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Design is not a matter of personal taste. It either achieves the goals of the designer or it doesn't. It can be evaluated on a purely objective basis.No it cannot. First, because nobody cares about the goals of the designer -- it's all about the goals and satisfaction of the users.
(E.g. if the designer is in love with themselves and find everything they do great, then any crap design they've made that they're fine with, can be said to "satisfy their goals" and by this logic is "objectively good").
If you meant "satisfies the designer's stated goals when it comes to actual use" (e.g. make the UI intuitive, convenient, powerful, etc") then notice how all those words are still subjective, and the various hard objective design laws (Fitts law, etc) are not enough to cover the entirety of a design.
And of course all those are about the UX. A design can have great UX but still look like crap in the aesthetics department -- and this is also quite subjective.
>When someone reacts so negatively to material design that they won't use it, that is a failure. There's no matter of opinion there.
That's (someone's rejection) is the definition of subjective though.
So much for "design success is objective". If you meant "refusal to use can be objectively measured" sure, but that doesn't say much about the design.
Said person could be a bizarro outlier that prefers some way worse design for example.
