[coolyd]

Don't forget, the material design specifications and frameworks are being made freely available. When you compare interfaces designed by that vast majority of developers, using MD is an enormous step up in usability and functionality. It also incorporates concepts that, while not being the most "accessible", are patterns the vast majority of users have become familiar with and can navigate without explanation. For example, interactions like gestures are not accessible or obvious but are commonplace and understood.

Constructive criticism of design is important and with these frameworks being open source, we can modify and "improve" as we see as appropriate. Google has invested enormous amounts of money, energy, and time into making this available for free. They are not enforcing these concepts, even on their own platforms so we should appreciate that they make these systems available if you choose to use them.

[cosmotic]

Material design is among the worst design languages I've ever seen. Developers without an eye for design typically use native widget toolkits which are superior to material design.

Gestures may be commonplace but are not understood. They are inconsistently implemented and you can tell the general populous doesn't understand them if you watch folks use them (or mistakenly trigger them) 'in the wild'.

Material design documentation is internally inconsistent. The numerous re-implementations are inconsistent. Usage of the libraries are inconsistent. The first-party usage is inconsistent. The documentation leaves holes in common use cases and steers toward uncommon cases (FAB for example). Consistency is a requisite feature of a good UI design.

Material design completely fails an accessibility review. From the labels referenced in the article to the terrible contrast and lack of meaningful dimension and dividing elements.

No amount of money invested in documentation is going to make material design any better.

Material design should be scrapped. There are no redeeming qualities.

[otterley]

I’m not sure why the effort alone makes it worthy of use. The product needs to be judged on its functional merits, not based solely on what it costs and how much work was put into it.

I also disagree that it was a step up for spec made available by other vendors before. Apple’s original Human Interface Guidelines for the Macintosh (http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf ) was a paragon of usability. AFAICT nearly everything we’ve invented since has been a step back.

If anything, Material Design is a textbook example of “you get what you pay for.”

[coolyd]

I'm not saying because of effort it's worthy of use. Just that it's not required and is a free resource. I also didn't compare to other specs, just common developer interfaces: https://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-what-happens-when-you-...

Outside github and dribbble there is a large population of developers creating internal tools that abide by no UI/UX standards or even common sense.

There are many frameworks available. Which ones might be a better choice?

[JohnFen]

> When you compare interfaces designed by that vast majority of developers, using MD is an enormous step up in usability and functionality.

I disagree. MD is terrible, and is a a couple of steps backwards in terms of usability and discoverability. Its use and influence has been pretty harmful, in my opinion, and is one of the reasons why UI design has been growing increasingly worse overall.

[mitchty]

> It also incorporates concepts that, while not being the most "accessible", are patterns the vast majority of users have become familiar with and can navigate without explanation.

Does that include ios/macos/windows users?

[bagacrap]

Are you kidding? This is hacker news and the topic is Google. I'd say the pitchforks are out, but these days I don't think they ever make it back to the shed.