Google isn’t shy about recognizing the talents of others, in fact they seem to relish it as they are now announcing the winners of the 2016 Material Design Awards, a series of awards designed to highlight the design skills of developers with outstanding apps that carry a spectacular user interface and style, and not just apps which look great, but apps which are able to utilize Google’s Material Design guidelines and standards better than any other applications out there. These are apps which set the bar, which other apps should aspire to in the design department.
With Google announcing this year’s winners, this would mark the second year that Google has ended up handing out awards for Material Design implementation in apps as they initially held the first Material Design awards last year, and isn’t too unlike Google’s recent Google Play Indie Games Festival, which recognized the excellence of indie game developers in a handful of different categories. For the second annual Awards, Google has laid out five different categories for best use of Material Design in their apps, including Brand Infusion, Charming Engagement, Creative Navigation, Expressive Layouts, and Focused Efficiency. Google notes that each app highlights a best in class specific implementation of Material Design in their apps, and that they will be featured at the SPAN LA conference next week on October 27th.
Starting things off is the winner for best use of Brand Infusion. Asana: Team Tasks & Projects, is aimed at helping teams of people be more productive during their work day, and as Google states, Asan is able to do this by making everything accessible and easy to get to yet they’re still able to keep the app filled with functionality, and stylish to boot. When it comes to the winner for the best use of Charming Engagement, Fabulous – Motivate Me takes was selected, the app which was built to help people stay motivated and form habits of making positive choices, all with the aim of helping people reach their goals.
Google’s choice for creative navigation goes to C Channel, a video platform application that offers up video content in various categories including food, fashion, and more. It allows for content to be both submitted in by users, as well as for content that is studio created, and packs everything into a neat design which makes use of navigation aspect by making it possible to jump clip to clip in a seamless manner. The winner for the Expressive Layouts award is Kitchen Stories. This is a cooking app which makes easy to scan through its collection of recipes, no matter the size and the layout of the screen that the app is being viewed on. Each piece of the app was designed with a thoughtful placement and has a very flowy navigation feel to it, but allows for home cooks to only touch the screen as much as they have to. Last, but certainly not least is the winner for the best use of efficiency, which is Airbnb. Google highlights that Airbnb’s design kept users in mind every step of the way, and this shows through by users being able to pinpoint what they want to do in the app and get it done quickly.
