I want my l—k and f—l

Last year at Google I/O, I had a trollish question to ask Matias Duarte at the design session as to whether or not Android would ever get a human interface guidelines document to provide formal design patterns for Android app designers.

I ended up not asking it because by the end of the session it was fairly clear to me that:

• Matias Duarte knows what he’s doing
• Major changes were coming in Ice Cream Sandwich
• Putting out a style guide that would have to be completely changed within a few months would be silly

This is that mythical unicorn style guide. Very happy to see it show up. Will manufacturers follow it? I doubt it. Will app developers follow it? I doubt it. But at least it shows that they have the head in the right place.