Hey Matias,

Google seems to be taking prototyping seriously with their investment in RelativeWave Form. There have also been a lot of discussions here recently about Facebook's Origami, FramerJS, Pixate, AE, etc.

How do you feel about the current state of prototyping in terms of software, workflow, and usability for designers? Did you use any of these when concepting Material Design animations and interactions?

Hey Matias,

Thanks a lot for doing this. Super pumped to get to ask you a few questions, so I'll jump right in.

• A couple years ago, you said that Android was about a third of the way to where you wanted it to be. With the release of Material Design, how close are you now? Edit: Already answered.

• Thanks in part to Android's new direction, motion design is playing a bigger part in apps than ever. As developers and designers get more comfortable with animations, what do you see as the next frontier of app design?

• As head of design at Google, you obviously aren't pushing pixels around, but you're often credited with the look and feel of the platform. What role do you play in defining Android's direction?

Bonus: Are you sick of the whole Lord Duarte / #Holoyolo thing? Be honest with me.

Thanks again for the AMA. Looking forward to your answers.

Hi Matias,

How did you go about creating a design culture at Google – a company that was formerly primarily engineering-driven?

I can't believe Matias Duarte did it.

In the future, I'll tell my grandchildren that I requested this AMA: https://news.layervault.com/stories/41377-request-for-amas

The webOS phones had a striking unity between the software and hardware design, with the playful icons and colors and the pebble-inspired design. Some other amazing phones like the Nokia N9 had married the software and hardware and felt great to use.

Now that you are working on Android and have less control of hardware design for non-Nexus devices, do you still see this issue as a problem? If so, how do you think this can be addressed while still giving manufacturers the ability to express their brand?

What advice do you have for students looking to get into the field? You mention motion design a lot in your talk, is that valued over HCI and more static visual and interaction design?

Old-school designers seem to be very authoritarian but it seems that newer, tech-focused designers have to take a softer approach. You have successfully led teams at many different tech companies and pioneered many new interfaces and design languages. What do you think made you so successful at this, do you see your ability to code as a factor?

Thank you, you are my greatest source of inspiration!

Hi Matias.

Do you feel Material works (or can work) as successfully on desktop as it does on mobile and touch devices?

And how important was that distinction when developing the language?

Hi Matias,

The hamburger menu has gotten a bad UX rap of late - did Google Design have any concerns with it as a prominent MD pattern? (also just realized that you share initials with Material Design - coincidence?)

Hi Matias,

Thanks for being here today on Designer News. We’re happy to host you.

One question, multiple parts:

• When operating at the scale of the Android user base, how does that affect your design decsisions? How do you effectively delegate design decisions? How do you remain empathetic with your end users at that scale? How has Material helped that?

Hey Matias - no questions, just wanted to say I'm a shameless fanboy of Google's design work, especially now that the identity is tightening up across products. I once had a really awkward interview where I mentioned loving the look of Google+ (with a side note that I don't believe its failures are UX or UI design related) and the dude told me it was shit and designed for babies. I stuck to my guns and blew the interview. Thanks for all your work.

Hey Matias,

Thanks so much for doing this! I'm a Google Expert for Design/UX, and had a question on a topic I'm researching currently:

Material Design is probably the largest design project you've taken on in your professional career based on the sheer volume of users it is intended for (which is in billions). And it gets even more complicated considering it's a design language that other services would need to adopt, and its cross platform.

What kind of user studies did you do? How widescale was it, and how diverse were your focus groups? I'm particularly interested in how much your focus was on users from developing countries, where the Android user base in a pure numbers form is insane and only going to get bigger.

Hey Matias!

I've got an easy one - what's your favorite design detail in L (and/or across all Google products)?

Mine is how the settings gear rotates in along with opacity as you pull down on the notifications panel.. as if it's really traveling on its own.

Hi Matias,

What are your favorite things to snack on and what kind of music do you listen to while working?

Is it mind-blowing to believe that there will be a whole new platform to design for when Android Auto becomes mainstream? Is Material Design ready to address that?

Hi Matias,

First of all, I wanted to say thank you. Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich were some of the most compelling UI/UX designs I had ever come across, and they taught me a lot about how I thought about function and form.

My question is: what sources of inspiration do you draw from when you are thinking of design. What made you want to design in the first place? Do you typically have a design routine or method that you practice every time start a new project?

Hi Matias! Google Design Guidelines (and common sense) tells you to respect platform you are designing an application for. It makes total sense. Android community hates when iOS design is getting ported as-is to Android platform. It breaks well-known experience to Android users and makes life harder. At the same time there is a number of Google apps on iOS which are heavily using Material design (and other Android UX principles) in their implementation. Just a few most noticeable examples - is Android share button, drawer icon, overflow appbar menu, FABs in such apps like Google Chrome, Google Maps, Youtube. Was it done intentionally? Or there is a technical constrain behind that like code sharing or something?

Hi Matias,

Great to see you here and thank you for joining us!

• What is your advice for design beginners/those just starting out?
• Any personal projects you are working on?

Hi Matias,

I appreciate that you take the time to do this AMA.

Here is my question: Working in a very tech/developer driven company like google, what kind of efforts do you think are necessary/important to keep designers happy?

Hi Matias,

I remember someday you said that you see android design finished for thirty percent. AFAIK it was in the times of honeycomb. What stage is this design currently?

Hello Matias,

Thank you very much for reaching out to everyone who wants to know more about your creations. I personally love your work and I believe you brought Android up to speed with the competition, and now it has surpassed the rest in many aspects thanks to the latest design implementations. These are my questions for you:

• What do you think was the hardest part about working around the graphical limitations of low-end specifications when designing the highly-animated Material Design?

• What originally made you pursue the idea of Material Design further, and how different was the original design language from what we see on our phones now?

• Do you see yourself revamping or scratching Material Design any time soon, or do you think this one will stick for a while?

• Will we ever see darker themes adopted in Google's vision of Material Design? Given the popularity of dark or black themes for night time or AMOLED efficiency, how do you think the lack of these options affected Material Design and how can Google address this?

-Do you have any advice for making Material Design fit within the brand of a cross-platform service?

Thanks again for answering our questions and providing us with amazing eye-candy!

Hey Matias!

Thank you so much for doing this! Super excited about it. My questions

• At one of your interviews, you mentioned that design without constraints is just art. Can you talk a bit on this, regarding the lack of constraints in web design and the resultant inconsistencies produced.
• With sites like Dribbble and Behance showcasing popular designs, a large number of designers often draw more than just inspiration from them rather than take risks, resulting in a lot of designs getting stuck in a rut. What are your thoughts on this?
• With your prominence in the design field, a significantly large number of designers look up to you. My question is, whom do you look up to in the design field?

Thank you once again!

Hi Matias,

Thanks for doing this AMA. I love what you guys have done with Material Design, and I feel that the design evolution of Android has increased by leaps and bounds since you took the reins.

I'd much prefer to keep my phone as close to stock Android as possible, and the best way to do that is to download the Google apps (Calendar, Messenger/Hangouts, etc) however there are notable ones that are absent - such as the dialer, Contacts, etc. Are there plans for Google to continue the trend of pulling out apps and putting them in the Play Store so we can totally enjoy Material Design as Google intended no matter what phone we use?

Also, are there plans to implement a change to Android so the notification shade can be a download-able app, instead of baked into the system? This also goes further to letting users customize their phones and perhaps download the "stock" Shade from the Play Store, should Google decide to put it up there.

Thanks again for your hard work - not just to you, but to the entire Android team!

Best Regards,

Darren

Hey Matias,

Fellow artist here. I saw that you wrote how you spent most of your time in painting class. I was wondering if you had an online portfolio of your older, physical work (paintings, drawings, sculptures?, etc). Would be interesting to see.

Also, which fine artists and/or art movements inspired you?

I've been splitting my time studying design & creating fine art. Thanks, Big fan of what you and the team have been doing!

Hi Matias,

How was a data driven company like Google able to overcome years of legacy design to implement a completely new design language like Material Design?

Was it a complete revamp and now you will begin the testing and iteration? Or was there quantitative testing before launching 100%?

Really impressed with how seamless and efficient Material Design has been rolled out in such a large organization.

Thanks!

Hi Matias,

Thanks for doing this!

1. One of my favorite things about Material Design is the animations. Can you elaborate on what your team's process was for working on them?

2. How long (in terms of time and Android releases) did it take to bring them from concept to implementation?

3. Off topic but very curious: Does anybody ever assume you're Dominican? Your name and last name are also the names of two of our founding fathers :)

Hi Matias - I'm a fan of your work and your philosophies.

Is there anything in the world of design that's a pet peeve of yours? Anything that gets under your skin, time after time?

Do you ever get frustrated by OEM skins? I work with electronics on a daily basis, specifically mobile devices. Most customers I talk to have a bad taste in their mouth for Android, and it typically stems from issues caused by customizations made by manufacturers, such as: lack of software updates, glitchiness, lag, unessecary applications, and highly unintuitive UX modifications. Are there any plans to reign these detracting modifications in, or is that at least something you'd like to see?

Thanks for doing this!

How big is your design group? How is it roughly structured and what is the most challenging thing about that scale?

OK,another guy that have lost your ama. If you are curios and tomorrow you'll watch this page again,I want to ask you one things. It seems that design isn't the first priority of google/android,indeed in every android app I have found so many inconsistencies,like the famous navigation drawer (different in every app) ,going to the copy/paste dialog,or apps that are forced in new forms,like play music(that need to be rewrited from zero).So the question is:you'll ever make android apps alla the same? Thanks,also if you only see this.

Ohhsnap, if you ever come to revisit the thread i got a handful of question for you.

I'm currently writing a paper about color theory and how color is used in marketing. With a background in painting and VP of design at google i suppose you know some about the subjects.

Q1: What elements of color theory do you apply in your work at google? (Q:1.5, Are there any special resources you recommend reading about the topic? Thinking along the lines of James Gurney).

Q2: What is googles approach to color between different rural areas? (While blue in the western world means one thing, it communicates something completely different in other parts of the world).

Q3: Is there anything else in regard to color in marketing, theory, etc, that has especially helped you during your design career?

If you ever see this, Cheers!

WHAT are the things or person or rivals which gives you idea of material design ? and why is your future plan about material design in android 5.2,6.0 ect?

Hi Matias,

I am kinda curious about the things coming actually. So with material design Google has a unified look and feel. The goal you guys were trying to achieve is almost fulfilled now !? What next? What should we expect?

Matias:

I'm sure building the Material language we see today meant spending countless hours of user testing. Of course, building a visual platform used around the world meant exploring outside our own hemisphere. This is especially important now that developing markets have become the center of attention for the mobile industry.

How did cultural norms and preferences from outside the west (and, in some cases, inside) impact the decisions your team made? Any particularly interesting stories worth telling?

PS - You should recreate one of your shirts as your icon here.

Hi Matias! Thanks for doing this AMA. You've been at the forefront of a lot of exciting change at Google, and I was curious about your experience from the management/bureaucracy perspective.

Context: Up until around the time you were hired, Google was famously design-illiterate and rather dismissive of the discipline. Marissa Mayer famously tested 41 shades of blue and made the decision using data, rather than tapping into design knowledge. Now Google is often seen as being at the forefront of design, MD in particular being hailed as a visionary achievement.

Question: In a company that's famously data-driven and (at times) somewhat oblivious to what might generally be called "matters of the heart," how do you and Google's designers get approval for your decisions around Google's UI/UX? Do you need to present an empirical, data-driven component to justify your decisions? What, if anything, do you do to convince your bosses that something like MD is going to have a positive return on investment? How do you translate the value of design into something an engineer or bean-counter can understand?

Thanks again for your time and your work!

Hi Matias,

How much of Material Design was done at Google vs. how much work Manual Creative? Do you feel comfortable going to an outside agency to define what you're going all in with?

Thanks

Hi Matias! I have one small question. Cats or dogs? And do you have any?

Hi Matias,

As the mainstream phone size starts to grow, do you think current design guidelines (including Material) will have to adopt in order to provide a more ergonomic and thumb-friendly experience?

On top of that do you think Material, a design language made with a 2 dimensional plane in mind is applicable for augmented or virtual reality devices?

Matias,

When creating design systems like Material - how much does the economy of development, iteration, testing and evolution effect your decisions for the platform? Essentially do you deliver an ideal state of Design and Ease of use or do you temper that with components that reduce development cost? As Material evolves will it be affordable for those that adopted it to change along with it?

Hello Mathias,

A pretty significant change to Android in Lollipop was the switch to document-centric applications, and Chrome was first out with applying it with tabs.

The response has been quite unanimous that this has been a rather awful implementation, as one app alone potentially clutters the task switcher to the point of being unusable and hides old content in that app behind a myriad of apps and "docs" alike. Obviously it was an interesting idea, but now that it's been field-tested and found lacking, does the design team have any special plans for improving upon it?

What's up Matias!

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of Material Design?

Is this weakness something that can/will be overcome?

Thanks for your time, high five

Hi Matías. Short question: What are Google plans or your opinion about the lifespan for a design language as MD?

Thanks, Greetings from Argentina.

Hi Matias,

I am currently studying mediadesign. in addition to my studies, I am always eager to learn more about design. I always try to approach design in a broad way. So, I am learning about animation, type design, a bit of programming and I just keep up to date with the latest design techniques. I have also been focussing on learning about the principle’s of design. Which gives me a deeper understanding on how design affects our surroundings.

Do you have any advice for me, and other students that are starting out in this industry?

Hi Matias!

We are about to design an Android app and our app requirements and google guide lines are not matching. So we would like to break those guide lines and make our app.

Our app is about finding stays in different locations. People can search for stays, chat with stay owners and book, can explore etc Google suggests that we have to place all of them in a left side drawer but we want people to easily switch between search listings and chats. So we adapted a tab method.

Problem here is when a user switches tabs (say search tab to chat tab) the context in nav bar changes (say New York, USA in search tab to, Agent Name in chats) which doesn't fit with guidelines. Any solutions for this?

And again we thought the tabs are of a higher family than the nav bar. So can tabs be placed above the app bar? We are breaking the guidelines but isn't it logical? Please let me know your thoughts. It will help us a lot :)

Thanks!

Hey Matias Whats on your homescreen and are you happy with the nexus 6

Hey Matias, thanks for your time.

I'll be direct—what methods of testing design in terms of both usability and business feasibility do you use before spending the cost of development? Do you use any data driven metric-based methods?

(Also—awesome work on the Material system, apart from being really great looking, I think we should be thinking conceptually about usability in the way the Material spec recommends. Thanks!)

Do you have any pointers for designing for "context" aka Android Wear? The Wear design guidelines are helpful, but its still tricky due to the newness of the category.

Hi Marias. I'm a designer and blogger in Turkey. Can we see Google Design site in Turkish?

Hello Matias ... Thank you for being here.

I wonder what is the main characteristic that a designer must have to work at Google ?

Thank U

Hi Matias,

Thanks for this AMA initiative. We should actualy have this often so that UI /UX members can interact.

With Material design, Google, instead of trying to impose a strict visual aesthetic, defined a set of principles that leave more freedom to individual designers.

I speak to several developers who are yet to be have their apps migrated to material design. I have seen you too sharing some of the apps on your G+. My question to you is, what has been the adoption rate ot MD so far OR statistically, how many apps have got the MD makeover. May be you can share stats regarding anyone of the app categories.

Hi Matias, You're my HERO since the launch of webOS! I'm a graduate student pretty new to this filed and here are my two questions:

What's your take on the first job of making video games and what's your mindset as you developing your career up till now?

Is there any practices you did everyday that's benefiting your skills in an incremental manner?

Thanks!

Hey Matias,

Is MD team completely in-house or remote? I mean it's hard to imagine designers working remotely while still staying in sync over the work.

Hi Matias,

I'm really wondering what your office/workspace looks like. I'm sure it's as interesting as the shirts you wear!

Hi Matias! Thanks for the AMA initiative. Just wanted to ask you that are you aware of reddit.com/r/androidcirclejerk and the massive fan-following you have got there? Thanks!

Bonus hardball question: Don't know if you've noticed but some people on the internet are mad about Lollipop's new interruption system/the removal of silent from the rocker. Could you break down some of the reasoning behind the changes?

Hi Matias I'm 17 and I'm starting in this beatiful world of design. In your opinion which would be the most important steps to become a "successful" designer? Could you recomend a good book about design to read? That'd be nice too ;) Thank you!

There are tons of Windows enthusiasts that claim that you copied Material Design from Metro, me along with a ton of other people know that this is untrue. Does Google ever intend to advertise or showcase how Material is truly different, unique and better than competing design languages?

Also what steps(if any) are you guys taking to ensure that as many app developers as possible take advantage of material design alongside all the other improvements in 5.0?

Thanks for your time!

Matias, thank you for taking the time to do an AMA.

I work in an enterprise environment for app development and it's a long road to try and push for new UI enhancements for most of the applications we deliver. I was wondering if there are some good spins that I could make on Material Design that would be key points a business would listen to in order to update their applications.

Thanks for taking the time to give us insight into your process, Matias.

As someone who found formal training via post-secondary education inefficient and wrong for my learning style, what are your suggestions for moving forward in the field of UI/UX design? I've discovered that working directly with my team and learning on the job are providing me with more information and experience than school ever offered. Would you recommend returning simply for a degree if I intend to move forward in my career?

Just thought of another one;

For platforms (apps, websites, etc) that have implemented Material thus far, what are ones you think have hit the nail?

Hey Matias,

1. Who are your design heroes?

2. Could you describe your personal philosophy when it comes to design/making tradeoffs?

3. Does having a Comp Sci degree change your approach compared to designers with a more traditional design education?

how much actual coding do you do while designing things?

Hi Matias,

Thanks for doing this AMA!

My questions are:

+What advice do you have for an up-and-coming designer?

+How do you recommend they improve as designers?

+What is your vision of design (mobile, web, anything + everything) for the next 10 years?

Thanks again and looking forward to your response.

Hi, Matias.

You all have done a great job making Material design simple and easy to understand but with a lot of depth for different content and platforms.

My question is, why is Google having so much trouble applying it to the apps? If I'm correct, one of the main ideas was creating a seamless environment for the user, but I really can't think of 2 Google apps that follow the guidelines as they should.

Just to be clear, I don't have a problem with not following the guidelines, but with having a differently applied design for different apps.

I just can't understand what's the big deal with creating the unified environment Material design promises.

Hi Matias,

In terms of Card components, I know that before Material Design was established, designers had been using them to style both static list items and actionable unique items.

But even now with their use clearly defined, I've still seen some apps updated to the new aesthetic still use them for homogenous, not actionable/dismissible items.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Hi Matias!

Big thanks for doing this AMA! It really gives us some more insight as to who you are as both a designer and person.

I have only one question: What advice or tips would you give to all of the freelance graphic and motion graphic designers out there in regards to getting recognized?

Thanks for being my biggest inspiration!

Hi Matias,

I appreciate that you take the time to do this AMA and I also wanted to say that I am a huge fan of your work and have been using it since the days of WebOS on the Palm Pre.

As you know, Material Design has a way of always presenting itself well on devices based on screen size and relevant content. I am personally a huge fan of the look of Lollipop. What is one piece of advice you can give to device manufacturers who choose to use their own skins such as TouchWiz or Sense?

Hi Matias,

You mentioned that your first job was making video games and I was just reflecting on the fact that I haven't noticed a whole lot of cross-pollination of talent between the game industry and the web/mobile product design field. What do you think tech companies can learn from the design trends happening in gaming right now and vice-versa?

Hi Matias!

It's awesome that you're doing this! Did you have mentors growing up or when you were entering the design world? How do you feel about mentorship for young designers?

Hi Matias,

I'm a big fan of how Android has evolved over the years, and I've noticed that the latest iteration of the design language (Material Design) has a striking resemblance to the tactile card-based UI from the unfortunately defunct Eel project back from the Palm days (http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/2/5264580/the-lost-secrets-of-webos). Do you see Android as a sort of spiritual successor to webOS, and what do you miss about webOS?

Hi Matias, How much of UI is affected by UX? Thanks in advance.

Hi Matias, thanks for doing this. Can you tell us anything about the next Android version's design?

Hi Matias! First I want to say I'm a huge fan of everything you do, and you're the reason I started designing for Android and why I want to work at Google someday.

I want to ask a few questions. First, I think everyone here is wondering where you get your awesome shirts.

Second, more relating to design. The material Guidelines are absolutely incredible. They are so comprehensive and include so much, but not everything. When we run into something that isn't included in the guidelines, what would you say the best course of action is? And what is the best way to share what we came up with, with others?

Thanks so much for the AMA!!

Mr Duarte,

Philosophically speaking, do you consider Material Design to be the future of interface design? I know that you've already started adding it to mobile, computer, and web apps, but do you think it's future-proof? When Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was released, I thought it's the best-looking interface around. Now it feel dated, because it's not colourful. Aren't you afraid that users (and designers alike) will eventually become tired of bold colours and smooth animations? Then your idea of making digital interface more meaningful than they were before may become obsolete.

Thank you for your work. I personally think that Material Design is the best thing that happened to interface in recent years.

Hi Matias, thanks for coming here :)

While I was reading about Material design I came across some contradictory statements. I got a reply from Google Design, not sure, maybe it was even you who replied but I'm somehow not !00% on this answer yet. I don't understand why material never bends or folds? Am I missing something?

There are several explanations of the metaphor:

"the flexibility of the material " " the rules of physics"

and so on...

http://markoprljic.tumblr.com/post/112305446667

Thanks! Marko.

Hello! I recently graduated with a degree in comp-sci. Only after I graduated did I realize that I want to pursue a career in design.

What advice can you provide to people like me who don't have a formal design education background to break into the field?

One more...

How late did the name change come in the process, and what led to it (if you are at liberty to discuss)?

Thanks for this AMA Matias. When it comes to design leadership what is your take with regards to both leading a design team and filling the design seat at the 'table'? What are the different needs and issues at a small company where there is one or a few designers and how does that scale when a company grows to say Dropbox size (say 5-20 designers) and then again to say Google size?