Google’s New Material Design language: Enhanced Visual look to Android

July 15 2014

Google unveiled a new cross platform design language, labeled as material design, as part of the next version of Google’s Android mobile operating system, known as the Android L-release.

Features in Material design:

  • Improved visual look and feel
    The design is fabricated to enhance the visual features of the operating system. Not only this, the design will facilitate a consistent and uniform look and feel across multiple platforms including mobiles, tablets, desktop, android television and even smart watches.

    material-design

    Material Design is special in the way that it binds an element of depth to the operating system while keeping the entire things look smooth. Also, the new design comes with an updated version of the system font, Roboto. With the advanced features of this new design, the consumer will be able to enjoy super fast, colorful and highly finished animations.

    With built-in real time user interface shadows and highly advanced visual features, this design is about to bring a revolution.

  • Improved icons
    Google’s material Design is all about bold and flattened icons with an illusion of elevation and finished corners. The main aim of Google behind launching this material design is to make all apps look like they are operating in the same visual environment.

    Improved-icons

  • Element of Motion
    Apart from the visual effects, it also adds an element of appropriate and united field of motion with advanced effects of light and movement.

Matias Durate – “We imagined… what if pixels didn’t just have color, but also depth? What if there was a material that could change its texture? This lead us to something we call ‘material design’.”

Will the design make any changes to the already running applications?

Yes!! Google even showed some apps during its I/O press conference to give an idea of the look and feel of the same and get an insight about the upcoming changes. For instance, the phone dialer will now have an entirely new look with appealing animation effects. Not only this, Multitasking and Notifications have also been updated. Even, the company would be launching the updated versions of Google’s flagship apps like Gmail and Calendar, for both Android and web. So, if you get a much cleaner and simpler interface in Gmail, it’s no surprise.

Does the design parallelize any features from existing operating systems?

The design, as showcased in the conference, looks quite similar to Microsoft’s Win 8 and Windows Phone 8 design as it includes large squares and rectangles with colorful images. Instead of incorporating any icons or windows, all you can see is big and bold squares.

While, on one hand, the color scheme seems copied from Apple’s iOS 8; on the other hand, the feature of material wherein it provides live info from the apps, seems analogous to Microsoft.

According to Sundar Pichai who is the head of Android at Google, the introduction of material design is aimed to achieve a fresh, bold and new look for Android.

Other fascinating features in the Android L version

One of the most fascinating features in the new Android L-release is the security measure called as Personal Unlocking. This feature enables the device to detect personal environment. For example, if you are wearing your smart watch, it can detect that and will get to know automatically that it’s you using the smart phone and thus, it won’t request any PIN. A similar feature is soon expected to be seen in Chrome OS, wherein the device is set to automatically unlock when it detects a users’ smart phone in the vicinity.

The Android L version will also allow users to separate their personal and business apps on the same device which is a big plus.

android-L

Google all set to compete with Apple

Google’s initiative to improved design through the launch of this new design language is not all about giving consumers an enhanced end user interface, but to give a tough competition to Apple; may be not just Apple, but Microsoft too.

So, we can say that Google is all set to lay down the guidelines so that all the apps have a consistent look much similar to Apple that has its own specific designing guidelines for Mac and iOS developers.

Although the new material design showcase many promising features like improved visual effects, icons and motion effect, there is still a lot to come forth and it will only be proved in the coming months how much beneficial it actually turn out to be for the end users.