Creativity and constraint

Material Design "unified us in our thinking," Duarte says, admitting that "it’s absolutely a constraint." These constraints, he says, made design decisions easier and more consistent. Take, for example, the idea of flipping a card over to see what’s on the back. In Material Design’s world, that’s a cheat that doesn’t work. It’s as if the software is actual, physical stuff inside these devices, and there’s not space inside a phone to flip a card over, so Google doesn’t allow itself to do it.

We’re hardwired to comprehend physical things, Duarte says, and software all too often behaves in ways that break with our models and expectations. Wiley thinks of it as breaking the suspension of disbelief, as when something happens in a sci-fi movie that doesn’t follow its own internal logic. Duarte is a little more direct, with a subtle dig at Apple’s iOS and its flying software layers: "We’re not hurtling you through space at high speeds," he says. "We’re not puncturing your hand with invisible, impossible surfaces."

"Design is all about finding solutions within constraints," Duarte says, "If there were no constraints, it’s not design — it’s art."

"Design is all about finding solutions within constraints."

Google’s designers steadfastly refuse to name the new fictional material, a decision that simultaneously gives them more flexibility and adds a level of metaphysical mysticism to the substance. That’s also important because while this material follows some physical rules, it doesn’t fall into the old trap of skeuomorphism. The material isn’t a one-to-one imitation of physical paper, but instead it’s "magical," as Duarte puts it.

It can do things that physical paper can’t, like grow and shrink with animations. Those animations were important to Google, because they help users understand where they are inside an app. "A lot of software … kind of feels like television or film in terms of jump cuts," Wiley says, causing you to lose your sense of time and place. For apps, you want something more akin to a stage play. "It’s going from one moment to the next," he says, "that scene change, and what’s happening onstage is choreographed and transitioned, and there’s meaning."

Materialize

The other, more important thing that this material can do is appear when you need it. Google has been working on the algorithms behind products like Google Now for years, and it’s become an essential part of this new design philosophy. Instead of asking users to manage their data, Material Design is asking users to trust that Google will show them what they need at the right time.

"With watches, you don’t want to spend a lot of time interacting with it."

That’s why the Android Wear smartwatch software doesn’t give users the ability to do much except respond to notifications. Alex Faaborg, the designer for the platform, says, "With watches, you don’t want to spend a lot of time interacting with it. You just want to be able to glance down and see information and quickly do a voice command." He says it’s "in the same spirit as a lot of the work that we did for Google now, but it’s for the entire platform."

That’s a lot of trust to put into Google and into its magical paper material, but Duarte says there’s a reason for that. "We did it in order to come up with the most simple solution. One of the design practices that we like to follow is try to design the simplest possible thing for the user first. See if you can get away with that, prove that you need more complexity before you add it."