http://theverge.com/2014/6/27/5849272/material-world-how-google-discovered-what-software-is-made-of/in/5606171

Not just it's OS but all visual components of Google's architecture.  "The design team at Google felt the need to come up with a more coherent look and feel that could be applied across all of its products, from Android to Chrome OS to the web. Rather than starting with a palette of colors or a big set of guidelines, they started with a question.  What is software made of?"

In 2012 and 2013, Google embarked on a design initiative called Project Kennedy, which began the process of unifying design across the company. Now, with Material Design, it’s about moving it forward. "As a whole the platform conveys this feeling of polychromacy," Jitkoff says, "it’s colorful in a way that the logo is colorful, it’s simple in a way that the front page is simple."

In 2012 and 2013, Google embarked on a design initiative called Project Kennedy, which began the process of unifying design across the company. Now, with Material Design, it’s about moving it forward. "As a whole the platform conveys this feeling of polychromacy," Jitkoff says, "it’s colorful in a way that the logo is colorful, it’s simple in a way that the front page is simple."

I always felt that iOS was not intuitive and I never really connected with it but I wasn't sure what put me off.  this  dig at the OS hits home to why I didn't ever go with apple anything.  'With a subtle dig at Apple’s iOS and its flying software layers: "We’re not hurtling you through space at high speeds," he says. "We’re not puncturing your hand with invisible, impossible surfaces."

This is a good example of why art majors are finding themselves in higher demand within today's silicon valley ecosphere, most people don't differentiate between the two following concepts."Design is all about finding solutions within constraints," Duarte says, "If there were no constraints, it’s not design — it’s art."

"There’s more ambition behind Material Design than just bringing a consistent look and feel across Google’s software and webpages. It’s bigger than Android L, bigger than Android Wear. It’s about the relationship between the metaphors we use to think about computers and the technologies we use to interact with them"

I feel the following is the most important, if not most difficult necessity in today's internet of things."Wiley points to the multiplicity of input technologies we have available to us today: touchscreens, gestures, voice commands, even Google’s own intelligent algorithms. They all need to combine to give our brains a model of how software works, one that functions across devices to help us intuitively interact with anything we encounter