Material Design vs One UI
マテリアルデザイン / ワンUI
Material Design comes from Google UI and One UI from Platform Screen Languages. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Material Design
A design system that reduces the physical metaphor of paper and ink to rules of shadow and overlap. Elements are given elevation, shadow states the hierarchy, and motion carries physical cause and effect. It became the model for UI design being distributed as a system.
One UI
Samsung's design language for Galaxy devices. It cuts the screen at the height a thumb reaches most easily and calls the part above that the viewing area and the part below the interaction area, so titles sit high while buttons, tabs and dialogs are gathered low. Content is collected into containers with heavily rounded corners, the ground is either white or true black, and a single blue carries every accent.
| Material Design | One UI | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2014– | 2018– |
| Family | Google UI | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Hierarchy and shadow expressed by elevation / Surfaces overlapping like sheets of paper / Motion that shows cause and effect / A standardized unit of spacing | The upper part of the screen holds nothing but a title and open space, with no touchable control in it / Text and images are collected into card shaped containers with strongly rounded corners / The title bar has only two states, expanded and collapsed, and never rests anywhere in between / In the dark theme the ground goes to true black and only the blue accent sits on top of it |
| Best used for | Distributing consistent behavior across several platforms · Communicating the depth of a hierarchy visually | Pulling every control to the lower half of a large phone screen so one thumb can reach all of them · Rebuilding a list screen as a set of rounded containers instead of rows divided by rules |
| Type | Build the hierarchy from one type family and separate levels by weight and size. | Let the title fill the height of the upper area and open a wide gap between it and body text. The collapsed title may be a shorter, different string from the expanded one. |
| Composition | Place elements on a grid of multiples of 8 and standardize the spacing. | Split the screen at thumb reach. Keep only the title and open space above, and move everything that is pressed, switched or confirmed below it. Never let the side margins fall under 24dp. |
| Material | Give surfaces elevation and show front and back by the density of the shadow. | Round corners generously, roughly 12dp to 26dp. Choose one of two grounds, #fafafa or #000000, restrict the accent to a single blue, and bring no other hue onto the screen. |
| Caution | Do not add shadow as decoration. The moment the elevation rules break, the hierarchy is telling a lie. | Putting a pressable control into the viewing area destroys the reason for splitting the screen at all, and what is left is just a layout with a lot of empty space at the top. |