I think it is a matter of personal taste. I personally don't like the material design. I enjoy the thin typography and design of iOS, and finding myself enjoying the experience of "Messages" in iOS at the moment. The "tapback" feature letting me heart/thumbs up some message is elegantly done IMO. And the knowledge that the receiver is also getting it the way I intended is great.
Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. It can be evaluated on a purely objective basis. You're talking about style, which is about expression more than outcomes, and is received in a very personal way.
When someone reacts so negatively to material design that they won't use it, that is a failure. There's no matter of opinion there. The purpose of the design work is to make it usable.
>Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. It can be evaluated on a purely objective basis.
No it cannot. First, because nobody cares about the goals of the designer -- it's all about the goals and satisfaction of the users.
(E.g. if the designer is in love with themselves and find everything they do great, then any crap design they've made that they're fine with, can be said to "satisfy their goals" and by this logic is "objectively good").
If you meant "satisfies the designer's stated goals when it comes to actual use" (e.g. make the UI intuitive, convenient, powerful, etc") then notice how all those words are still subjective, and the various hard objective design laws (Fitts law, etc) are not enough to cover the entirety of a design.
And of course all those are about the UX. A design can have great UX but still look like crap in the aesthetics department -- and this is also quite subjective.
>When someone reacts so negatively to material design that they won't use it, that is a failure. There's no matter of opinion there.
That's (someone's rejection) is the definition of subjective though.
So much for "design success is objective". If you meant "refusal to use can be objectively measured" sure, but that doesn't say much about the design.
Said person could be a bizarro outlier that prefers some way worse design for example.
"Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. "
But, what if I like/dislike the designers goals? In other words, if the designer painstakingly crafts a detail I don't care about, does it mean it is a good design?
Not trying to prove any point. Just trying to understand your perspective.
> In other words, if the designer painstakingly crafts a detail I don't care about, does it mean it is a good design?
If that detail helps them achieve their desired business outcomes, then yes. You might not like the product, but the design work is good. If you are trying to weed your garden, a Tesla is not useful to you. That doesn't mean it's a bad design, it just wasn't designed for that particular need.
All design comes from a specific set of values, and can only be evaluated within the context of those values. The notion of universal design is a fiction. It's the remnant of the colonialist mindset, where there is a presumption of universal values.
>Sounds like you're describing Art more than Design.
And even at that, parent goes for a controversial, "if it fits the goals of the artist it is fine" view of art, which is hardly some universally accepted standard for art.
Dictionaries usually lag consensus among practitioners about what a field is really about. What is software engineering? We update our answer year after year, but Oxford English only does every decade at best.
