Passionate, determined and curious, 3 youngsters – Adrien, Armand and Brody are celebrating their success after reaching a milestone of 18000+ active members on “Material Design Apps” Google+ community. And community gets bigger every day.
We did an interview with highly successful developers like Sergio Villasenor. He has managed to secure business with luxury brands in the 5 to 70 million dollar revenue sector. You can read more about his Minder app here on TechCrunch or InstantCuts startup here.
However, this time we decided to take different approach and to talk with way less known, but relatively eminent individuals . What do we mean by eminent? Well, if you are launching a new Android app featuring Google’s Material Design or a website based on the same Google’s design guidelines, most likely you will share it on Google+… And by far, “Material Design Apps” is the largest and most active community on Google+ dedicated to Google’s Material Design, which would help you to reach your targeted audience with ease. Surely, no spammers! We were curious: who are those people running this community? And here is our discovery.
Nowadays youngsters are often stereotyped as only wanting things that are simple, different and bold. They’re also often viewed as being fearless about technology and constantly connected to some form of social media. Although this might be partially true, it’s an oversimplification and letting this steer your product design or social media marketing can lead to unsuccessful outcomes.
We did some research, and we’ve tried to post on variety of Google+ Material Design oriented groups. Most of the groups are lack of logic, full of spam posts and irrelevant content. However, the only active and engaging – the “Material Design Apps” group. Spot on! No surprise why these young fellows went so far compared to others. How they did it and where they are heading to? Here are the answers :
1.How did the idea of starting “Material Design Apps” community came to you?
Adrien: It actually came from a friend’s idea. He opened soon as he knew about material design. he called “MATERIAL DESIGN APP” in caps for fun because he thought this wouldn’t go anywhere. and here we are now with more than 18.000 members! its amazing!
Armand: I initially met Adrien via another community and when he introduced me to this one, I instantly fell in love. Great community.
Brody: one day i was scrolling threw my feed and someone shared this community to the public, and i instantly clicked join and then met adrien with his amazing prototypes and then he introduced me to all the other good people at this community and became friends with them and eventually became a mod.
2.What was your inspiration?
Adrien: well our idea was that material design would become popular some day in the future. so it would be cool to have a community with all the apps, and reference point to all of them.
Armand: I don’t really have an inspiration for this community as I was not one of the original founders. But having a place for apps to be shared using the latest Material Design guidelines has helped a lot of developers show off their app and have a unique exposure.
Brody: i just loved material design since i flashed the very first developer preview of android lollipop and from there on out i’ve been in with all the new updated on lollipop but (more importantly) latest material design guidelines
3.Why did you choose Google+ social platform instead of a website?
Adrien:I Always used google+ as my main social media site, i always loved it. google+ has amazing communities out there and a wide variety of them which google+ is optimized for. and there many other advantages other google+ then by example creating website which would cost.
Armand: We chose it because we wanted everyone to contribute to sharing apps, not like a blog post where specific apps are added by a select amount of writers. By making it using Google+ and not a website, we not only have a wider amount of apps shared, but we also use the platform most Android power users who care about the latest and greatest (Material Design apps) use.
Brody: even know i didn’t start this community but i still think it was started on google plus for a good reason, because google plus focuses more on android user then IOS, and android (5.0x) is home of material design
4.Are you solely running community or it has multiple moderators?
Adrien: I like when its a duo owner community because it’s more efficient and practical especially when one is sleeping and one isn’t
Armand: A duo owner community is best in my opinion. Not everything is put on the shoulders of just one person. And not only that, we also have a few moderators to help fight spam (oh those Whatsapp posts had us dying, one post was deleted and five minutes later the same app was posted by another person) and other posts not related to Material Design.
Brody: I am just a mod who manages the MD community along with my friends
5.How many members were part of the Material Design Apps community in the beginning? How long it took to reach 18k+ members and become the largest Material Design community on Google Plus
Adrien: we never expected to grow that fast! especially when we were at 10,000 members the community rate blew up! before we had some competition with other community ( we were 2nd at the time), and amazingly it only took us 6 months!
Armand: At first I believe it only started out with two people, two moderators. And then when it blew up we needed more and within a year, we now have 5 people which are 2 owners and 3 moderators.
Brody: I don’t really know because i joined long after it was already started, but i’m very proud that it reached such a high leave of people
6.As many predicted, Google’s Material Design will be one of the biggest web design trends in 2015/16. Do you agree with that?
Adrien: yup! I totally agree, here’s why: material design is for everybody it’s easy to use and understand and at the same time beautiful.
Armand: Yes I agree. It is a big refresh that will make everyone talk about it, I mean come on it is one of Google’s products. Everyone talks about Google sooner or later. The design is simple, intuitive, and made for everyone with the paper layers ideas in mind. Very easy to use and very colorful and organized. This is where Android will shine.
Brody: yes i do 110% everyone who knows anything about android should know about material design, if u don’t, well you’re missing out big time!!
7.How is Material Design Apps community different than other communities focused on Google’s Material Design?
Adrien: As Armand said! we try to be fun and active for better user experience, but there always rules you need to respect, but there fairly simple so just act normal, be cool! and enjoy material design.
Armand: We are a more lenient and fun community, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have rules. Basically if you stay inline with the rules, which are pretty easy to follow, you won’t get in trouble. We have had this community since the very dawn of MD, so naturally being one of the first, we became the largest because of all the new traffic MD has caused.
Brody: this community is managed by amazing people that will keep the community running longer
8.What are your plans to ensure community growth and engage new members to join?
Adrien: We implemented daily material design app which is awesome. its basically everyday we post a material designed app. i have more ideas coming soon! to boost the community
Armand: As Adrien stated, we added the daily MD apps section where all of the moderators and owners each post one new app per day. That was a big success. We have more under our sleeve so stay tuned.
Brody: Brody recently joined the community so he can’t say much about it (-Adrien)
Follow Material Design Apps on Google+:
https://plus.google.com/communities/116821616252548925340
The Team
Adrien zier (owner) :
https://plus.google.com/+AdrienZier/about
Armand Agopian (owner) :
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110183172030290491634/about
Brody Over (moderator) :
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110571274826146550188/about
#materialdesign #apps #Android #inspiration #
