User interface design has been influenced by a number of trends in recent years. In this post, let's see what is so great about both the designs? and is it a good idea to move from flat design to material design or vice-versa?
Before going into detail about both these UI designs, let’s know what is Material Design and Flat Design.
Apple's Flat Design
Flat design is the bare minimum design. It does not count for the 3D effect that can be added to the graphics, and the use of textures, shadows and even gradients. It primarily focuses on colour and typography. With a flat design, the overall appearance is not that important. It concentrates instead on what the functionality of the design will be. The advantage of using this design is simplicity, load time and the fact you can’t exactly mess the design up.
In Flat Design, the user’s attention is directed towards valuable content, as people are less likely to examine digital art, rather than reading the content. The flat images may look nice to decorate the webpage and help the users navigate through the page easily.
If you'd like to keep your graphics and icons simple, I recommend that you choose Flat Design.
Like most things, there are disadvantages to using Flat Design including:
You are extremely limited to what you can do with your designs.
Such a simple design trend can actually be difficult to produce an idea.
It might not complement the web application you will be using them for.
You can read more about Apple's flat design guidelines here.
Google's Material Design
Material design released by Google can be said as a branded product with a set of well-defined guidelines and principles.
The main idea behind introducing this design seems rather obvious - Flat Design is a less intuitive design and users get mixed up due to excessive flatness of objects. To overcome this problem, Material Design introduces some skeuomorphism* in the most simplified design. Although the Material Design is flat, it remains multi-dimensional.In short, the material design is an enhanced version of the flat design, which emphasizes minor details in terms of animations, shades and layers. It makes a product feel more intuitive when it comes to navigation while preserving its simplicity.
The best thing about material design is that it gives designers a comprehensive design language to create apps that look and feel the same across various platforms.
You can read more about Google's Material design guidelines here.
Flat Design Vs Material Design
Failing to understand the distinction between the two designs is likely to lead in unpleasant user experience.
The biggest difference is in terms of depth, animation, clarity and navigation.
Depth of flat vs material design
How objects transition in space and interact with each other depends on light, surface ad motion. When it comes to interaction with apps and devices, both Google and Apple have different opinions. According to Apple mobile devices, it's seen as a window into another world, embracing infinite depth in their applications. On the other hand, Google believes that humans should interact with the components as if they were stacked on top of each other.
Animation, pattern and shadow
Google considers animation to have something that enhances user experience and gives life to other components. Material design uses different types of animation to express the type of material to interact with. The animation would appear as if you were arranging cards on a piece of paper.
On the other hand, Apple believes that animation should be in such a way that it takes the user to the destination without distracting the user from the actual content.
Clarity
Apple promotes gradients and blurred design, while Google gives importance to shades. Both platforms have imitated the real-life in their own ways
Navigation
Navigation is a must-have factor when it comes to a better UI. The app should be structured according to the content and tasks that the user wants to see.
Google has fewer browsing rules and gives designers a high degree of flexibility. Navigation can be in many different places and should be obvious. According to the Google Navigation Rules, a variety of action buttons and components can be used that reveal different options.
On the other hand, Apple uses a different navigation system that is easy to understand and use. The idea is to have an app with less than 5 functions that force designers to think about the features of their app.
So which design guideline should you follow?
Nothing prevents you from combining these two to create a really great design. Flat design is a closed group that depends on the user's familiarity with the design, while material design tries to get some ideas from flat design, but is optimized for digital design.
“Unlike real paper, our digital material can expand and reform intelligently. Material has physical surfaces and edges. Seams and shadows provide meaning about what you can touch.” - Matías Duarte, Vice President of Design, Google
*Skeuomorphism is a term most often used in graphical user interface design to describe interface objects that mimic their real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them. A well-known example is the recycle bin icon used for discarding files.
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