The perfect imperfection of Google's Material You

deeper pixels unprecedented performance the most powerful product we've ever created you can all but taste the details as you pinch in to discover photos within photos the fact that for the first time ever iphone can now access verizon's 5g ultra wideband that enable unprecedented performance i'm so jaded i'm so tired of companies trying to manipulate us with this style of phrasing they use big words and vague statements to make it seem like their company really understands you it sees you it knows how you work how you live and how you feel and when you sit through enough corporate product demonstrations and demos it's very easy to get just a little bit cynical about what this company has actually done to make your life better or what it's actually done to differentiate itself between the thousands of other options on the market just like it back in may i was watching the google i o developer conference with the same jaded mentality and don't get me wrong i still love this stuff but i maintain very low expectations i need a company to prove to me that a product or service is actually as good as they say it is before i take what they say as gospel but during that presentation google's head of material design matthias duarta said this instead of form following function what if form followed feeling and i'll be honest with you when i first heard that statement i couldn't stop myself from laughing it seems like the same out of touch fluffer statement that we're just so used to hearing from pretty much every company when they try to launch a product it has no material meaning it is made purely for marketing but then google released the android 12 beta and i tried it on my pixel 5 and there was something in the ui that kept that phrase creeping back into my brain over and over what if form not only followed function but also followed feeling i've been ruminating and replaying that phrase in my head for months now i've watched that keynote maybe 50 times over at this point and i'm starting to think that maybe matthias wasn't actually spewing because if you really crack that open it's a phrase that spans over everything from the relationship we have with our technology to a design language that can make google finally stand out as its own cohesive ecosystem this video is about material you but it's also about us it's about interface design and psychology but ultimately it's about why i think material u might be one of the best things google has ever done for its brand identity so let's start with the question what is a smartphone fundamentally it's a phone that can do other things it's a merger between a dumb phone and a pda a handheld device that helps you get things done from communication to navigation to booking appointments but as the years have gone by the smartphone's gotten smart in ways we never really imagined every year it's gobbled up other devices and tools the flashlight the gps the personal computer and yes there are still use cases for these other devices and tools being individualized dedicated devices but they're still fundamentally redundant but as our smartphones have become multi-tools they've also become just that tools the word gadget is a word lost in time an individualized dedicated device that is meant to do one or maybe two things smartphones can replace almost everything they are the everything gadget but for that to work everything that the smartphone has gobbled up has to take on the same general interface to become understandable it has to be uniform and interfaces have started to converge we got stripped of the choices that allowed our gadgets our other devices our everyday carry to really reflect us with a few exceptions the smartphone form factor has mostly stabilized into a big rectangle with a screen os skins and roms have taken the best parts of each other and sort of funneled into one very similar interface companies are reacting to what consumers say they want but when every company reacts in the same way you sort of end up with this very distilled version of a device and you start to lose choice i mean the most popular phone in the united states the iphone has traditionally locked down customization past your wallpaper and the positioning of icons on your screen but it's so popular because it's so good at what smartphones were meant to do it's a fantastic multi-tool but it reflects what we want as a society not what we want as individuals it's not fun it's just functional so what if form not only followed function but also followed feeling what if our devices were not only dictated by this raw tool-like functionality but by something that brought warmth back into our technology customization uniqueness a reflection of who we are as individuals material u is meant to be built on that idea that your device reflects who you are through ai generated system themes that are based on your wallpaper weird wacky big bold buttons and ui elements that ripple in or fade out material u tries to feel like you it tries to feel alive it's an extension of something that android has always represented choice be together not the same that's the motto that google ran android on for years you have choice not only in your software experience but in the vast variety of hardware options that you have on android phones too the open source nature of android allowed the market to give everyone choice but like i said earlier as our options became distilled android has started to feel bland there's this sense of sameness even material you is trying to adapt around you so even though it's just google's interpretation of android 12 it's trying to be multiple things at the same time so any pixel that's running android 12 is running material u but material u itself is supposed to change and adapt to the person that's using it i mean just look at google's marketing for the pixel six what if your phone adapted to you represented you reflected you google's trying to bring back that individualism that the android ecosystem used to reflect be together but not the same and the reason google's doing this is founded on principles that have been in marketing for the last couple of decades that you are unique that you are an individual and the tools and environment that you use and live in should represent you it's become this universal theme in marketing for the 21st century companies want you to feel seen they want you to feel special and they want you to feel like their product can help accentuate your uniqueness material u is google's attempt to bring that uniqueness back to its technology that personalization that's been lost since our phones have become these incredible multi-tools and believe me i am skeptical if this is even possible if something is intentionally created coded to feel unique can it actually be unique if something is intentionally created to be imperfect isn't that perfect in perfection it's a little bit of a paradox but google's trying very hard to make its phones at least feel that way apple makes it really hard to leave your device it uses ecosystem lock-in these irreplaceable tools to keep you on their devices but what if you could have ecosystem lock in using feeling what if leaving a device felt more like an emotional loss a return to this super bland joyless mobile experience well that is an interesting idea google's using a bunch of different elements of material you to try to lock you into that feeling that your phone really sees you it adapts to you it understands you as a concept that seems really hard to quantify and ultimately i don't even know if it's physically possible but google's using a bunch of different tactics to make your phone feel like it's really really yours okay try this look at your phone now look at your wallpaper unless you're using a wallpaper pack there is a very high chance that you may be one of the few people on the planet that is using that image as your wallpaper but even if you're not you're still choosing to look at that image every single day because in some way it reflects you it represents you what you like what you feel material you tries to play on that idea it takes your wallpaper as a base and creates a unique color palette with different amounts of luminosity and some complementary colors and populates it throughout your entire system theme if you're the only one using that wallpaper there's a good chance that you're the only one on the planet with that particular color palette all created from the most personal thing that you can do to your phone but just color is not really enough to make our phones feel alive if we want our phones to feel like they represent us we have to see ourselves represented in them and the fact is it's almost impossible to see ourselves reflected in grids and straight lines because they're too perfect as humans we do strive for this perfection we worship celebrities and we use exorbitant amounts of time and energy to try to project confidence and flawlessness we work so hard to make it seem like we've got it all together but that's because of this inherent human trait to feel like we're not enough that in the world around us exists all these unilaterally flawless embodiments of humanity but we were left behind just trying to hide the fact that we're not as perfect as we try to seem so we try to make up for this feeling by buying products that seem to embody perfection we're attracted to sharp lines and grids it gives us this sense of control like we've got it all together but none of us are perfect and because of that we don't see ourselves reflected in the tools and devices that we use every single day and they begin to feel cold the form only follows the function but in no way does it actually follow the feeling it reinforces the idea that our devices are just tools that we have no personal say in the way that they make us feel so while we might strive for perfection we don't connect with it we most deeply connect with the things that are imperfect things that feel unique handmade products feel more special more unique than mass-produced ones because they're one-of-one even if they have chips and flaws we say that it gives them character the japanese art of kinsuge is the process of taking things that are broken and chipped and mending them with gold making them unique they're one of one no longer is that object perfect but it is unique in film and photography it's very rare that we strive to make a direct representation of reality a majority of the time we're trying to focus on using that medium to evoke emotion it's extremely common for filmmakers to use old imperfect lenses to give their film character it helps reflect that emotion and it reflects the imperfections that we see in ourselves film photography doesn't represent reality it's a distorted sense of events that feel more like a memory than a direct representation of those events that's why people love it it makes them feel they connect with that emotion so material you tries to take that idea of imperfection and character and build on it with widgets something that's been an android since the beginning but instead of relying on sharp boxed grids your widgets are shaped like ovals and stars they are wonky wacky shapes that wouldn't normally be associated with a perfect tool-based system the shapes aren't made to purely be functional anymore now they can also be fun the widgets fit outside boundaries they sometimes take up one and a half two and a half times the space they would normally take up if they were gritted they have these unique optional elements like the date acting like a second hand rotating around your sun-shaped clock they feel almost random uniquely random unique to you how you want them to be displayed and they feel alive so many elements of material you try to add this feeling of life the display washes in after you press the power button sparkles flood through your device when you plug it in or place it on a wireless charger text and lines grow and shrink from thin to thick and back again depending on the state of your phone google's trying to add this motion to your phone it's not just this computerized binary feeling of on or off it's the motion between these two states that really adds the feeling into the form and this feeling of living choice is even expressed in the hardware of the pixel 6. you can buy this phone in six different shades of duo duo-tone pastels the salmon colored pixel 6 has this orange forehead up top black is mixed with a lighter gray there's a primary and there's a secondary and i know you might be thinking these colors seem really bold and brash most people love them or hate them they're really polarizing they stand out but that's just it they stand out that's exactly what google is trying to do it hasn't gained much market share trying to be the android iphone so it's leaning into what it's always done best individualism choice customization and ironically that brash individualism is something that is right out of apple's playbook not necessarily out of the iphone but out of many of its other devices think about the airpods when they first came out people made fun of them for months for being some of the ugliest headphones ever but what they did have was this unique silhouette you could see those headphones from a mile away and know that somebody was wearing airpods it really didn't matter that they were ugly as long as they were recognizable and now they're some of the most recognizable headphones on the planet so it really feels like material u is the cohesive brand identity that google can rally behind and something that the pixel in particular can really be the masthead for it's bold and it's brash and it's individual and i think it's probably the best thing that google can do for its brand to stand out from the iphone not to try to be the same so that's about all i have to say on material u but i really wonder if that message is strong enough to gain google market share apple just has such a huge ecosystem of cohesive devices google just doesn't really have first party parity with all of these devices i mean there's chromebooks but they're not really full computers and there's no pixel watch yet running an ecosystem on third parties does give you a lot of choice but it probably isn't going to keep people around for very long anyways guys thanks for watching um and i guess i'll catch you the next time i have something to say see you later

Channel: David Imel

Views: 411,097

Keywords: Material You, Google Pixel 6

Id: k7pks7yqQOc

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021