Android's Material Design with Social Apps

Question

I am actually a developer, currently also designing android apps using:

• simple drawing board
• Balsamiq Mockups
• Justinmind Prototyping

My question pertains to Google's Material Design and developing apps for that current methodology. I have not seen that many apps that are social apps and utilize material design, the only example I can think of is Google+ which I personally think lacks a little bit in the design area.

Can anyone provide me with good guidelines for developing social apps in accordance to material design?

Here's what I'm thinking:

1. Easy Flat Material Design for Login - Signup
2. User lands on dashboard and all items are stored in cards in main feed
3. Navigation Drawer to provide navigation for users to different views
4. Incorporating Material Design Floating Action Buttons, Cards, and colors

My problem is that this is beginning to look and function a lot like pre-lollipop social apps, but it just "looks" different.

What are some things I can do with Material Design that would make my social app different from other social apps on the play store by incorporating material design?

An example that I refer to often is the Google I/O 2014 app, which uses a lot of material design features but I personally think it is a very limited application.

EDIT: Another example that I found was this here for whatsapp:

WhatsApp Material Design

Answer 1

If you looking for inspiration on Material design apps then I would recommend looking at Material Up which contains tons of Material redesigns of popular apps including social networking apps.

You might already know about Material Design Guidelines which will show all the new ideas and concepts behind Material design.

Also just because Material provides all these new cool things such as Floating Action Buttons etc, you might not need to use them all.

Another thing to note is that most of the cool new animation features that are available for Lollipop (Material Design) will not be available on older Android OS versions so you should keep this in mind when designing your app.

Anyway I hope this helps and good luck in designing your new app. 👍