Google has some of the worst UIs in the tech industry. Materials Design is not good. Google Plus is so bloated with JS that it wouldn't run on my netbook with 4 Gb of RAM. The animations and "cute" easings make me feel uncomfortable whenever I open a Google product. Gmail is only tolerable when loaded through Thunderbird.
Google does well when they stick to the Craig's List school of graphic design. If G+ looked like Craig's List and had a good API, it would have done much better. One of their mistakes is that they are trying to be innovative in an area that they have never been good at (design). It would be better to be very conservative with design and focus on being innovative in their strong areas (e.g., data).
Constructive feedback: get rid of the animations, stop cropping profile photos into circles, and go much lighter on the JavaScript, abandon Materials Design and model everything off the Google homepage: think "information not animation."
Google does well when they stick to the Craig's List school of graphic design. If G+ looked like Craig's List and had a good API, it would have done much better. One of their mistakes is that they are trying to be innovative in an area that they have never been good at (design). It would be better to be very conservative with design and focus on being innovative in their strong areas (e.g., data).
Constructive feedback: get rid of the animations, stop cropping profile photos into circles, and go much lighter on the JavaScript, abandon Materials Design and model everything off the Google homepage: think "information not animation."