Can you give your top factual reason (not opinion) why you chose not to use Material Design for your UI components? [closed]

Question

I work in a group that has decided to use Material Design (MD) to guide out UX design and I have to admit I am a complete convert. Material Design provides the base design language for our components and then we extend the components as and when we need to (documenting this in a design system and pattern library). It has made our design work much more consistent and means we are doing real design reuse (alongside our component based software reuse). There are good frameworks based on MD like angular for building our components which our developers can use.

My question now is what is stopping everyone doing this? I am trying to make this a specific factual question so that it falls within the rules. I am not looking for opinions here just facts as to why a particular group has chosen not to do this. So please just answer with your top factual reason IF and only if you have actually considered Material Design in your group/company/lab. I think it will really help me understand the scope of the Material Design space and what the limitations are.

Answer 1

My top reason for not going 100% Material is that some of the UI elements e.g. forms and buttons are not yet conventional to our userbase which includes people who don't necessarily use the latest apps and not used to the latest interface designs. They don't know what's clickable and what's not, e.g a card or flat button and expect links to be underlined. It's something we have to balance and test out with users outside of the demographics of the dev and design team.

Answer 2

When i started here in my company as the first UI/UX-Designer i found the developers were using material design for all of their work, no matter if it was mobile or enterprise applications.

The biggest problem we faced with material design is that the components were really hard to adjust within the tech-stack of the developers, meaning that for more complex functions they were struggling to adjust what material design had to offer and this made them use functions/patterns that weren't the best option from a UI/UX point of view.

It has made our design work much more consistent and means we are doing real design reuse.

This might be true, but if you look at the bigger companies they all use their own design systems, that fit THEIR needs and were simply created because THEIR research told them that its a working way to go.

Setting up a design system/pattern library is a lot of work and a continuing process of improvement but once your setup is done you will achieve better results while using LESS time then with Material Design.

Also Material Design was mainly created for mobile, where it works like a charm, but as soon as you try to build something else you will face problems which will force the developers to find workarounds.

One question to you: If Material Design is so great why would anyone need an UI/UX Designer?

Answer 3

Yes, I can: because Material Design is a knee-jerk response to iOS 7

If you're unable to discern context, and deride from this the fuller meaning of the above, let me explain:

1. You're inappropriately experienced in UI and UX to be considering either

2. History is important, as are context and experience, and expectations

3. Material Design is not the pre-eminent version of minimal touch design

4. iOS 7 is not the pre-eminent version of minimal touch design

5. Material Design is not nearly the best consideration of touch design

Now that we've gotten some of the lesser versions out of the way, the primary reason to disregard Material Design as a benchmark is that it's a knee-jerk response to iOS 7.

Not an opinion.

Fact.

The snappier animations were a direct response to the more physical nature of the physics systems used in iOS 7. Fact.

The minimalism was an attempt to woo developers to an easing of visual expectations on Android. Fact.

The two companies were in a war of app counts. Fact.

They considered the fastest ways to get developers making ever more trivial apps more quickly to be removing designers from the equation. Fact.

They were both copying Microsoft in this. Fact.

Nokia had already found a different way that looked similar, but for entirely different reasons, also fact.

Know your history of design before making false idols and demigods out of nonsense.