- Google accidentally leaked details of their new Material 3 Expressive design for Android.
- The redesign is based on extensive research and aims to be more energetic and user-friendly.
- It appears to be cooler and helps users find components faster, and improves accessibility for older users.
Google I/O is just around the corner, and we have already been seeing glimpse of the Material 3 Expressive design language that the company is set to announce during the event. However, seems like we won’t have to wait that long, as Google have unintentionally (or intentionally) shared a complete blog on the redesign ahead of the event.
The blog shares extensive details on the new design language, but it was quickly taken down. However, the Wayback Machine captured the post. The images aren’t visible in the archived blog, but the folks at 9to5Google were quick to grab some images.
According to Google, Material 3 Expressive is build on the fundamentals to “inspires emotion, communicates function, and helps users achieve their goals“. Further adding, “These design aspects are also fundamental to what makes a product more usable by drawing attention to what matters in the interface: Making key actions stand out, and grouping like elements together“.
The Mountain View-based company calls it their “most-researched update to Google’s design system, ever“. This research included:
- Eye tracking: Analyzing where users focused their attention
- Surveys and focus groups: Gauging emotional responses to different designs
- Experiments: Gathering sentiment and preferences
- Usability: Seeing how quickly participants could understand and use an interface
All this tests and research helped Google develop Material 3 designs. The feedback came out to be, “overwhelmingly higher rated for attributes including: Energetic, Emotive, Positive vibe, Creative, Playful, and Friendly”. It also proved to be more cool, as designs with Material 3 showed 32% higher in relevance, 34% boost in modernity and 30% jump in rebelliousness.
However, it is not all about the aesthetics. This redesign also helps the user find key components in the design up to 4 times faster. It also helped people from elder demographic which are age 45 or higher to be able to perform actions on par with younger users.
With all these metrics, Material 3 Expressive is shaping up to be quite an exciting update for Android’s design language, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. However, not everyone’s a fan of the over expressive changes and One UI + OxygenOS like software elements. Where do you stand on this debate? Do you like what we have seen so far of M3? Or do you like the current Material You design. Let us know in the comments below.
