Material 3 Expressive: Better, Easier, Emotional UX
35 comments
·May 13, 2025webprofusion
I feel like this is quite a complex style to implement in terms of layout and animation, especially while still taking into account accessible colors etc, but we'll see.
uxcolumbo
I don't get it.
Their examples are about usability.
So expressive = make things usable?
One of design's main tenets is to make things usable. That's a given.
Also how many users did they test with? And they should caveat what apps this might be suitable for.
This post just feels like more design wankery, using ambiguous words to restate design's core tenets that have been established decades ago.
They could have easily started the post with 'Hey, we made some updates to make Material design more usable and this is how we're doing it.'
andrepd
I wish they were "restating" them. They're not, they're ignoring those principles in favour of vibes design.
eviks
> In many cases, we chose to exceed existing standards for tap target size, color contrast, and other important aspects that can make interfaces easier to use.
So now even more space is wasted, making interfaces harder to use, but yes, the less important metric "how much time does it take on first use to spot a button" will shoot through the roof of you make the button full screen width (10x faster!). Thought it will fail to capture the more important metric of time wasted scrolling since a simple message doesn't fully fit on screen
And of course there are no user customizations to rectify these usability errors...
arp242
> Expressive design makes you feel something. It inspires emotion, communicates function, and helps users achieve their goals.
I sometimes wonder if the people writing this sort of thing really believe what they're writing?
Their case study is mostly just "make buttons that people use a lot stand out". Oh wow! Such emotion! Much feels!
rafaelmn
Especially since it feels so bland and "corpo safe" - the only thing I have feelings about is selling this as expressive :D
andrepd
No but look
> We found a 32% increase in subculture perception, which indicates that expressive design makes a brand feel more relevant and “in-the-know.” We also saw a 34% boost in modernity, making a brand feel fresh and forward-thinking. On top of that, there was a 30% jump in rebelliousness, suggesting that expressive design positions a brand as bold, innovative, and willing to break from convention.
nicce
Also known as marketing. I don’t know why they need it here so much.
jiehong
Underwhelmed by the obvious stated in that article.
3 years to make the simple UI cases bigger and more colourful.
Just use the platform conventions and toolkits, so nobody has to learn UIs that do the same all the time. Let people apply themes. Done.
Do study high density UIs, though, because it’s nice to know how to do that well when needed.
martin_a
Instantly hate that page for changing my cursor. Why do they even do that?
edelhans
The cursor being captured when hovering buttons is the worst UI I've seen in a very long time
jakubmazanec
It looks like "expressive" in this case means "various pastel shades of pink and purple".
saubeidl
Maybe this is just me getting old, but imo Material design peaked at Material 1.
I especially hate the visual noise that they've introduced now - I guess that's the "expressive" part?
boobsbr
> M3 Expressive designs were rated higher across desirability attributes, including “modernity,” “subculture,” and “rebelliousness.”
The more UI "evolves", the more I crave Win98.
AJRF
That image of the send button on email is a great example of design that would pass review, but absolutely sucks.
I feel like iOS has lots of design elements that look good in a screenshot, but are unusable. Share dialogs and the Call Waiting screen in particular on iOS are a masterclass is poor design.
I don't love the aesthetic of Material 3 - but I do align with the goals of making the design more useable.
rkachowski
It feels a lot like "duotones everywhere" - i.e. the hottest trend of 2022
That's a mixed bag.
Have a look at the linked https://m3.material.io/blog/building-with-m3-expressive to get a better impression of what this is about. From the guidelines given there, many parts of the design make sense and will help designs work better - grouping objects properly, be aware of contrast to highlight important elements, more options for good typography (instead of basically none, Android/Material offered nothing by default), helpers for highlighting buttons etc. It's also still simply a good idea to focus on good animations that actually work for the UI, instead of being superfluous baggage, and then to make them feel nice. I'm not saying it's groundbreaking, but it's helpful to have something like this as an official guideline, and be it to reign in rogue designers.
But it's still a flat design, and thus does not properly transport clickability. And their weird approach for the color schemes still leads to an ugly mess, pastel with weird contrasts and color combinations that just are ugly. I haven't seen a proper analysis what's going on there, but it sucks. Also, this whole design system is very far from leading to a consistent system, but that seems to be a non-goal, just some standard component building blocks are there to foster familiarity.
Better than nothing and probably a step up, but M3E doesn't convince me totally so far.