Unboxing a New Collaboration

When a Google customer selects a particular phone in a color they like, this choice is a form of self-expression, and Google designers want the software to be able to reflect that same choice, digitally. The strong positive reaction to Material You demonstrated that design plays a critical role in how people personalize their devices, whether phones, tablets, or watches.

Google’s entry into the hardware space is relatively recent, and the designers have been hyperfocused on producing high-quality products. Their breakthroughs soon provided a next-level premium feel, inspiring interface designers to match this elevated standard in the digital design details inside the hardware. Their goal: Not only to create visually impressive designs, but also to meet functional needs using color, typography, movement, and shape moments that add personality and reinforce feelings like ease, joy, and fun.

Successful design delivers a striking first impression that is outperformed by perfect functionality. When thoughtfully applied, color, size, and arrangements can help users focus on the most important elements of the design. By bringing more color, richness, and depth to every surface, form becomes a function that brings a personal experience to each user.

As the collaboration between the disciplines grew, interface designers shared the new capabilities of a dynamic digital color system with industrial designers, who in turn shared their process for choosing device colors.

Hardware color, material, and finish selection can take seven to eight months, and includes a consideration of a very wide sweep of the economic and political landscape as well as global trends, and then an unpacking of gut reactions…

   Why am I responding to this?

   Why is this interesting?

   Why is this weird?

When the industrial designers land on any potential color, they have to analyze its feasibility. Some colors just can’t be reproduced accurately in certain materials.

The final colors were identified by keywords that represent the color’s mood and personality, meant to correspond to the inclinations of the person who might choose that color. Iris, for example, is a soft purple theme that embodies a youthful, dream-like serenity.

The interface designers brought this attention to physical nuance and color impact into their own digital explorations, continuing to share their findings: how colors change in different contexts, when a color no longer aligned with how it was supposed to be perceived, and whether or not a color context stayed true to the feeling behind it. They used this observational process as a compass to cohesively translate colors across all hard (physical) and soft (digital) surfaces.

As technical as calibrating design details like color and shapes can be, a lot of the work came down to the designers talking about their feelings together.

The designers had to do two things at once: showcase a comprehensive theme that evokes a feeling and retain the functions that communicate important signals. Something like the use of the color red, which can evoke references as disparate as emergency warnings or icons for ending a call, required a lot of conversations around how to avoid confusion.

To add to the challenge, designers had to consider countless configurations across various screen sizes and on wildly different device types. They had to uncover new ways to balance how much of which color or shape or movement should be on the screen to maintain the right amount of feeling and function.

After running that gauntlet, the designers were able to get more specific and critical about their choices, continuing the iterative process of finding the exact balance of hues, vibrance, and contrasts to make the themes both beautiful and functional.

Weeks were spent adjusting, fine-tuning, and testing functionality. The turning point during this time was when the teams converged again in a remarkable design studio filled with top-secret device prototypes and a library of interesting objects collected over the years. Not only did it help to observe the performance of their digital design decisions working on the actual prototypes, it also helped to see the software and hardware come together among incredibly inspiring products (positioned on the wall to form a kind of color gradient). Those seemingly unrelated design objects were a lifeline for the industrial designers, who said…

   The answer is in this room, we just need to find it.

After months of sharing color codes and shape logic digitally, the process came to life physically in that room. When the interaction designers saw their digital colors changing with the light in the studio, it was a completely different, and enriching, experience. They started adjusting the digital colors together in real time, comparing the color performance to the color on the back of the device in their hands – adding a bit of juice here, and more “squish” there. It was organic and playful, like cooking.

The cross-pollination between the design teams continued when the interface designers explained how design details change between displays. The legibility and effectiveness of certain shapes and colors change dramatically from a phone to a watch. Additionally, the new dome-shaped screen of the Pixel Watch, a first of its kind, comes with unique requirements that the designers hadn’t faced before: the graphics live so close to the surface of this domed glass display, and to have a noticeable boundary where the screen ends and the hardware begins would ruin that magic.

Personal smart wearable devices are already a complex space to design for. When new designers are onboarded, it takes extra time to get oriented to designing for such a small visual field that must be seen and understood quickly at an arm's length. This means scaling things, simplifying shapes, and being even more selective with color. Something that’s legible on a larger phone screen might be too faint or too crowded on a watch. This leaves very few design options to achieve a visually satisfying, functionally legible watch interface.

It’s easy to want to prioritize cool graphics without considering their impact on function. But what makes design most successful is functionality. Personal expression is about being understood. When someone expresses themselves out in the world, they want to be heard and recognized by others. Within the parameters of a digital device, they want the interface to understand their intent.

Through this collaboration, the designers came to understand that digital interfaces are where design extends and deepens the first impression of a new device in a lasting way. And to achieve that, they had to consider every last detail.

Like an unexpected pattern lining a coat, a surprise pocket, or a zipper in a contrasting palette, thoughtful design decisions show care and consideration. They reassure you that you’re in good hands.

As for what comes next – getting to this new standard of working together in person involved moving mountains, but the designers are now enthusiastic about continuing the evolution of hardware and software together.

Learn more about all the 2025 launches, including when they’ll be available – and sign up for product updates on the Google Store.