Design is in the details: A case study for designing digital assistants

Design Is in the DetailsA case study for designing digital assistantsIt’s raining, and I just missed my bus—there’s no way I’m going to be at work for the 9am meeting I scheduled. I pick up my phone and say, “Hey Google, reschedule my next meeting to 10am.” That should give me enough time…Illustration by Kimberly HarveyRecently, the G Suite team announced...

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How to Find Device Metrics for Any Screen

Calculate the right measurements for design across devicesNew devices are always coming online, offering new formats, screen sizes, and pixel densities that you’ll want your product to accommodate. If Googling doesn’t give you the numbers you need, or you just want to show off your math skills, here’s a relatively easy way to determine the relevant...

May 2020

Everyday Color Theory

A poetic crash course on the history of colorA version of this essay was presented at SPAN 2019 during the “Hue & Glue: Hands-On Color Theory” workshop. Read to the end to find instructions for an exercise that explores the relationship between color and light.Throughout the essay, the accompanying images are scenes from the short film Everyday...

Apr 2020

People + AI Guidebook

The Google PAIR team is very proud to announce the launch of the People + AI Guidebook!https://pair.withgoogle.comThis Guidebook will help you build human-centered AI products. It will enable you to avoid common mistakes, design excellent experiences, and focus on people as you build AI-driven applications.It was written for UXers and product managers...

Feb 2020

Towards Goal-Centric Design

To be truly humane and helpful, technology needs to see the world the same way people doFrom daily routines to big life events, technology is deeply woven into the texture of our lives. But even though technology gets easier to use with every passing day, it’s still falling short of what people need. And that’s because the way technology organizes the...

Feb 2020

Implementing motion

Implementing MotionAn introduction to Material Design’s new motion system and transition patternsWhen I claimed that motion design doesn’t have to be hard I figured it would raise some eyebrows. Sneaking the word “design” into the title was my way of sidestepping the elephant in the room: implementing motion sure is hard. After all, what good are slick...

Feb 2020

What’s Next for Material Design’s Theming Tools

Material Design retired the Material Theme Editor. The Material Plugin will continue to serve as a way to upload and sync Sketch files with GallerySince launching Material Theming in 2018, we’ve learned a lot about what designers and developers need in order to customize Material Components’ typography, color, and shape. We’ve heard members of the Material...

Feb 2020

Material Design Components for Android 1.1.0 Are Now Available

Material Theming, new components, dark theme support, and moreWe are excited to announce the release of Material Design Components (MDC) 1.1.0! A host of exciting new features have been added along with many bug fixes and accessibility improvements. Get the rundown below.Be sure to check out the release notes. If you’re using MDC for the first time,...

Feb 2020

Using Material Density on the Web

A hands-on guide to applying default, comfortable, and compact density to your applicationA common issue for any front-end developer is layout and spacing. How dense should your user interface be? Can a design system really account for all the different layouts in a product? Material is here to help.The latest update to our density guidelines includes...

Jan 2020

How Human Interaction is Shaping the Future of Technology

As a species, we humans have been talking to each other for a long time. It’s only very recently that we’ve started to talk to machines. In fact, if you think of human speech as having been around for 1 day, then talking computers have been around for just 1 millisecond. This recent development might sound like a flash in the pan, but it actually attests...

Jan 2020