Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 144 posts

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#121

Post by watwut »

"My uncharitable interpretation for this class of responses is simple laziness"

That does not make sense. Those designers will not go home sooner for using web. They work how much they work regardless of technology choice. Those who work hard will work hard on both Android and web and those who slack will slack on both. What changes is how much they achieve during their work-time.

"it’s a value judgment on who is worth designing for. [...] I do hope, given tech’s rhetoric about changing the world and disrupting outdated hierarchies, that we don’t really think only those with revenue potential are worth our attention. "

This argument does not make much sense to me. Those are designers working for companies. Both companies and designers gotta pay bills. Even if they do not, owners want to get rich and there is nothing wrong with it. That is what business is.

As for disrupting rhetoric, that one is just a buzzword used to get attention. Getting attention is needed to earn money. Anyone with half a brain know that "disrupting" means either "new" or "has earning potential" these days. By definition, you will disrupt nothing by releasing apps nobody wants to buy

WhatsApp and few other successful apps are outliers and not a norm. They did not become successful by nice design only, they become successful by figuring out which features matter right now for their business.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#122

Post by baldfat »

thomasahle wrote: post #113
yaeger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't checked on Android as a platform in quite a long time but it is amazing to see that things still are exactly where they were when I last checked. Android == Google == Free Software That still seems to be the basic idea many users have. It was always weird to see a platform with such high market share compared to iOS can not even get close to what iOS rakes in as revenue and mobile traffic. If one looks at t…

It seems to me that we have to go more than a year back, since iOS generated more web traffic than android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#De...

There is something going on with iOS and Android web usage.

My daughter used 8 gig of data last month. It meant she watched a lot of Netflix at her college who's Wifi is weak.

Video = More Data not necessarily a good measurement.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#123

Post by bluedino »

youngtaff wrote: post #93
DiabloD3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am. On my Nexus 5. Compared to a iPhone 5s, this runs circles around it. I'm not trying to start a flamewar or anything, but why are iOS devices so slow and clunky, and why is the UI so... fruity? Its just weird.

I am. I've also got an iPad and seriously considered getting a iPhone instead of my Nexus 4 but iOS's poor keyboard i.e. key caps are always uppercase regardless of shift state, it's hunt and peck rather than swype, and the lack of intents were a deal breaker for me.

The key caps on my desktop and laptop are always uppercase regardless of shift state.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#124

Post by Zigurd »

LordIllidan wrote: post #74
Zigurd wrote: post #6

I was able to successfully train a designer to use the Android SDK's tools when appropriate, and check in graphical assets. In preparatory meetings I insisted the designer be in the room with the coders and product managers as I explained how Android is different. I taught them all how to use conditional layouts and how to test apps for good practices by changing font sizes to see if they really are geometry-independ…

I'd be interested in reading more about this - I'd love to show it to some designers I work with. At the moment, I'm struggling to get the designers to acknowledge that Android and iOS need to be designed seperately. iOS designs can look pixel-perfect due to having only 2 resolutions to care about (ok, iPhone 5+ have taller screens, but same width) Android is a whole different story.

This is how I introduce Android to teams that are making their first serious non-game app:

1. How to scale the app across all screen geometries:

   a. Let Android choose the layout from among the alternatives you create for different geometries
   b. This means different numbers of Fragment objects can be displayed
   c. This means different functionality can be available 
   d. This means you have to organize functionality in a hierarchy (for the smallest screens) that can be unfolded and flattened (for the biggest screens)
2. Then I get into Activity and how the code that used to be in activities should be organized into Fragment subclasses, and about top-level layouts.

3. Then I get into Relative Layout and how to make your layouts "stretchy" enough that you don't have to specify a different layout for every combination of size, density, orientation, and text size.

4. Now that the coders and designers understand how they fit together in making a UX that "folds up" and "unfolds" I teach the designers how to check in to the client's repos, and how to edit layouts in Eclipse, so they can be responsible for their own work getting into the project and build and run the app to see how their layouts work.

This is still a vast simplification, leaving out things like Android remote methods and high-level (Intent) IPC and how hat affects UX, and numerous other areas where Android is substantively different from iOS's app environment.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#127

Post by ntlve »

mruniverse wrote: post #59

Most designers I see have iPhones. I think they just like designing for a platform that they like. It's natural. People who like Linux develop for Linux, etc. Why would you do otherwise?

Make more money perhaps, no source on whether or not well designed apps drive more revenue, just a guess.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#128

Post by ryanSrich »

my3681 wrote: post #4

I develop apps for both major mobile platforms, and when I speak with designers and artists about Android and iOS, they overwhelmingly prefer iOS. Since they use iOS devices themselves, it is their go to platform. It is almost always the one they want to work with. Oddly, when I ask them why, the answers are mostly qualitative. It has nothing to do with "reaching the most people" or "getting exposure". It's a simple…

As a designer this is exactly why.

No android phone nor interface is close to the level of what Apple is putting out - both from an experience and product standpoint. This is also the same exact same reason why I purchase all apple products.

I really don't understand the argument of "You're paying more for a lesser product when you buy Apple". Ok - so the hardware isn't as good/powerful, fine, but that's not why I'm buying an Apple product. I'm buying it because of the UX, because of the way the phone feels in my hand, because of the way the keys feel on the keyboard when I press them down, because of how great the applications look and feel when I use them.

If android came out with something that looked and felt great I would certainly consider using it. In fact, I purchased a Samsung Galaxy S3 several years ago when it first came out. The phone was absolute garbage - plastic bevels still had molding pieces around the edges, the unnecessary bloatware (which would have been fine if it was remotely useful) was very poorly designed, and overall the phone felt very light and cheap.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#129

Post by rsynnott »

ryanSrich wrote: post #128
my3681 wrote: post #4

I develop apps for both major mobile platforms, and when I speak with designers and artists about Android and iOS, they overwhelmingly prefer iOS. Since they use iOS devices themselves, it is their go to platform. It is almost always the one they want to work with. Oddly, when I ask them why, the answers are mostly qualitative. It has nothing to do with "reaching the most people" or "getting exposure". It's a simple…

As a designer this is exactly why. No android phone nor interface is close to the level of what Apple is putting out - both from an experience and product standpoint. This is also the same exact same reason why I purchase all apple products. I really don't understand the argument of "You're paying more for a lesser product when you buy Apple". Ok - so the hardware isn't as good/powerful, fine, but that's not why I'm…

> Ok - so the hardware isn't as good/powerful, fine, but that's not why I'm buying an Apple product.

The funny thing is, that's kind of a myth, particularly in phone land. The A7 (the 5S's SoC) had pretty much class-leading performance when it came out, except in highly parallel tasks, and to a large extent it _still does_.

Re: Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

#130

Post by tomelders »

chetanahuja wrote: post #64
andric wrote: post #2

Android doesn’t drive early adoption, so it would make sense to leave it out while you let iOS “take the cake” so to speak, for a while at least. Android, being the dominant platform with a huge mass of people in the early-to-late majority part of the bell curve, makes sense for when you want to scale.

"Android doesn’t drive early adoption" Surely you're going to provide data or some citation to back that huge assertion.

Feel free to refute them with your own evidence.
Post reply on HN