In Google’s case, the company probably had no choice but to make design a priority in 2011. Owing to its relentless design perfectionism, Apple was on the cusp of becoming the most valuable company in history. To compete with Apple’s tech cachet, Google’s products had to be well-designed. But Page’s design awakening reflects some broader trends in technology that have been brewing for a decade.
As Brett Lider, Google’s design lead for Android Wear, points out, web design during Google’s ascendance in the mid-2000s was focused on utility. Being homegrown and DIY lent a certain credibility on the web, especially in the valley. Conversely, most well-designed sites were marked by a painful lack of performance. In that brew, ambitious design actually suggested a lack of seriousness about engineering. Google’s obsession with tech geekery, visible in details like the Android logo, and the functional but unimaginative language of stripped down simplicity happened to fit both the valley’s DIY self-regard, and an ancient precept in human-computer interaction: That the most user-friendly thing you could do is to make a computer fast, because if it were fast enough, it would hold people’s attention. Faster speeds inevitably made people spend more time at a computer.
This all changed, of course. Computing power eventually became a secondary draw to user experience. That's partly because broadband exploded, making sheer speed less of a selling point. But mobile is what really forced design to center stage. Unlike desktop computing, which took decades to become household mainstays, the iPhone ushered in a new era of invention that was geared toward computing experts and computing novices—from software developers to grandmothers—at the same time. Everyone was learning about mobile, all at once, forcing both engineers and designers to think about usability on unprecedented scales. User experience, once a discipline that evolved at a pace dictated by Apple and Microsoft, was being pushed ahead by every new app that did things just a little bit better.
Google's Material Design →
I'm really excited for Google's new design language. One glaring annoyance that's bugged me since I got my first Android is the design inconsistency of the icons. Another thing that's bugged me is the default Halo theme that feels so cold and lifeless.
Material Design on the other hand looks fun, playful and full of personality. It looks like a joy to use, much like my beloved (and iOS-exclusive) Tweetbot app.
Android fans have always boasted how Android is open. But when it was completely open, Android's lack of design guidance resulted in a chaotic mess of garbage apps that showed very little unity or consistency.
From a user experience standpoint, I'm really glad Google is tightening ship and leading the way for the Android developer community. Google's designers are fantastic and I hope all Android users upgrade to Lollipop soon.