it, though. The dynamic theming is a bit of a branding nightmare.

[–] Skyraptor7@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I miss the UI from android 4.3.. it was so clean and minimal.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] chadmichael@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The dynamic theming is a bit of a branding nightmare.

Probably one of the reasons I like it. Big red company icon next to the big black company icon next to the big pink company icon. Nah, I'll take the uniform design, please.

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

It's alright, but I'm not obsessed with having everything conform to it like some people are

[–] s6original@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I love Material You. And thanks to Android if you can't stand it you don't have to use it. It's nice to have options.

[–] applejacks@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Barely any of my apps use it lol

[–] ar0177417@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Android 11 was the last best Android version in terms of UI. I went back from Android 12 to 11

[–] reversebananimals@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Came here to make this same comment. Android 11 was peak.

[–] AnonymousLlama@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I like the integration of adaptive icons for Android. I'm really keen on selecting a theme based on my current wallpaper and that color being used for all apps.

Not many apps are currently supporting it, even Facebook and other players you'd assume could do it in a seconds aren't.

Implementing it looks fairly straight forward, you provide a transparent image of your logo and it adaptive naturally to suit your theme. I assume apps are intentionally being difficult because that visually changes their logo / branding.

It's great when it works tho!

[–] faltuuser@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Big fan of material you.

[–] IronRain@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

It definitely grew on me over time, and as more apps began to embrace it. Really well-detailed apps, like Sync, showed the true potential of what Material You can be like. It's also a little easier to distinguish the pastel and tint in sunlight (at least with sunglasses on), so that's a major plus.

[–] FuriousFrodo@vlemmy.net 2 points 1 year ago
[–] Laice@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

i always disliked material and material you. They look too coperate.

[–] atake@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Absolutely like it. This design is very cool and has huge potential

[–] sure@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

My main complaint is the amount of padding everything has, it makes things feel so cramped, even on a big screen. Increasing the information density would really improve the design, imo. Making colors more saturated would be cool too.

But other than that, the design is growing on me.

[–] eighty@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Design preferences has a tendency to be "cyclical" appearing to be tiresome. That's fine and an encouraged strength of customisablility.

The issue is unified design language across android devices. Material You attempts to solve this to limited success. But it's better than the alternatives I've seen in the past.

The over-padding (especially default widgets) is something I take issue with but it's a preference and can easily be adjusted.

[–] Dick_Justice@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

No, I love it.

[–] isdfoa@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm a fan - also I think material you allows for good interpretation/flexibility in terms of branding so that not all apps look exactly the same cookie cutter style.

[–] lightrush@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I'm still liking it a lot.

Absolutely not.

I'm way more tired of the designs before it, or the apps halfway into the design language but not really. Especially if it is to the point where just using the material you colours you have seperates it, signal comes to mind there for example.

Some apps can keep their design layout but please let me use my material you colours anyways

[–] kadu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I love Material You when apps are designed to work with Monet color theming and use the default system navigation bar. Apps that deviate from that become an eye sore.

That being said, Material isn't my favorite design language for mobile OSes. I still prefer interfaces based on layers of gaussian blur, like iOS 7, Windows' Aero and similar.

[–] unfnknblvbl@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm just kind of sick of Android in general, tbh. Google has killed off almost everything that made it fun to play with new Android versions, and somehow made it less intuitive/easy to use for advanced/experienced users in the constant pursuit of - ironically - ease of use. For example: why is it now a swipe and three taps to disable wifi in the Quick Settings panel, when previously it was a swipe and one tap?

[–] soft_frog@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

It drives me nuts that I need to drag down twice to adjust screen brightness. It just feels icky to do that second drag, even hiding the brightness slider behind a button would be better.

I don’t like material or material you. They feel confused and they mix layers on top of your content which gets in the way to me. I don’t like the loud colour sections on headers against the stark white content backgrounds, it’s all too much.

Despite fear of sounding snooty, material is bauhaus design without the authentic materials, and the design elements are so focused on purism of being “material” that they forget they could be straightforward.

[–] merryflag0655@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Wasn't a fan at the beginning, now I think it's great.

[–] mremugles@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I like it. I'd like it even more if it one day accomplishes the goal of making every application on an Android phone look graphically consistent.

[–] quortez@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I like MY — I just wish I could design more of it on the user side.

Auto generated colorschemes are great and give Android a level of class it has been missing for a while. But I wish I didn't have to rely on a third party app like Repainter to finely choose my palette rather than hope the theme engine makes a good one. I also resent my icon shape, font, and icon options being ripped away from me.

There was a section on the original MY Google IO announcement that implies that the padding and roundness could be freely adjusted throughout the system. I wish that materialized (rimshot) into the final product.

The only objective regression I can think of with MY, rather than just an annoyance, is the Quick Settings. A merged internet toggle that no one asked for, a further reduction in a available toggles from Android 11, and not even bothering to make the Bluetooth toggle one of the fancy expanding ones instead of sending you to settings or surfacing the audio playback toggle (why can't I change the output before I play media, Google?). Ugh.

load more comments
view more: next ›