I have a love hate relationship with Google's Material 3 design. Because on one hand, it looks really nice. For example, this page you're reading right now is using dynamic color. But on the other hand, I feel like it's trying too hard to be unique, to the point where it becomes annoying. I think the carousel element is one of the best examples of that.
I've always had this opinion, but it didn't strike me on how much of an issue it was until I saw this beautiful concept drawing of Instagram using M3:
Instagram but it's an Android app by Google pic.twitter.com/9OOgEnWi5B
— 👨🏻💻⚡ (@jvepng) November 13, 2024
The biggest thing here is that they feel optimized for desktop, but are instead on mobile. The picture feels so cramped for no reason.
The spec sheet shows there are multiple types of carousels, but all types but one have this problem. Too much space is taken up by other images, when a simple dot indicator could of been used instead. At least the other type which only shows 2 items is a little better.
One of the biggest issues for me is the amount of motion. There is so much parallax to the point it starts to become distracting. And all you can do about this is enable reduce motion for the entire operating system. Parallax would work if only one image is shown at a time, but when 3 are shown it starts to become dizzying.
The problem with Material 3 is that it includes so many elements that would impact a companies branding, so most companies aren't going to implement it as compared to previous versions. There is a reason why the only apps that use Material 3 are Google's apps, and a few nerdy third party ones.
Material 3 is full of good ideas that only really work in screenshots. For example, having all icons on the home screen be the same color. It looks good in screenshots, but it makes quickly finding app icons harder. There is a reason why when Apple released a similar feature, users (who are more likely to appreciate design compared to Windows and Android users who just want things to work) immediately started saying "this is stupid".
I'm excited to see where Material 4 goes, but I hope they stop trying to make the music scrubber look like sperm and focus on how the OS feels instead of looks.