The perfect imperfection of Google's Material You.

Google's new Material You UI is wonky, and wacky, and imperfect. It is bold, and brash, and individual. And that might be the best thing it can do for its brand identity.

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This is Matias Duarte, the VP of Material Design at Google. He’s been at the company a long time, first leading design for Android back in 2010, and continuing to direct interface design for the company today.

In 2014, Mattias helped Google create Material Design, a new set of guidelines to help developers create intuitive and consistent interfaces for apps and the web. It was a reaction to skeuomorphism, the idea that digital interfaces should look just like the objects you use in real life. You probably remember this. Apple’s notepad app that looked like a real notepad. A camera icon that looked like a real camera.

Skeuomorphism vs Material Design

This definitely made digital interfaces more intuitive, but it also just looked ugly. Cluttered. So Material Design set out to clean that up. To merge the simplicity of the flat design that was bubbling through Silicon Valley with some elements of real life. Layered paper. Drop shadows and texture. It felt intuitive, but wasn’t so gaudy you didn’t want to look at it. It was quantum paper.

Elements of Material Design have been populating our digital world since its inception. Almost every website or app you use today uses design practices from Material, even if you don’t notice it. It’s become a standard for digital interface design in the 21st century.

But on May 18th at Google’s annual I/O developer conference, Matias got back on stage to introduce something new. He called it Material You - Google’s new philosophy for interface design going forward. A new interface that would adapt around the user, and push the boundaries of traditional design to try and make our devices feel more alive. And more personal.

Specifically though, there was one key phrase that Duarte kept repeating. It’s something that later appeared on Google’s website for Material You. It pops up in interviews and podcasts when you bring up the subject.

What if form not only followed function, but also followed feeling?

Ok lemme stop you right there. If you heard that statement and you’re thinking “David, that’s total bullshit. How do you not see through that?” Let me just say I don’t blame you. When I watched this keynote happening live, I literally burst out laughing. This feels like the sort of out of touch fluffer statement that has no practical meaning. Something that was written into the script purely as a marketing device. To make it seem like there was so much thought put into Material You that you just don’t understand it yet. And that was my first reaction too.

See, I’ve become very jaded. I am tired of companies trying to manipulate us with this style of phrasing. They use big words and vague statements to make you believe that this company truly understands you. It sees you. It knows how you work. How you live. How you feel. And frankly, when you sit through enough corporate presentations and product demos, it is very easy to get just a little bit cynical about what a company has ACTUALLY done to make its product better than the thousands of other products just like it. How it will REALLY change your life.

But then I saw the demos of Material You. I played with it in the Android 12 Beta. And over time, there was something in the UI that forced that phrase to creep back into my brain. Over and over. What if form not only followed function, but also followed feeling. I have been ruminating and hyper focusing on that phrase for months. I have re-watched that keynote probably 50 times at this point. And you know what. I think that maybe Mattias wasn’t actually spewing bullshit. That maybe he was onto something. Because if you really crack that open, that philosophy arches over everything. From the relationship that we have with our technology, to a design language that can finally make Google stand out as its own, cohesive ecosystem.

This article is about Material You. But it is also about us. It’s about interface design and psychology. And fundamentally, it’s about why I think Material You might be one of the best things Google has ever done for its brand identity.

So. Let’s start with a question. What is a smartphone?

Fundamentally, it’s a phone that can do.. other things. It’s a merger between a traditional dumb phone and a PDA. A handheld device that can help you get things done. From communication to navigation to booking appointments. But as the years have gone by, the smartphone has gotten smart in ways we never really imagined. Every year it has gobbled up other devices and tools and added those tools to its list of functionalities. The flashlight. The GPS. The personal computer. Of course there are still use cases for these individual tools living as dedicated devices, but they are now fundamentally redundant. So many of the tools and gadgets we used to carry with us have now become gobbled up by the smartphone. We’re getting to the point where we only need to carry one single thing with us at any given time. No wallet. No keys. Just a smartphone.

But as our phones have become multitools, they’ve become just that. Tools. The word gadget is now a phrase lost in time, a piece of technology that did one thing. Smartphones can replace almost everything. But for that to work, every tool the smartphone has sucked up has had to take on the same general interface. To be universally understandable. It has to be uniform.

Credit: Android Authority

As this uniformity spread across our smartphones, they began to feel… cold. We were stripped of the choices that allowed our devices - our every day carry to reflect us. Over time, form factor has largely stabilized into a rectangle with a screen. Interfaces have taken on the best features of one another and formed experiences that are largely the same. And the most popular phone in the United States, the iPhone, has traditionally locked down customization past your wallpaper and the placement of the icons on your screen. With some exception, our devices have largely ceased to represent us as individuals. Even custom ROM-ing, the process of replacing a manufacture’s interface with something that we prefer, something that gives us more choice, has faded out of style. We’re left with mostly what the manufacturer offers us. And more and more, that’s starting to look like the same thing.

Which brings us to Material You. What if form not only followed function, but also followed feeling? What if our experience was not only dictated by raw tool-like functionality, but also by things that brought warmth back into our technology. Customization. Uniqueness. A reflection of who we are.

Material You is built around the idea of your device reflecting who you are as an individual. Take a look at Google’s marketing for the Pixel 6. ‘What if your phone adapted to you. Represented you. Reflected you.’ This rhetoric is built on the foundation of trying to appeal to one key phrase that has been repeated in marketing material for years. ‘Be you. Stand out. Be yourself.’. We want to feel unique. And marketing has adapted to that concept. Look around you and you’ll see what I mean. Companies want you to feel special. They want their products to feel like they were meant for you. Physically. Emotionally. Materially. You.

The idea of uniqueness is something that is built into the heart and soul of Android. Be together, not the same. This was the campaign that led Android for years. It represented the idea that we are all humans, and we all use technology. But we have choice in how we want our technology to look and feel. As an open-source platform, Android was built on the idea of the market allowing for a huge variety of options. But the consolidation of software features and styles has left left that phrase feeling more like “Be the same. Be the same.”

Material You attempts to adapt to you in the best way it can. All the way down to the system theme. In their current state, the most unique thing you can possibly do to your phone is change your wallpaper. Unless you’re using a wallpaper pack, it’s likely that you may be the only one on the planet using that image. It’s truly unique.

Material You uses an AI theming engine to build off of that idea. It takes your wallpaper and creates a unique color palette using luminosity and a couple complimentary tones, which populate through the entire system. If you’re using a unique wallpaper, there’s a good chance your system theme is the only one on the planet that is using that particular color palette.

And while there is technically a limit to how many color combinations there are, it is so vast that your phone is bound to feel unique, all from one simple change that represents the most unique change you can possibly make to a phone.

But color is only one piece of this. There are other elements introduced in Material You that are meant to help your phone feel like it represents you. And a big one is widgets.

Material You takes widgets, something that has been in Android almost since the beginning, and it adds a sense of individualism to them by leaning on this idea of imperfection. Instead of relying purely on sharp, boxed grids, your widgets are shaped like ovals. Stars. Wonky, wacky shapes that we wouldn’t normally associate with a perfect, tool-based system.

The shapes aren’t purely made to be functional anymore. Now they can also be fun. The widgets fit outside boundaries, sometimes taking up one and a half, two and a half times the size they would if they were gridded. They have unique optional elements, like the date acting as the second hand, rotating around your sun-shaped clock. They feel almost random. But they feel uniquely random. Unique to you. How you want them to be displayed. And they feel alive.

So many elements of Material You try to add this feeling of life. The display washes after you press the power button. Sparkles flood through your device when you plug it in or place it on a wireless charger. Text and lines grow and shrink from thin to thick and back again depending on the state of your device. Google is trying to add this sense of motion to your phone. It’s not just a binary toggle of on or off. It’s the motion in between that adds feeling into the form.

And this feeling of living choice is even expressed in the hardware of the Pixel 6. You can buy the phone in six different shades of duo-tone pastels. The salmon Pixel 6 has an orange forehead up top. Black is mixed with a lighter gray. A primary and a secondary. It’s not just your wallpaper that evokes these different shades through the system. You’re choosing a color palette for the phone’s hardware itself.

While the Pixel always represented some of the best of Android, it never felt cohesive. The software and hardware felt like strictly separate entities. One didn’t represent the experience of the other. But with Pixel 6, it would appear that Google has finally taken ownership of their brand identity. It’s not just the new Tensor chip helping bind the software and hardware experiences together, it’s the hardware taking direct notes from the software. This phone directly reflects Google’s brand identity.

For the first time, it feels like Google has found something to grab onto, which can really define the Google brand, and probably more directly, the Pixel. It’s a representation of something that Android has always benefited, but has lost over the years as the industry converged. Choice. Individualism. An imperfect, emotionally unique experience.

And I know what you might be thinking. The colors and designs might seem brash. They’re polarizing. They stand out. Most people either love this design or absolutely hate it. But that’s just it. It stands out. That’s exactly what Google is trying to do. It hasn’t gained much market share just by making the Android iPhone, so the best possible thing it can do is lean into what it’s always done best. Customization. Individualism. An experience that is tailored uniquely to you. Sure, it’s finally vertically integrated like the iPhone. But it’s also doing the exact opposite of what iOS offers you. It is staking its entire brand on the idea of individual choice.

And ironically, the brash individualism Google is trying here is right out of the Apple playbook. Not necessarily for its phones, but for plenty of other devices. Think of the AirPods. When they first launched, people made fun of them for months for being some of the ugliest headphones ever. But what they did have is a unique silhouette. You could see those earphones from a mile away and know someone was wearing AirPods. It really didn’t matter that they were ugly, as long as they were recognizable. And now they’re some of the most recognizable headphones on the planet.

Material You really feels like Google has found a cohesive brand identity to rally behind. And something that the Pixel can be the masthead to represent. It is bold and brash and individual. And I think it’s probably the best thing Google can do for its brand. To stand out from the iPhone. Not try to be the same.