Pixelated - Material 3 Expressive and you

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Welcome to episode 53 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, we talk about the upcoming Material 3 Expressive redesign. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Read more Leak: How and why Google made Material 3 Expressive The Material 3 Expressive redesign of Google Clock leaks out [Gallery] Android 15 May update rolling out: Pixel microphone, Bluetooth fixes Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek The Buzz Podcast Space Explored Rapid Unscheduled Discussions Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or to our producer.

So I mean, we've seen something really interesting this last couple of days. Google basically, in sort of Googly fashion, I guess, inadvertently leaked a lot of the material free expressive design, some of the concept, some of the theories behind it. I want to hear your thoughts on this because I know you have strong opinions on user interface design anyway, and I know that you love material design in general. But tell me what you think so far. And then let's get into their details and discuss. what was discussed effectively.

So, yeah, what we got specifically was the research that went into material tree expressive. It's Google, they said around 2020, they started asking the question why all material apps look the same. And from there, they decided to make something that's more expressive at a high level. So what we have is the research. We don't have the components yet. We don't know. We don't have the updated components yet. We just have the thinking.

But as part of this leaked blog post that went up very briefly, but got saved nonetheless, we have screen. We have some vendors showing off possible designs. We have the philosophy going in. And basically it's this. It's, I think that what Google is at a very high level, I think Google is hoping for less uniformity for UIs that are a bit more obvious. I think that's the initial goal.

Again, we just have the thinking. We don't have the principles about the design language. So, yeah, that's where we're at right now. we have a pretty good idea of what it entails. Do you think that, I'm going to say in air quotes, the thinking behind it is a little bit, and I'm going to use a term, I'm going to use a word contrived,

because I think sometimes we get the, we sometimes will have, at the end of the day, I know that we're discussing the fact that a lot of material applications start to look the same, but when you give people guidelines, people are going to just err on the side of caution, and stick within those guidelines.

Do you think this is the first time where they basically thought, huh, we kind of, we kind of, there's a perception on Android that the applications are not quite as high quality as the R&IOS. And a lot of that is to do with the intangibles, not the elements of the application,

the things that, the feel, and maybe that's the word, the terminology expressive. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here. I just feel like there is sometimes a little bit of a misconception

that Android applications don't feel or look or operate in the same way they potentially do on iOS. And a lot of that is to derive from the fact that developers maybe just stick within the bounds of what they're told to do or what frameworks are available. I don't know. Do you think that's along the right lines? I think that's a little bit silly to think like that. No, I think it's, I think it comes down to a lot of, I do still feel that iOS has the indie app advantage in terms of more, one off or so

a small team developers making apps and I think I'd venture to say that most people that most people on Android they are using apps from big companies. They use a lot of Google apps they use a lot of apps and companies that make

that have a cross-platform. These are just big companies where they're just the big companies making apps in that large company sense versus I would wager that on iOS there are more people, still it's maybe not everybody, but there's more people making one-off applications making in the applications. And I think in the applications, they're more likely to push the boundaries of, they're trying more unique things versus, again, the big apps that I would say I'm a bit more standardized.

I think that's the distinction I'd put. And to that end, I think Google's material U apps so far, well, we're at the end of the line for them. But they're all so consistent. Let's take a recent example, Google Keep and Google Tas, recently. updated with proper material three redesigns and the biggest

aspect is changing they had they had bottom bars but now they all use a fab a floating action button in the corner and in a lot of sense

those apps are identical they work the same I think there's quite a few examples of that across Google's apps and I think the intention here with material three expressive

is to break that out a bit more to make UIs that are more specific to the function and purpose of the application. Yeah, I think that's the distinction. I mean, I'm hoping, I definitely agree with you there in that respect. I do hope that looking into it a little bit more, if we look at like, I mean, I hate bringing up iOS and Android all the time, but we have this situation whereby, and you alluded to it very briefly there, that on iOS you do need a little bit more.

to stand out because the level of polish is probably a few, well, I mean, it is a few steps higher than it is on Android for the most part, apart from some of those big app developers. And I do wonder if this is a first move by Google to kind of almost give developers the opportunity to add that level of polish or almost challenge them to do so maybe. I don't know. I don't understand the terminology for expressive because I don't necessarily have it quite yet. I think it's a very strange way doing it. Yeah, I haven't quite, I'm not quite there yet, but I mean, did we, is this, is this Google's almost realization that material you might have failed a little bit in some respects in terms of like, it didn't give people the true, the true design that maybe it probably promised out of the box.

I don't know, I don't, maybe, again, I feel like I'm thinking out loud a little bit. It's, again, I've, I've said is, I'm referring to this as material 3.5, basically. Google itself, they're keeping Material 3 is still in the name of Material 3 expressive. That's one thing. But I,

it's, again, it's what we saw, and this is important to note, what we saw is a lot of concepts. It's, it's, it's not,

it's not the final. These aren't, won't be the final. These are not, these, these aren't Google specific art teams. This isn't Gmail. This isn't whatever.

They're not making. This isn't their final thing. So they're far from the point where they're ready to ship this. And I guess the big question that we have is how soon everything will start shipping, especially in the context of Android 16 coming. soon in next month. So that's indeed a question that we have. I do think some of the concepts do look very striking and very interesting, like most

concepts will. I wonder if any, we'll see any people just take, take the ball and run with it, as it were, because obviously there's sometimes you get these conceptual applications and it never comes to fruition, right? That's the whole point. But there is some really interesting concepts. Like, obviously the website. website that was, was that archive, by the way, back machine was, it showed a really neat alarm

application very, very briefly with some very, obviously very different visually standout ways to enable alarms. Like, I think does that detract a little bit too much from potentially the usability? Because I think at the end of the day, we do we just want usability more than visuals. Visuals are a secondary component within the usability tree, I guess it is. Like, does it come a point in which there's overcomplication

for the sake of over complication here? Like, I just want to rack your brain in it like what you think. I think some of them look great. Some of them I'm questioning them. There's definitely an element of like fonts and styles that are completely mismatched. Yeah, and I think that's the intention.

It's not this uniform, man. it's i'm curious as always well we're just speaking about the clock example over the weekend we had a leak about uh what material uh the material to the expressive redesign of google clock and it looks nothing like these concepts obviously as i said earlier these aren't uniform base on nowhere any of the final thing but uh the clock redesign we had is keeps this same basic layout of what we have today and it's sort of a drastic departure I think in that week which I think is a bit more final than these renders obviously

they show the trend is towards simple making things very obvious like very large buttons, fourth buttons with buttons with text instead of icons like how you stop a stopwatch or you rap, it literally says the word stop rather than using an icon. So there is, in one sense, icons are more universal in that you don't need to translate it. I want to interject there actually,

because there is something that I think, as I've definitely, I mean, obviously I'm a show my age again here, and I show me age nearly every podcast. Do you think there has come a point in which some of the iconography that we've used for traditional desktop paradigms mostly and then has been switched over to mobile, I wonder if this is a pushback against the fact that there is a generation of people that have grown up on smartphones and grown up on tablets

and have never really, in the grand scheme of things, understand the reasoning behind certain iconography for user interfaces, i.e. files the save icon being a disc. thought people. And certain things like that, I do wonder if this is a deeper level. That's a good point. Yeah, I wonder if,

I wonder if there's some element of that because like, you could, I mean, obviously it's a little bit different for Google's alarm options. And I kind of question some of the decisions in terms of that full width buttons.

But I guess from an accessibility standpoint, it makes sense as well. All of this seems really, really like the theory that Google has laid out is very, very, I mean, it's simplified. they're probably their true intentions.

And I guess we can read into it a little bit more. Like, do you genuinely think it makes a big deal of difference to someone who's going to have a huge start button and a huge stop button? I don't think it's going to make much difference to me because I don't really use a stopwatch that often on my phone. But how is this going to translate to bigger screens? Is it going to take up an even larger area of the display? Like, there's a lot of questions that I have about it.

And is it, I mean, with those applications, are very functional anyway. I guess the functions don't get touched, but yeah, I mean, it's thrown up more questions, to be quite honestly to me, than anything else.

Yeah, a ton of questions. It's, I don't know. Again, we need to see the actual principles about, and we need to see

how strict slash uniform Google is about, but this car cap is so far best bet, and it's not drastically different. It's, I think the thing that struck me about the material three expressive renders that we have, these app concepts,

is how they're trying to very much re-architect layouts. Like this email, there was an example of an email compose screen with a very large send button. It looks nice at a high level, me, but maybe that's just because it's different from what we have today. But, like, this very big send button, and I know, it's, again, I think so much of this

comes down to actually using it, which is, can be said about a lot of things, of course, but I wonder if, I'd say, I think it's a given that things get toned down when it actually ships in apps, but I wonder, expressive design, there's Google,

and the patonic idea they want, I think is you to experiment with app layouts to change things from how the existing structures that we've had for years and years. But I wonder how much experimentation app developers are really going to do at the end of the day.

And I'm not sure if that's an indictment of it. Again, we don't really know enough the concepts, the principles, the components to really make a final call. But, um, it really comes down to like the actual day-to-day stuff and whether what's actually acceptable

for design. Yeah, no, I mean going back to the to the email client option, I do wonder if this signposts that we're going to see some big changes in Google's first part of applications. Like I think, I don't think that Google would throw out all of that work that's been done and all the analysis. And I'm sure they do lots and lots of. I think it's, It's as it's as familiarity. There's just an expectation of how things work. And I don't know how much they're going to walk the boat at the end of day. Do you think it's, I mean, my first thought is if Google goes ahead and does rock the boat and just says, we'll go for it, I get the impression they would try that with applications that don't necessarily have the same amount of state.

There's not as much at stake. So, for instance, my first thought was Google Arts and Culture application. They can definitely try it with those kind of applications which are seen as, I mean, they're not even secondary, rather. They're probably like a real tertiary addition to Google's first party application library. And in some ways, it almost feels like it isn't a first party application. I mean, I guess, I guess there's a, there's almost like a do what we say in some respects. or here's our idea of what an application would look like on our platform,

but we can't do this because we have billions of users of Gmail and suddenly overnight they might switch to another platform. But it's exciting to see. It's exciting to see. Yeah, I think the one component we have is this floating bottom bar. It's a very traditional component. And we've seen it Google chat, but I think the one discussion you've had is, okay so it floats you get to see the background edge to edge apps where you get to shine

but what are you really getting out of it not being edged of the bottom bar not going all the way you'll maybe seeing at best an additional line of text underneath this bottom bar and above the system nav bar pill how much are you really getting from that how much will people appreciate how much has it really changed the overall experience. I think those are some questions we're going to come across as we as we start seeing

material three expressive in apps. So I don't know. It's it's exciting in that when we see new things, but I wonder if apps that do go to this

full redesign route, rather we'll see a correction, a course correction sooner than later, but I don't know, some of these apps, some of these concepts, they look fun. And I don't think you can say that with the current apps that we have,

or maybe that's because we're so used to them. There's a funness to them, vibrancy, but at the same time, it's the day, once you subject things to the day-to-dayness of it, I wonder how

how much whimsy you really want from your applications? 100%. No, 100%. I think whimsy is one of those things that maybe Google has been aiming for with expressive. I think the idea that expressive to me, they probably need to showcase that in animations a little bit better. I think, obviously, we're only seeing static images.

I think animations are where a lot of people generally see ground and say that iOS animations are, probably top tier elite level. I think with, if these concepts are being carried over to what we potentially see in Android 16.1, 16.2, whatever ends up being, I think there's going to be a real shift in just, and I don't want to say stagnated because that's definitely not true.

I think that obviously we very much want to see lots of changes in the OS that we use because we go to the endth degree and we scrutinize every single little thing. I mean, probably more so than is necessary at times, or so it feels. But I think if Google is laying out this groundwork now and effectively showcasing these concepts, I want to see that, like I say, I want to see them in action. I don't want to just see a flat screen, screenshots. I think that animation is such a huge component within mobile OSs, and obviously you have high refresh rate screens.

I do wonder, like you alluded to it just a moment ago, regards to the floating windows. I wonder if that just adds another element of almost area of animation. So, for instance, you have a floating window, you scroll up. You're seeing that big album art in one of the, we'll leave it in the show notes, so you can go check these out. You can almost see the album art move. You can see maybe some parallax scroll or that kind of thing.

I do, I do, I'm, I didn't think I had any interest in what material three expressive would bring because I thought it'd be so, I mean, it will. be heavily develop a focus, but I was so not ready for potentially big visual changes that will affect how we use our phones in the next few years. Whether or not we get it at this level remains to be seen. I do agree with you that we're probably not going to see things thrown out over the next 12 months or so. But yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes. I think whether or not whether or not other people out there are happy to see it as well. I'm not so sure.

I think a lot of people definitely like consistency with their mobile OSs and we get lots of complaints about the simplest things. Oh, they've moved the save button. For instance, I can think the biggest one, a recent example is the Gemini icon and the user icon in the Gmail top search bar, is it? And if you switch between a workspace account and a personal, it switches and you can end up tapping things,

as long as there's consistency I think that's the main thing. Yeah, but at the same time, I think one thing they should, one, with this big redesign, I think they should probably take the opportunity to be more focused on bottom, yeah, one-handed usage,

like placing everything at the bottom of the screen like that. think that could be an opportunity. Like, again, let's take the email thing, for example. Like, they move the send button basically just above your keyboard instead of it being in the top, very top right corner of your screen. Stuff like that, I think there's an example for them to redesign. If they're forcing apps to undergo this transition, I think this could be a big

opportunities for one-handed design, all that stuff. So I think that could be a plus. But I don't see how whether this is how much Google, I think in an ideal world, Google, with all design languages, I guess, in an ideal world, a new design language equals developers taking the time, deleting the entire apps, to change basic layouts, all that. I don't think that really happened at Material 3. I think you still have a bottom bar.

A bottom bar will be at the bottom of the screen. I think you still have fabs. You still have... I don't think this will read to a massive rethink of how apps will work by most developers. That's always a bit unfortunate. fortunate to say, but I think the practicality is

I mean, outside of Google apps, where do you see Material 3? Mastodon is updated. The app that we, pocketcast is just the app we use so much. They didn't, they didn't even update the bottom bar to be the new pill-shaped

design. And I guess this is an evergreen complaint, but you they have their own design language. Google can't even get YouTube to update their apps, even if it's as simple as the bottom ball, because they have their own design language, and what they're prioritizing is a cross-platform consistency

with iOS, with the web, with TVs. So that's, if Google can't get YouTube to rethink the stuff, even on the basic level, it kind of undercuts the pitch developers, and that's always unfortunate. Yeah, I mean, that's a fantastic, point, I do think it's very much a case of if you're a developer out there and I'm sure

anyone out there who is a developer, you probably don't want necessarily... They have other priorities. Yeah, you have other priorities. You want something that's functional and you use a and you're happy to use it. Yeah, the thing with... Yeah, features and work on them... The views are so disruptive. Users might expect you to update your apps, but like a big redesign of this scale,

it cuts into them adding new features, time for adding new features. It, like, changes the yearly developer development cycle, whatever. They can either add these, rethink their app, or even a more basic level update these components, or they could add new features for users. And I think they really have to decide what's worth it. Well, it's worth it.

Yeah, I do agree as well. I think I wonder if there's going to be some element of some developers not wanting to create an application that almost looks like, I mean, they said a lot of absolute boring and similar. There is going to be a lot of people who just use these off-the-shelf components when we get to see them eventually. And then they all start to feel samey as a result of that. So, yeah, I think there's probably complaints on either side of the fence.

But I'm excited to see where it goes. I hope that obviously we have some sessions, or there are some sessions planned at I.O. I wonder if we'll get some more details of this ahead of in the Android show and then ahead of I.O., as it were. I think it's going to we're definitely going to take well follow it closely and and be very interesting in it and I think a lot of people again if their OS is not developing at the same in the visual elements where they want it to then they're going to hope their

applications are as well because it almost gives them an update within an update if that makes sense but yeah I agree with you think developers are not going to potentially push this too drastically to begin with yeah that's that's material through expressive it was an interesting little almost semi-leak, but yeah, let's get into some, let's get in some of the things that are happening ahead of I. Google has done this really weird thing past a couple of days. I know we always talk about Gemini updates here, but they've done a Gemini 2.5 Io edition, which I don't really understand that, but they're claiming that this has a lot of coding upgrades, which again, that I kind of understand. Like, what do you think the reason

behind this is, why do you think they've done this just before IOs? Is this an entire it into iOS, as it was. What do you think of the reason for that is? I think it's just the nature of these AI models with the industry moving at such a breakneck speed. If they have something ready, they push it out. They're an active competition with the entire field, to say the least. And yeah, so I think they take this as an opportunity to, if they're ready to push, if everything, has been flying. they're going to push it. And so I think they frame this as a pre-IOTES.

And hopefully that means there'll be more consumer-facing stuff. Like we got the theme, the Gemini-Reed shared teams such as personal, proactive, and powerful. It's, I don't think. The models will always get better. I think that's a given in the state of how there's still time, there's still room for all these to improve. I think the most, the more important thing about I.O.

is seeing how Google takes these powerful models and they apply it to products. And this talk about making Gemini more personal, more proactive, more powerful, I think that's, I think we'll see rest of model announcements at I.O. and more of how these things are going to be applied to the products, to the flagship Gemini app, and how we are going to start to see them in our day-to-day lives. I mean, again, I do still find it strange that they did beforehand. I do agree with you that they're pushing it just ahead of an event

kind of does build some sort of hype, and if it's ready, it's ready. And yeah, hopefully we just get to learn a little bit more about it. I figured we would have even more Gemini again, as we did last year at I.O. It does strike me strange, but yeah, I guess it makes sense when you put it in that context. I'm not someone who keeps abreast of every single AI, decision, AI, change, AI function. But I must say I've been using Jim. Yeah, I've been using Gemini a lot more recently. I don't know if you've tried out VEO.

I know we talked a little bit about briefly on the podcast before. It's kind of fun to play around with. I don't really know what the use case would be. How are you feeling about the 720P resolution? You can definitely tell. I wasn't expecting. Yeah. You can tell.

Yeah. It is very strange to look to view a 720P image on a above 1080p screen, which obviously a lot of modern smartphones are now. I think in a text message it's going to be fine or like an email attachment maybe you send to somebody. but again, I feel like these feel like throw away little bite-sized chunks of of video that you could potentially use. There's no sound on them either, so that's always a bit weird sending a soundless video,

I think, as someone who shoots video day-to-day. Yeah, it's a confusing one. Hopefully we get to see some more cool stuff with regards to video and image generation and stuff. I'm still on the fence with it, but I do find it, I find it impressive, if a little scary at times. I do wonder where it ends up. I hope Google puts more guardrails up,

especially as they made that mistake with Pixel Studio. But, yeah, Gemini, super... It felt like this is one of those things that was like a little bit of a surprise, but at the same time, yeah, when you put in the context before, it does make sense. I think heading into I.O.

in regards to Gemini Appetries, they're more widely rolling out native image editing, which is kind of cool. I know you haven't had a chance to use it yet. But it's this idea you can make edits with prompts, the natural language. It's all the Google Photos thing that they try, like, reimagined with. That was definitely one of the earlier features that's not based on the latest models.

That should probably get an update down the road eventually to the Gemini approach. But yeah, it's, I think going, heading into Gemini, they're clearing out the basics. for recent iPad app this week. They just also this week they rolled out home screen widgets for Android. So again, they're like V-O-2, that's actively rolling out.

They have the image generation models. To me, they seem to be clearing the deck of getting the basics out. And again, this is sort of a mini, I guess a mini-IRO preview, but I think

I think they've caught up with the others in terms of what the other AI apps and models offer. So what I'm really hoping for going into I.O. is them to show the future. I don't to start having discussions and criticisms of the future rather than this basic. It's wild how things become tables to take so quickly. Like image generation just two years ago,

that was state of the art that wowed people. But I think we're probably past the point where it's just table stakes to people. And I want to see what a more personal Gemini looks like, one that uses your context in the biggest, in a more comprehensive way than extensions slash Gemini apps today. So yeah, I want problems of the future. I mean, the future aside, I want to talk about one more thing as well before we shoot off.

I think we have seen this week, if you don't already, you haven't already checked your device. I mean, you probably should have done by now. You should have the OTA for the May update. If you have a pixel six and newer, there's a few fixes in there. We usually talk about Android releases in the future, but this is one of those ones that kind of like consolidates. And I think this is potentially the final Android 15 update, save any game-breaking bugs that have to be pushed out to Android-15-only devices at sort of the future. They talked a big game about hitting the June timeline. So I think if they miss June and they do one more 15 update, that kind of looks bad because they've been talking a big game about accelerating this Android-16-to-Recycle.

So fingers very much crossed on next month. We'll be talking about the stable release. And in terms of Android 16, I want to get some thoughts from you from this. What do you think Android, sorry, Android 15, so I don't know why I'm saying 116. It's on my brain. What do you think, at Android 15, we've had not even a full year with this release. No. It didn't really change the game in terms of like what we're doing with our smartphones, specifically on pixel phones.

what do you think what yeah like it definitely felt more like Android 14.5 and then that was potentially yeah 13.5 in and of itself like do you think that like I think we're at a point now where Android 15 really speaks for itself it's very much very mature it's like material you probably is very mature very ready for anything it doesn't there's no real major game breaking bugs with Android 15 it doesn't feel really feel like there's too much missing and I guess that's maybe why we've been a little bit disappointed with Android 16 beta releases. I'm kind of hoping we get a bit of a teaser during the Android show for what 16 might bring to the table because, yeah, it just feels like when these big major functionalities are now

all tied within what Gemini might do, linking back to what we said just a moment ago. But yeah, if you pour one out for 115, I mean, it's still going to run. You're still going to be able to use Android 15 for long time to come. But, yeah, that's basically it as far as Android. 15 updates are concerned. It's, yeah, it's 116 all the way down,

all the way down now, rightly or wrongly, but yeah, interesting time. We have lots of things coming up. We have just so much to digest ahead of I.

And then we have a really busy I.O. So, yeah, I'm excited. I don't sound it. I sound tired, but that's because there's so much to do. We're in the long hole.

We're in the long haul. We're always in it for a long haul. Yeah, we're always in for a long haul. but yeah I just want to say thanks for joining me up now. I know that was a super quick one today. Hopefully everybody out there enjoyed our little talk through material through expressive,

even though we've expressed our opinions on it and what we're hopefully going to see in future. But yeah, thanks guys for listening, and I will speak to you soon. Bye.