Disclosure: I’ve done very little UI/UX.

Google’s Material Design (wikipedia) is much more widely-adopted across OSes/Flutter/the web (see how many websites have that dropshadow topbar and ≡?); Microsoft’s Fluent (wikipedia) is Windows-first, but is usable anywhere.

Both are based on responding to user actions. Fluent uses lightup acrylic (translucent) canvases (e.g. hover? border glowy.)

while Google’s Material uses paper-esque whitespace, navbars, dropshadows, and round corners. (e.g. scrolling? dropshadow appears on nav)

Think Microsoft Teams vs. Google Drive.

They’re both full-fledged but Material You is way more common judging by places such as the F-Droid ecosystem on Android. As for which is “better”, Material You supposedly has better colorscheme flexibility since it ‘wants’ to adapt to e.g. user wallpapers. But other than that it’s really just preference (or whether relevant tooling exists :P). I know some devs use Material You for a predictable, unified look across Android apps, while others bend them to their will to reduce animations or whatnot.

If you’re designing something, make sure you keep your own self in the mix too. Breezy Weather uses Material Design, but it’s more customized to have a unique feel than, say, TrackerControl (which also uses Material).

I mean, it’s incredibly subjective.

Personally I’m more a fan of material, but it isn’t without it’s faults.

both are f’n ugly as hell and unusable fucking eye targeting missile

We used Fluent at a previous job. My recco? Don’t use fluent.

I feel like the team ended up having to work around it for anything with any amount of complexity.

IceWM’s default theme, clearly

Material Design is quite pleasant to my eyes in both light and dark mode. I don’t like Fluent Design as much. It’s too busy with the translucency.

“Which paint is better: eggshell white or oyster white?”

Apple’s skeuomorphism was the best looking for me. Now everything is boring flat. I hate flat design, hope it goes extinct ASAP.

I personally prefer Material You

Better?

Are you sure they aren’t overused? 😉

Remind what a design language is?

Is this like a brand guideline of specific colors and rules to follow? Or like a prestyled UI widget pack?

That’s a subjective question. I personally like Material You more, but Fluent is good too

Big fan of Material