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Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

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Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#11

Post by BadLogInMyAss »

batista wrote: post #8
tysonjennings wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may have been true at one time that most Android apps were just ugly ports of iphone apps but in my experience that is no longer the case. Devs are taking the platform seriously and it its really coming into its own. Iphone apps on the other hand are starting to look like just mashups of each other all with the same generic looking animations and U X elements. New apps on my Xoom tend to be exciting and original.…

> Iphone apps on the other hand are starting to look like just mashups of each other all with the same generic looking animations and U X elements. Yes, if you do that you are "just mashups of each other", if you don't you are "inconsistent". Damned if you do, damned if you don't. > New apps on my Xoom tend to be exciting and original. My iPad? More of the same. That's just in the superficial sense --looking differen…

Good point, although the glacial pace of Apple's refinement and their total lack of user customization options cripples their platform aesthetically and functionally.

This is a bigger problem on the Apple desktop, which still forces the late-'80s/early-'90s inverse color scheme on you all day. Squinting at black text on a glaring white screen results from the failed attempt to make the screen an analog for a piece of paper. This fails because paper doesn't emit light. It's a bad idea left over from the "desktop publishing" era.

On any other GUI (certainly Windows for 20 years), you can simply set up a color scheme that makes sense. Competent applications then take on that scheme automatically.

Note that this is not a call for the return of the asinine "skinning" fad of 10 years ago. We are seeing that in mobile apps, which eschew well designed standard controls in favor of undiscoverable gimmicks.

Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#12

Post by abruzzi »

tysonjennings wrote: post #6
ryguytilidie wrote: post #3

What an awful, misleading title. A) Apple is innovating the user experience. The author even specifically says that Apple is far ahead in the game, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that this is precisely because of past innovation. B) It's not even necessarily Apple who have to innovate. There are tons of developers writing libraries for iOS that make UX and user experiences better. Tons of developers meaning more dev…

It may have been true at one time that most Android apps were just ugly ports of iphone apps but in my experience that is no longer the case. Devs are taking the platform seriously and it its really coming into its own. Iphone apps on the other hand are starting to look like just mashups of each other all with the same generic looking animations and U X elements. New apps on my Xoom tend to be exciting and original.…

>Iphone apps on the other hand are starting to look like just mashups of each other all with the same generic looking animations and U X elements. New apps on my Xoom tend to be exciting and original. My iPad? More of the same.

Design consistancy, standard UI widgets and behavior are all good things. What excites me on my iPhone/iPad is apps that do new cool things, not apps that try to create new UI behaviors and looks.

Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#13

Post by fpgeek »

cooldeal wrote: post #9
tysonjennings wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may have been true at one time that most Android apps were just ugly ports of iphone apps but in my experience that is no longer the case. Devs are taking the platform seriously and it its really coming into its own. Iphone apps on the other hand are starting to look like just mashups of each other all with the same generic looking animations and U X elements. New apps on my Xoom tend to be exciting and original.…

>New apps on my Xoom tend to be exciting and original. My iPad? More of the same. Can you name a few so that I can try them on my tablet? Also would be helpful if you can point me to a place where the good and new tablet apps are showcased(not just the Play store's Tablet picks) since most apps seem to be phone apps that look terrible on a tablet.

Tablified Market. They do the hard work of going through the Android Market to find the apps that actually work well on Android tablets. More on them here:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402037,00.asp

A must-have resource for any Android tablet owner.

Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#15

Post by jpxxx »

This is pointless nonsense. What's demonstrated is a special effects video of a reworked Android home screen with a bunch of whizzy mystery-gesture interactions - the exact same kind of interactions that takes the longest for iOS users catch on to. (make a folder, edit homepage, notification center, camera-from-lock screen, caps lock)

And it's shipping for a subset of a boutique phone line sometime this summer in Japan only. Next!

Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#16

Post by fpgeek »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #3

What an awful, misleading title. A) Apple is innovating the user experience. The author even specifically says that Apple is far ahead in the game, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that this is precisely because of past innovation. B) It's not even necessarily Apple who have to innovate. There are tons of developers writing libraries for iOS that make UX and user experiences better. Tons of developers meaning more dev…

Honestly, as an experienced Android user I try to shy away from the apps that are recent iPhone ports.

They can look pretty, but they usually make basic mistakes like not supporting the Share intent correctly, not taking advantage of Google/other account integration and not integrating with external applications (e.g. browsers). Those developers can think they're bringing "good design" to Android, but, by not paying attention to what's different, they're often producing apps that are borderline unusable.

Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#17

Post by msellout »

10dpd wrote: post #10

Any time I read an article that references the 41 shades of blue experiment in a negative context, it turns me right off the rest of the article.

Yeah, it's all a question of if you have the time, resources, and most importantly a good sample.

Testing 41 shades only sounds bad because we typically have far too many design variables relative to the population of users. In those cases, we need someone with a priori knowledge of good design to limit the space we explore. When you can make billions of observations, you can start exploring experimentally much more of the design space.

Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#18

Post by gurkendoktor »

Okay, only semi on-topic, but I'm curious. Am I the only one who finds this interface interesting, but unbearably ugly? Mostly, the boxes around icons and the form factor of the phone itself. I usually appreciate them all - iOS, Android 4, QNX and the Lumia 800 - but this is hate at first sight. I can't even explain why.

Anyone else? I feel weird, like someone who is about to give Inception a rating of 2 on IMDb.

Re: Feel UX: If Apple Won't Innovate The User Experience, Android Designers Will

#20

Post by radley »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #18

Okay, only semi on-topic, but I'm curious. Am I the only one who finds this interface interesting, but unbearably ugly? Mostly, the boxes around icons and the form factor of the phone itself. I usually appreciate them all - iOS, Android 4, QNX and the Lumia 800 - but this is hate at first sight. I can't even explain why. Anyone else? I feel weird, like someone who is about to give Inception a rating of 2 on IMDb.

It's grey, it's flat, and I honestly think they're iOS users trying to do an Android OS UI. There's a lot of mistakes in there and not much flexibility (which is in very high demand on the platform).

But at least it's not the 4x4 grid we've seen for 5 years.

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