2018 Material Design Award Winners

Each year, the Material Design Awards honor the product teams that bring Material to life. These best-in-class examples showcase the flexibility of our adaptable design system by making it uniquely their own.

We’re pleased to present the class of 2018, a group of products that creatively employ Material Design across four distinct categories—expression, innovation, experience, and adaptation. The winners were selected from hundreds of open nominations, and will be honored at SPAN Helsinki on 1 November. We hope their work is as inspiring to the community, as it is to us. We’ll continue to evolve and expand Material Design, adding end-to-end capabilities like Material Theming and customization, but we’re most excited to see how you continue to make Material yours.

Congratulations to this year’s Material Design Award winners.

Expression: KptnCook

Brand identity brought to life through the engaging and harmonious use of color, imagery, typography, and motion.

KptnCook’s intimidation-free approach to cooking extends through the app’s engaging, hassle-free design. Step-by-step instructions with images of ingredients and techniques lead users through the cooking process; these detail pages feature a transparent top app bar that references similar touches within the app. The Favorites view features a scannable image list of saved recipes, with branded iconography and type, plus a custom shape for text protection. All these details work with the app’s immersive, full-screen imagery to showcase beautifully executed meals.

“We strongly believe that anyone can cook. Our mission is to simplify the daily dinner decision—and avoid endless scrolling—by giving our users a selection of three recipes each day. Our visual language is clean, simple, and rather subtle.” — Lene Koenig, Visual Designer

Innovation: Lyft

Demonstrated ability to build upon and extend the Material Design system in inspiring new directions.

Lyft recently revamped its app, rethinking fundamental aspects of the backend UX while also adopting and adapting Material Components in impressive and unexpected ways. Bottom sheets and an extended Floating Action Button (FAB) optimize available screen space throughout, while custom color system algorithms ensure accessibility and legibility of their iconic neon-bright hues. Using their own take on Material, Lyft has seamlessly realized a singular brand expression.

“One of our biggest priorities was to create a universal design system that works best for Lyft on all platforms.” — Linda Dong, Design Manager, Core Design

Experience: Simple Habit Meditation

Creative and effective deployment of interaction, navigation, and content in service of an impactful user experience.

Learning how to slow down and de-stress requires an equally tranquil interface; from first tap, Simple Habit Meditation opens up with an easy onboarding experience—which employs color-coded, selectable image cards to support the calming, purposeful navigation. It uses a dark theme effectively, with cool implementation of cards and bottom navigation, branded typography, and subtle motion cues across mobile devices and tablets.

“The app’s simple information architecture and intuitive navigation allow users to quickly and easily discover the right meditation for their particular situation. Positive user actions, such as '‘meditation completes,’are reinforced with rewarding interactions that help people build their positive habit more rapidly, while leaving them delighted by the experience.”

—Valentin Drown, Lead Product Designer

Adaptation: Anchor

Cross-platform design that delivers a consistent experience, with native features and functionality optimized for each device.

Anchor’s DIY podcast tool is impressively buttoned-up, with a seamless flow across platforms and devices. Android and iOS users can record from their phones and find the audio automatically uploaded to the web app. Choice chips clearly delineate and display options for the alignment selection in edit mode, where an extended FAB is anchored to the bottom to allow the action to remain persistent. Nice animations complement this solid cross-functional solution for aspiring broadcasters.

“Anchor uses bright colors, friendly typography, and conversational copy to make sure podcasting is approachable for anyone, even people who’ve never done it before. We use animations and transitions to make our app feel lively, responsive, and fluid.”

— Emmi Hintz, Lead Product Designer

Congrats to all the winners!