Android

As a UI/UX designer myself (hobbyist, to be clear), I really like it.

There seems to be this notion in the homebrew/FOSS/Linux community that "wasted space" is always non-preferable. I can see this being true for some people, but I feel like a lot of people and band wagoning this opinion.

It's pretty universally known and accepted in the design community that padding is extremely important when it comes to helping your brain read and separate content. And to be fair, most non-tech people prefer space and padding in their applications to make things easier to understand.

I can be entirely off base here, but TLDR: I like padding and it's literally beneficial to helping your brain understand the layout of what you're looking at better.

The dynamic colors are a fucking nightmare. No, I don't want all my ui elements to be the same color as my girlfriend's skin tone. And the worst is even if I change it, it resets every update. I also don't like the new quick access controls in the pull down. This is really the first Android update that's felt like a flat downgrade for me.

I'm not upset by it because, like all Google design eras, nearly no one uses it uniformly.

yeah, i hated material ew as soon as it was announced. so much padding everywhere, and so little contrast - to paraphrase the incredibles: if everything's orange^[1]^, nothing is. your eyes will adjust to it. i want actionable items to stand out, not be a slightly lighter shade of the same colour. it also looks rather like a fischer-price my first phone interface

i must say, if an app (for example, jerboa) uses material 3, i usually try to look for an alternative

[1] other colours are available, i just like orange

edit: some examples:

with material design, it's clear what's a header, what's a footer,^[2]^ and what each button's state is.

with all the padding, there's also less space; leading to less functionality

with material ew, it's much harder to tell at a glance what each app is, one has to scrutinise the icon rather than just tell at a glance by colour

i also really dislike monet; the way it pulls this horrible washed out sickly pastel colour from a wallpaper and washes it over the entire app. if i just pulled one accent colour, and applied that to, say, the header and main action button, i'd like it a lot more

[2] look at the lack of contrast on that "new post" button

I'm over pastel colors, honestly. I want bold, vibrant colors. At least the option. It feels like Google is stripping more and more customizability with every update.

As a professional UX designer, the padding is the least of the issues.

I'm hoping I get used to it, but I miss more skeuomorphic design. It's like a designer wanted to push it to be edgy and forgot about real people using it.... which describes the bulk of Apple design, too, for that matter. I think we overshot the balance point.

Edit: forgot my real point halfway through commenting: I will say even that isn't the worst of it, though. The dynamic theming is a bit of a branding nightmare.

Design preferences has a tendency to be "cyclical" appearing to be tiresome. That's fine and an encouraged strength of customisablility.

The issue is unified design language across android devices. Material You attempts to solve this to limited success. But it's better than the alternatives I've seen in the past.

The over-padding (especially default widgets) is something I take issue with but it's a preference and can easily be adjusted.

Big fan of material you.

I love it. Personal preference, of course. :)

No, not at all. I am really fond of Material You. I think it is a nice mix of modern and playful. The colors are great too. I seek out applications that adhere to the material you standards and allow for using system colors. I have a Pixel 7 and a Pixel Watch. I'm excited to see what Material You looks like on the watch when the Wear OS 4 update comes.

I'm personally not that fond of it, and kind of want it to blow over in favour of a new trend.

It lacks the charm, and neat little 3D effects that skeumorphism had, but that's also not helped by it being implemented poorly.

I find it and other modern designs to be boring, but I don't hate it.

I still want Material back.

I like the integration of adaptive icons for Android. I'm really keen on selecting a theme based on my current wallpaper and that color being used for all apps.

Not many apps are currently supporting it, even Facebook and other players you'd assume could do it in a seconds aren't.

Implementing it looks fairly straight forward, you provide a transparent image of your logo and it adaptive naturally to suit your theme. I assume apps are intentionally being difficult because that visually changes their logo / branding.

It's great when it works tho!

I'm just kind of sick of Android in general, tbh. Google has killed off almost everything that made it fun to play with new Android versions, and somehow made it less intuitive/easy to use for advanced/experienced users in the constant pursuit of - ironically - ease of use. For example: why is it now a swipe and three taps to disable wifi in the Quick Settings panel, when previously it was a swipe and one tap?

My main complaint is the amount of padding everything has, it makes things feel so cramped, even on a big screen. Increasing the information density would really improve the design, imo. Making colors more saturated would be cool too.

But other than that, the design is growing on me.

I like it

I like it fine, I just wish Google (and Microsoft, Apple, etc) would decide on a consistent UI theme instead of completely changing it every few years. They don't even have time get all their first party apps up to date with the latest design trend before they move on to a new one, and third party apps are even worse. I have apps on my phone in like 4 different UI styles now.

Android 11 was the last best Android version in terms of UI

HOLO YOLO

i always disliked material and material you. They look too coperate.

I actually like it very much!

Absolutely not.

I'm way more tired of the designs before it, or the apps halfway into the design language but not really. Especially if it is to the point where just using the material you colours you have seperates it, signal comes to mind there for example.

Some apps can keep their design layout but please let me use my material you colours anyways

I didn't think I'd like it but I really do

I can't stand it, honestly. I recently moved from a samsung phone after like a decade of using nothing but samsung to a pixel phone and I really dislike how fat random ui elements are. The volume control is confusing to look at because it's gigantic, there's less quick settings tiles because the ones you do get are giant, and I dont really like the colour tint across the entire OS. Just because my wallpaper has grass in it, my whole phone shouldn't be baby shit green.

It definitely grew on me over time, and as more apps began to embrace it. Really well-detailed apps, like Sync, showed the true potential of what Material You can be like. It's also a little easier to distinguish the pastel and tint in sunlight (at least with sunglasses on), so that's a major plus.

The only thing I hate about MY is its comically big quick settings. Give me back the Android 11 quick settings and it will be fine (the Internet QS be damned)

I like it. I'd like it even more if it one day accomplishes the goal of making every application on an Android phone look graphically consistent.

Barely any of my apps use it lol

I didn't like it a ton initially, but after seeing the new Sync for Reddit redesign, and seeing how perfectly they've implemented it, I love it. Props to the Sync dev, they really got the idea behind Material You. Can't wait for the alpha of Sync for Lemmy.

I love Material You. And thanks to Android if you can't stand it you don't have to use it. It's nice to have options.

No, I wish more app used it. It's really fun and looks beautiful.