Lollipop’s Material Design Gives a More Consistent UX/UI

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By Thomas Copeland on November 5, 2014 Technology & Software

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s new Android software version 5.0, Lollipop, exhibits the biggest change yet in Android, in the past few years. The user interface design of Lollipop, Material, smartly uses grid-based layouts, transitions and whitespaces. The “cards” metaphor is extended across the Android platform.

The interface of Lollipop is designed so that it gives a consistent look and feel of all applications used on it. The new design promotes a smoother experience for Android users and decreases the learning curves of different and new apps, thereby promoting adoption of applications from third-parties. These third-party apps can be integrated with the Android app to give a smoother and more consistent feel to all users.

A style-guide has always been available to third-party app developers. These guides promote the best practices, consistent design and standard methodologies and shortcuts. When portable computing platforms were just breaking the surface, these style guides instructed the app developers to build applications whose designs were consistent with the built-in apps of the devices. This meant that when users installed new apps, they did not have to spend much time in learning each app’s usage individually. The instructions were consistent for all applications.

The Material design will now force developers to consider the user interface design of their popular apps. They will need to update their designs to the Material design in order to keep their app from looking outdated. Otherwise, the highly competitive app stores, will pull away their users and popularity.

The developers who update their designs will contribute to a refresher of Android OS. The user applications will look a lot like the built-in applications in the Android 5.0 devices. So performance of specific tasks, information flow in the apps and navigation through the app will be the same in all the applications.

Material design focuses on giving a new and updated look to the Android Platform and a feel of progress. The Material design is also forcing app developers, new and old alike, to start from square one, using the new design guides. This will keep everybody on the same page.

Over the years, Android platform has seen incremental changes in its user interface design. The applications today are developed at a slightly different level of iteration of the Android’s UI design. This generates acceptable consistency. However, this means that there is no focus on creating an app consistent with Android user experience.

Fragmentation is about creating a consistent, smooth and welcoming user experience as well as developing a code that works successfully across all the implementations of the Android OS and the hardware that implements the Android platform. Material design addresses those Android applications that drive user experience, meanwhile allowing app manufacturers to use their own environments and launchers.

Material reduces fragmentation problems. It generates shallower learning curves in new apps, thus reducing the complexity of third-party experience for users. Material design also encourages developers to roll-out updates to their apps for the new experience. This process will take some time to become widespread.