I don’t think anybody ever asked about the soul,” he answers in a very matter-of-fact way, “This was my question, it was the question I challenged the team with.” “I think people had very clear and concrete visions about Android and its strategy, but from a holistic design perspective — not just the look and feel — what does it mean in your life? Why are we doing the things that we’re trying to do. That was the question I wanted to ask.” This question sparked deep user studies at Google on mobile phone use, what Matias described as “Serious baseline ethnographic research which hadn’t happened before.
Matias Duarte on the philosophy of Android
When I worked on Square, we used to get a lot of feedback from Google that our Android app felt “too iOS-ish.” It’s true that Square’s Android app is pretty much a slavish clone of its iPhone app, but I always thought that criticism was slightly disingenuous since Google’s designers seemed, when pressed, to have a difficult time articulating what “Android-ey” means in the context of design. It’s encouraging that the Android team is becoming more aware of the need to express a coherent design ethos to developers.
That said, I think the fact that Google kicked off its quest to find Android’s soul with “serious baseline ethnographic research” really highlights what will always make Android and iOS very different beasts.
(via petervidani)