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Android Design

developer.android.com

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41–50 of 143 posts

Re: Android Design

#41

Post by evanw »

Regarding the Design Principles page: http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.h...

I love that they included the ICS home screen's "glass desktop" effect in the "Delight me in surprising ways" section (http://developer.android.com/design/static/content/principle...). It's a completely unimportant feature, but the first time I swiped past the edge of my rightmost homescreen and saw the effect, I appreciated the attention to detail.

Where I disagree is with their "Pictures are faster than words" suggestion. I completely agree that many things are best said with images, but I've had a hard time identifying the function of several features in the icon-driven UI's featured in both ICS and in new Google web redesign. In ICS's Gmail app, I'd understand the words "Mark Unread" much quicker than the "sealed envelope" icon which I had to experimentally discover.

It's also interesting to note that in ICS Gmail, Mark Unread is an icon and Report Spam is text, where in web Gmail, Mark Unread is text and Report Spam is a stop sign.

Re: Android Design

#42

Post by vlokshin »

Simply put, and coming from an Apple fan-boy, this is REALLY nicely done. I honestly think this will significantly improve the usability of the platform as a whole by attracting the right designer/developer talent.

Re: Android Design

#43

Post by amirkhella »

georgechen wrote: post #25

Am I missing something? I'd like to get my hands on the templates, mocks, wirefames, etc. Let me play with those (as a designer) and I'll be able to better follow the specs and guidelines. Note: Microsoft (for once) actually one-up Big G. here. They provide the PSD and fonts for Windows Phone 7 on MSDN + the UX Guidelines. Also, for Apple, 3rd party made all the PSD and templates for them...

I've recently updated Keynotopia templates to include Android ICS UI components for Keynote and PowerPoint (http://keynotopia.com/android-prototyping-templates/)

Re: Android Design

#44

Post by aChrisSmith »

kevinh wrote: post #4

The website felt odd to me. It's clearly aimed at developers, given the subject material, but it felt like it was written as an ad for prospective buyers. It listed a bunch of features and user interface methods that apps should have , but I couldn't find any resource for actually implementing what they suggested, apart from the link to the android developer page at the end.

I think it might be too early to pass judgement. I would hope that over time Google releases sample applications, better widgets, and so on to take care of the boilerplate. (Similar to HTML "grab and go" type sites.)

Re: Android Design

#45

Post by gjulianm »

Pewpewarrows wrote: post #9

This is a long overdue but very well put-together UI and Usability Guide for Android Developers. My only qualm from reading it thus far is the very last section under Navigation [1] regarding System-to-app navigation: "For the Back key, you should make navigation more predictably [sic] by inserting into the task's back stack the complete upward navigation path to the app's topmost screen." No. This piece of advice is…

I think this in an interesting discussion. Sometimes the user presses back to go to the previous screen, sometimes to go to the parent element (i.e., when you're seeing an email and press back to return to your inbox).

For me, the best solution would be make the back button come back to the previous screen, ignoring where they are. So, if you are playing Angry Birds, tap an email notification and then press back, you return to Angry Birds. But, also, in screens in which the user may want to go to the parent element, developers should put a button to go "home". In the email screen, a button to go back to inbox, in the Music app a button to go to the Music app initial screen...

Re: Android Design

#46

Post by f7u12 »

ge0rg wrote: post #10

Utterly worthless. This looks like a web designer on crack had too much time to promote the beauty of the new Android. However, from a developer's point of view this is almost unusable. By not providing the according XML/Java code, we are forced to reimplement everything from scratch, making smaller and larger errors, introducing inconsistency and making the look and feel not quite the same between apps. Then again,…

I found the site by way of an @AndroidDev tweet [1], and I was incredibly frustrated. Their old documentation [2] was completely useless, and this is even worse. Am I supposed to purchase and learn proprietary design tools to develop an effective Android app? This turns me off to the platform as a whole.

[1]: https://twitter.com/#!/AndroidDev/status/157570583800971264

[2]: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/i...

Re: Android Design

#48

Post by romey »

rryan wrote: post #26
Pewpewarrows wrote: post #9

This is a long overdue but very well put-together UI and Usability Guide for Android Developers. My only qualm from reading it thus far is the very last section under Navigation [1] regarding System-to-app navigation: "For the Back key, you should make navigation more predictably [sic] by inserting into the task's back stack the complete upward navigation path to the app's topmost screen." No. This piece of advice is…

This was a huge frustration for me on 2.x. I'm glad they're suggesting that people insert fake activities to fix it. Here's an example -- from the homescreen, click a Music widget. The Music app opens and shows the song I was listening to. I want to go back to the playlist I was playing from so I hit back. Instead, I'm dumped back to my home screen. you have to hit the Google Music icon in the top-left to go back wit…

I disagree. I think the confusion is caused by users not intuitively understanding the context of the android "back". In a web browser, if you click a link to a sub-page on a different domain, you don't expect the back button to take you to the home page of that domain, you expect to go to the previous site you were browsing. Do any android devices have something akin to the right click on the back button in web browsers, that shows the back stack?

Re: Android Design

#49

Post by deniz »

wmf wrote: post #6

Do they have a schedule for when Google's apps will follow these guidelines?

This really appears to be for Android 4.0+. Google's core apps follow these guidelines but Android 2.3 down seems to be left behind.

I'm not sure as an Android developer I'm ready to leave those users behind just yet which means a lot of extra work maintaining 2 different sets of UI code. The action bar is the killer.

Re: Android Design

#50

Post by kefs »

Pewpewarrows wrote: post #9

This is a long overdue but very well put-together UI and Usability Guide for Android Developers. My only qualm from reading it thus far is the very last section under Navigation [1] regarding System-to-app navigation: "For the Back key, you should make navigation more predictably [sic] by inserting into the task's back stack the complete upward navigation path to the app's topmost screen." No. This piece of advice is…

... or users can just be given the option and decide for themselves.

http://i.imgur.com/ym4W4.png

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