Ahead of this month’s announcement, Google accidentally published a blog post detailing the thinking and research behind Material 3 Expressive.
The full blog post was saved by the Wayback Machine (with the images that don’t appear in the archive version appearing below). Here are the key takeaways:
Material 3 Expressive is Google’s so-called “bold new direction for design” that is the “most-researched update to Google’s design system, ever.” Google wants apps to “move beyond ‘clean’ and ‘boring’ designs to create interfaces that connect with people on an emotional level.” Besides the full name, it’s also referred to as “M3 Expressive” or just “expressive design.”
Material 3 Expressive was born out of research—not in the 41 shades of blue kind of way, which delegated design decisions to data, but in a collaborative inquiry spanning research, design, and engineering.
In 2022, the Material Design team started asking: “Why were all these apps looking so similar? So boring? Wasn’t there room to dial up the feeling?”
Over the past three years, we’ve explored the implications of this conversation, iterating through dozens of rounds of design and research to find the next evolution of Material Design. Through 46 separate research studies with hundreds of designs, and more than 18,000 participants from around the world, we’ve dialed-in a system that’s both beautiful and highly usable. Material 3 Expressive principles are rooted in solid research and built on longstanding usability best practices, so designers can confidently use these new components and principles, knowing they’re building something that will be easy to use and that people can connect with.
Those research studies included:
- Eye tracking: Analyzing where users focused their attention
- Surveys and focus groups: Gauging emotional responses to different designs
- Experiments: Gathering sen
