I don't think it's as much a design for designers but a design for users. It's a guideline that all apps can follow so that the user doesn't have to relearn every single app and is more likely to know where to find stuff. As far as aesthetics go it's not the greatest yes, but it doesn't have to be. Having a good looking foundation on which to base your app is great. If you really want it can always be innovated. There's plenty of nice changes you can find in different apps and it's always evolving.
As a user it's super un-intuitive, though. At least how gmail, calendar, maps and other google apps are on Android at the moment. I mostly click and pray.
It's interesting that lots of people on HN say the same thing: I don't know how to perform an action; there are no affordances in the UI.
But Google is a data driven company and they must, surely, have scads of data on this. They must know what their users are trying to do and how they're trying to do it, so why are Google interfaces so hard to use?
As a tech enthusiast, I occasionally get surveys to possibly sign up to try out a new version of a Google UI. I've never actually done it because the time windows don't usually work out, but signing up for these user studies is definitely something I ended up in by being in the tech crowd.
But I also have done a lot of tech support for senior citizens, who don't have the innate ability to stumble through bad UI like a lot of us millenial-types do. I feel like Google is talking to the wrong people.
I suspect that if Google UI designers spent some time in senior citizen communities watching people use their email, almost everything about how Google designs web pages would be thrown away.
I think you are exaggerating a bit but there is some truth in what you say but that's not Material design's fault. It's Google's that doesn't follow their own guidelines.
Do not confuse "Material" with "Anything made by Google".
I wonder if people say these same things when there's a bootstrap related post, or do people just get that it's a jumping off point? I get it if you just don't like it, but we shouldn't need to explain boilerplate.
I like to look at the apps google builds with their own frameworks as a guideline for good examples. Like https://material.angular.io/ using angular material 2. I like it simple, clean, and easy to read.
I think it's been a misfire precisely because it was bad for users.
They couldn't get buttons right! The one button to rule them all thing was a flop that even their own apps have ditched, the only place I still see it is in myfitnesspal (and it's super annoying). It's surprising you can launch what's supposed to be UI/UX guidelines and get buttons wrong.
It was obviously untested and had no basis in actual UX satisfaction. They had an unproven theory at what a good UX would be and presented it as fact. I think because of that, the Material guidelines should be regarded as irrelevant. They were at best a designer's bad guess at what a good UX is.
In my opinion, there's loads of other components in there that are bad, for example the side menu, the experience of all material apps on desktops, it's a bad UX.
> The one button to rule them all thing was a flop that even their own apps have ditched, the only place I still see it is in myfitnesspal (and it's super annoying)
I have just opened 4 random Google apps on Android (Search, Docs, Plus, Drive) and they all have the floating action button. Which Google apps have ditched it? The FAB makes a lot of sense on small screens like smartphones.
