[nobleach]

Were there studies done to show that material design was "the way"? Or for that matter, was there any research done proving that it would be more useful at all? The designers at my company tout it as "the right way". I'm trying to be accommodating, but I'm starting to suspect that this is just one company's word over another's.

[uzero]

Oh I'm sure there's plenty of studies that were used to design Material and that's probably exactly why it feels like it was designed by an algorithm. Like the article says that it's very comprehensive guide/framework to get a cohesive result but that doesn't mean it has the magical "it" what makes design truly remarkable. One reason I think that might be factor is that Google has never been innovator when it comes to user experience. They're more about iteration and testing. The problem is that it leads to local maxima and rarely something unique and something that takes the whole industry forward.

But also keep in mind that designing a framework that works for small screens and big screens is truly a hard task. Microsoft tried and failed with "Metro" and now Google is trying to pull it off. In my opinion Apple has been a bit smarter about this and kept iOS and OSX mainly separate while integrating some elements here and there.