Well, frankly there are tons of apps where I have no idea what the + button do until I click it. Many times, it's not what I would think it would do.
How down the button and it'll say what it does.
Re:Material Design Color Tool
by ocdtrekkie on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @09:31AM
(#14087515)
As someone who helps seniors use their computers, if Material is designed to minimize confusion for lay users, Material is a complete failure. I once tried to help someone through the new Material Google Contacts app, and eventually gave up and sent them back to Comcast.net.
Simple is not necessarily better when making UI. A '+' symbol will always be worse than 'Add contact'.
In much the same vein, Material's "paper" concepts are designed to minimise confusion for lay users - i.e. "What does clicking the '+' button do?". Once you standardise the symbols and appearance of certain widgets, it removes the "have to think about it" barrier. You could argue that EVERYONE who uses a Windows computer knows what the [x] on the top right corner of every window does.
And like Windows, I think you will eventually see developers modify and extend Material to make applications stand apart from each other while maintaining some sort of consistency of the UI.
But like windows, you will eventually get to the stage that developers corrupt simple things like checkboxes to operate in non logical ways (e.g. as radio buttons), or you end up with a screen where every conceivable square millimetre of the window is a 'hot point' that does something when you touch/click on it! (I/m looking at you Excel etc.)