Material Components / Kunal Patel Q&A

John Maeda: So there’s a lot of life-size things here in this exhibition. How does that feel for you overall as more of a screen-based designer?

Kunal Patel: Scale as a method for creating emphasis. Right? It’s interesting to see what blowing something up to a larger-than-life scale does to make you pay attention to the building blocks of an application that most of the time we don’t think about.

JM: What components are on display here? And why are components important?

KP: The components on display here are some of the most commonly used elements of applications. So things like text fields for input or navigation drawer tabs to help people get around an application. Or lists and cards to display content for all the things you would encounter in most of the applications you use.

As for why components are important, it’s because as the fundamental building blocks of applications, we don’t want to put users in a position where they’re constantly relearning how to use the things they’re going to interact with every day. We want there to be standards for ease-of-use and for consistency across applications. They speed up user understanding…