Material Design a Discussion About the New Visual Language Developed by Google

Material Design A discussion about the new visual language developed by Google.

Presented by : Sugisha Sukumaran What is Material Design?

It is a design language developed by Google. It is a design with increased use of grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and depth effects such as lighting and shadows. A comprehensive guide for visual, motion, and interaction design across platforms and devices. It is grounded in tactile reality, inspired by the study of paper and ink. It is a skeuomorphed flat design. Used extensively in Android 5.0 “Lollipop”.

Material design is skeuomorphic in that it is an attempt to make design more realistic in how it portrays elements, using layers and animation in a way that makes sense outside of the browser. Skeuomorphism is adopting the style of physical incantation of an object for its digital display. Material design dictates a single physical incantation for the UI- everything should feel like paper.

Figure shows the paper model developed by Google to demonstrate material design.

When google overhauled the Android design philosophy in Ice Cream Sandwich, they introduced a whole theme called holo. The holo theme hasn’t been much of a design highlight after the release of Android 4.4 Kitkat. Instead a more brighter and minimalistic design status was showcased.

Matias Duarte Matias Duarte introduces a new design language called (The man behind material design) material design alongside the Android L release.

Material Theme is a user interface style that determines the look and feel of views and activities in Android 5.0 (Lollipop)

Material Dark Material Light Material Dark + Light

Bold colors are the main focus in Material Design. The color palette contains

19 hues

16 colors have accent variants

256 colors including black and white

Limit your selection of colors by choosing three color hues from the primary palette and one accent color.

Example of a primary color palette Example of a secondary color palette

Toolbars and larger color blocks should use the primary 500 color. Status bar should be the darker 700 tint of the primary color.

Use the accent color for your primary action button and components like switches or sliders. Don’t use the accent color for body text colors. Don’t use the accent color for app bars or larger areas of color. If your accent color is too light or dark for the background color, the general fallback rule is to choose a darker or lighter tint of the accent color.

To support all languages worldwide, Google recommends using

Roboto for languages that use the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts Noto for all other languages.

Hinted fonts

Hints are the instructions embedded in a font on how to modify (distort) a glyph to look better on low-resolution displays.

Use the unhinted versions on Android and on Mac OS X. Use hinted fonts on Chrome OS, Windows, and Linux.

Typographic scale and basic styles

The basic set of styles are based on a typographic scale of 12, 14, 16, 20 and 34.

Basic colors and color contrast

Text should maintain a minimum contrast ratio of 4:5:1.

Characters and line length

You should have around 60 characters per line if you want a good reading experience.

A powerful tool to help you communicate and differentiate your product. Some best practices to incorporate imagery are:

Both illustration and photography can live within the same product. Choose images that express personal relevance, information and delight. Stay away from stock Have a point of focus Build narratives Make sure your images are appropriately sized for their containers and cross platforms.

To create an icon for different densities, you should follow the 2:3:4:6:8 scaling ratio between the five primary densities (medium, high, x-high, xx-high, and xxx-high respectively). Some best practices for creating an icon are:

Launcher icons on a mobile device must be 48x48 dp. Launcher icons for display on Google Play must be 512x512 pixels. Action bar icons for phones should be 32x32 dp. Small icons should be 16x16dp. Notification icons must be 24x24 dp.

In material design, every pixel drawn by an application resides on a sheet of paper. Paper has a flat background color and can be sized to serve a variety of purposes. A typical layout is composed of multiple sheets of paper, arranging papers in two ways - Seams and Steps

Example of a seam Example of a step

A toolbar is a strip of paper used to present actions. The actions cluster on either side of the toolbar. Navigation actions, such as a drawer menu icon or an up arrow, appear at the left, while contextual actions appear at the right.

Toolbars have a standard height, 56 dp on mobile and 64 dp on desktop, but they can be taller.

Do’s Don’ts

Never allow a sheet of paper to be split by another one.

A floating action is a circular sheet of paper separate from a toolbar. A floating action can straddle a step if it relates to the content of the paper creating that step. A floating action can straddle a seam if it relates to the content of both of the papers creating that seam.

All components align to an 8dp square baseline grid. Type aligns to a 4dp baseline grid. Iconography in toolbars align to a 4dp square baseline grid. This applies to mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Vertical keyline at 16dp from the left and right edges. Content associated with an icon or avatar aligns 72dp from the left edge.

1 - 24dp 2 - 56dp 3 - 48dp 4 - 72dp

An incremental keyline defines an increment, like the height of the action bar, and uses a multiple of that increment to determine the size and position of other elements in the app.

Put content forward. Anchor navigation and actions. Be opinionated about functionality. Focus on a single view with embedded navigation. Use tabs to switch between a small number of equally important views. Manage more complex structure through a left navigation drawer.

This structure includes an app bar and a floating action button. If you have any additional functionality or action overflow, you can add a bottom bar. This is optional and side nav overlays all other structural elements.

© RapidValue Solutions Tablet Structure This structure includes an app bar and a floating action button. Bottom bar is optional and side nav overlays all other structural elements. Right nav can be accessed temporarily or pinned for permanent display.

© RapidValue Solutions Desktop Structure This structure includes an app bar and a floating action button. Side navigation menus accessed temporarily or pinned for permanent display. Side navs and content canvas can have secondary toolbar.

The app bar, formerly known as the action bar in Android, is a special kind of toolbar that’s used for branding, navigation, search, and actions.

Metrics Mobile Landscape: 48dp Mobile Portrait: 56dp Tablet/Desktop: 64dp

On Android, the status bar contains notification icons and system icons. On Chrome, the top bar contains the window controls: minimize, full screen, and close. The color of the status or window bar is a darker tone of the app bar color. It can also reference an element in the layout or it can be translucent.

Metrics

Android status bar height: 24dp Android status bar Chrome window height: 32dp

Chrome window bar

It contains the device navigation controls: Back, Home, and Recents. It also displays a menu for apps written for Android 2.3 or earlier.

Metrics

Height: 48dp

The left and right nav bars can be pinned for permanent display or they can float temporarily as overlays. The content in the left nav is ideally navigation- or identity-based. The content in the right nav should be secondary to the main content on a page.

Metrics

Mobile : Width = screen width - app bar height Desktop: 400dp

A sheet of paper that slides up from the bottom edge of the screen. It is suitable when three or more actions are displayed to the user and when the actions do not require a description.

Bottom Sheets - Spec

Text: Roboto Regular 16sp, #000 87%

Title (optional): Roboto Regular 16sp, #000 54%

Default bottom sheet background fill: #FFF Overlay shield fill: #000 20%

A button consists of text and/or an image that clearly communicates what action will occur when the user touches it. There are three types of main buttons:

Flat button: a button made of ink that emits ink reactions on press but does not lift.

Raised button: a typically rectangular button made of paper that lifts and emits ink reactions on press. Floating action button: a circular button made of paper that lifts and emits ink reactions on press.

A card is a piece of paper that contains unique related data. Cards do not flip to reveal information on their back. Cards have a constant width and variable height. The maximum height is limited to what can fit within a single view on a platform.

Cards have rounded corners. It can have multiple actions. It can be dismissible and rearranged.

Chips are small blocks that represent a complex entity, such as a calendar event or contact. Contact chips represent people for whom the user has contact information.

Chips - Layout guidelines

Closed contact chip

The contact name text is Roboto Regular 14sp.

Open contact chip Contact name text: Roboto Regular 16sp Address text: Roboto Regular 14sp

Dialogs inform users about critical information, require users to make decisions, or encapsulate multiple tasks within a discrete process. Use dialogs carefully because they are interruptive in nature-their sudden appearance forces users to stop their current task and refocus on the dialog content.

Dividers group and separate content within lists and page layouts. The divider is a thin rule, which distinguish content visually and spatially. Two types-

Full-bleed dividers : It separate distinct content sections or distinct content elements in both lists and page layouts. It can also indicate seams in material.

Inset dividers : It subdivide related content, such as phone numbers from email addresses from street

addresses in a contact detail.

Grid lists are an alternative to standard list views. A grid list is best suited to presenting a homogenous data type, typically images, and is optimized for visual comprehension and differentiating between like data types.

It consists of regular subdivisions called cells that contain tiles. Cells are arrayed horizontally and vertically within the grid. Tiles hold content and can span one or more cells vertically and horizontally.

Lists present multiple line items in a vertical arrangement as a single continuous element. Lists are best suited to presenting a homogeneous data type or sets of data types.

A list consists of a single continuous column of equal width called rows that function as containers for tiles. Tiles hold content, and can vary in height within a list. List tiles present collections of related content in a consistent format, using hierarchy to enhance readability by prioritizing a consistent type or set of content.

List controls are icons that appear to the left or right of the list text. They indicate the state of a list item, information about a list item, or serve as an action related to the list item.List controls fall under four categories:

State Primary action (including text strings)

Secondary action Secondary info

A leave-behind is an informative hint as to what swiping a list item away will do to that item. The leave-behind can transform into an action.

Swiping on a listing item from either direction will reveal an icon indicating the action. After swiping, the action appears as a text button centered within the space of the list item.

Pickers provide a simple way to select a single value from a set. Ready-to-use date and time pickers are included. The format of a time and date picker adjusts automatically to the locale.

Each picker is a dialog with a set of controls for entering the parts of the date or time. This ensure that a user’s specification of a date or time input is valid and formatted correctly.

It is useful for minimizing the amount of visual change a user sees before they can view and interact with content. Mainly 2 types:

Linear

Circular

Sliders let users select a value from a continuous or discrete range of values by moving the slider thumb. Two types:

Continuous Slider

Discrete Slider

Snackbars provide lightweight feedback about an operation. Toasts are similar to snackbars but do not contain actions and cannot be swiped off screen. They automatically disappear after a timeout or after user interaction elsewhere on the screen.

Subheaders are special list tiles that delineate distinct sections of a list or grid list and are typically related to the current filtering or sorting criteria. 3 types:

List subheaders Grid subheaders

Menu subheaders

Subheaders metrics

Tile height: 48dp

Subheader font: Roboto Medium 14sp

Tabs make it easy to explore and switch between different views or functional aspects of an app or to browse categorized data sets. Depending on the platform and the context of use, tabbed content can be presented as either fixed tabs or scrollable (swipeable) tabs.

Fixed tabs

Scrollable tabs

Text fields allow the user to input text. They can be single line, with or without scrolling, or multi-line, and can have an icon. Text field can be used as

Single-line text field

Floating labels

Multi-line text field Full-width text field

Character counter

Auto-complete text field Search filter

Animations in material design give users feedback on their actions and provide visual continuity as users interact with your app. We can categorize this as five.

Touch feedback Circular reveal

Activity transitions

Curved motion View state changes

An enter transition determines how views in an activity enter the scene. An exit transition determines how views in activity exit the scene. A shared element transition determines how views that are shared between activities and the transition between these activities.

Help users to be fast and efficient. Ensure critical text has enough contrast. Make touch targets at least 48x48 pixels. Provide clues about spatial relationships. Support mouse-free and standard gesture navigation. Give visual alternatives to sound. Manage the focus of your user. Make interactive elements clear and discoverable Ensure your app is visible with larger font sizes. Provide alternative text for images and video.

An app is bidirectional if it can be easily localized for language scripts that are written and read from RTL ar LTR. Bidirectionality affects not only text but also layout and iconography.

An RTL layout is the mirror image of LTR layout. Icons are to the right of text fields. The navigation buttons are in reverse order, with the back button on the right side.

Back and forward navigational buttons are reversed. An icon that shows forward movement should be mirrored. Icons of people, heads or faces should typically mirror, if they appear close to text.

https://developer.android.com/design/material/index.html http://www.google.co.in/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html#introduction-principles http://megapowertech.blogspot.in/2014/07/when-google-overhauled-android-design-google-io2014-material- design-matias-duarte.html