Google is due to unveil its new “Material 3 Expressive” design system at I/O 2025 this month, but someone at the company accidentally published a blog post about it this week. It was promptly deleted but the Wayback Machine already archived it and the quick-thinking folks at 9to5Google saved the images as well.
The blog post itself was all about the research that went into the new design system for Android 16. Google spent three years carrying out various studies and experiments with over 18,000 participants, including:
- Eye tracking to see where people focus their attention
- Surveys and focus groups to gather opinions and impressions
- Experiments to discover preferences
- Usability tests to see how quickly people could learn to use the interface
As you can guess from the naming, Google is going for an “expressive” design with this new system, which is all about making people “feel something” when they interact with the UI. According to Google’s research, this is both popular with younger people and easy to use for older people.
These images from the blog illustrate the difference between expressive design and non-expressive design.
The Gmail app mockup is the most striking to me, it does feel like email app designs are still stuck in the past “just because.” I want to see the images I attach and work with a design that actually feels like it was made for a phone.
Big text, bigger main buttons, floating toolbars, and “bold use of shape and color” are some of the main ideas behind Material 3 Expressive — but the images Google posted aren’t necessarily what you’ll end up with on your phone.
First of all, they’re currently only concept designs — no actual product exists yet. Secondly, when manufacturers like Samsung or Nothing make an Android phone, they make their own UI designs which all look a little different.
Now that we’ve seen lots of images and learned plenty about the research process, all that’s left is to find out exactly how (and when) Material 3 Expressive will be implemented. Hopefully, I/O 2025 will answer those questions.
