Google’s Material Design (wikipedia) is much more widely-adopted across OSes/Flutter/the web (see how many websites have that dropshadow topbar and ≡?); Microsoft’s Fluent (wikipedia) is Windows-first, but is usable anywhere.
Both are based on responding to user actions. Fluent uses lightup acrylic (translucent) canvases (e.g. hover? border glowy.)
while Google’s Material uses paper-esque whitespace, navbars, dropshadows, and round corners. (e.g. scrolling? dropshadow appears on nav)
Think Microsoft Teams vs. Google Drive.
They’re both full-fledged but Material You is way more common judging by places such as the F-Droid ecosystem on Android. As for which is “better”, Material You supposedly has better colorscheme flexibility since it ‘wants’ to adapt to e.g. user wallpapers. But other than that it’s really just preference (or whether relevant tooling exists :P). I know some devs use Material You for a predictable, unified look across Android apps, while others bend them to their will to reduce animations or whatnot.
If you’re designing something, make sure you keep your own self in the mix too. Breezy Weather uses Material Design, but it’s more customized to have a unique feel than, say, TrackerControl (which also uses Material).
Disclosure: I’ve done very little UI/UX.
Google’s Material Design (wikipedia) is much more widely-adopted across OSes/Flutter/the web (see how many websites have that dropshadow topbar and ≡?); Microsoft’s Fluent (wikipedia) is Windows-first, but is usable anywhere.
Both are based on responding to user actions. Fluent uses lightup acrylic (translucent) canvases (e.g. hover? border glowy.)
while Google’s Material uses paper-esque whitespace, navbars, dropshadows, and round corners. (e.g. scrolling? dropshadow appears on nav)
Think Microsoft Teams vs. Google Drive.
They’re both full-fledged but Material You is way more common judging by places such as the F-Droid ecosystem on Android. As for which is “better”, Material You supposedly has better colorscheme flexibility since it ‘wants’ to adapt to e.g. user wallpapers. But other than that it’s really just preference (or whether relevant tooling exists :P). I know some devs use Material You for a predictable, unified look across Android apps, while others bend them to their will to reduce animations or whatnot.
If you’re designing something, make sure you keep your own self in the mix too. Breezy Weather uses Material Design, but it’s more customized to have a unique feel than, say, TrackerControl (which also uses Material).