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Android can be beautiful

androidniceties.tumblr.com

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Re: Android can be beautiful

#21

Post by pkulak »

dpark wrote: post #14

These seem really inconsistent to me. Feedly looks almost like a metro (sorry, "Windows 8-style") app. doubleTwist looks like an iOS app, as do Square Card Reader and Tumblr. Reddit Sync Pro seems to fit in with Google+, so I assume that's what modern Android apps are supposed to look like. None of these general aesthetics are bad, but the inconsistency seems to be an issue. (Actually, a few of them do look bad to me…

Android doesn't have as much "drag and drop" as iOS. For example, you can't add a tab bar at the bottom, nav bar at the top, table view in the middle, set the text of each cell in the table view, and have an app that looks complete and looks like a stock Apple app. If you do that with Android you're just going to have a flat black screen with lines of text crammed next to each other with 0px of spacing. You really have to do _all_ your own design with Android. That tends to lead to more inconsistency, but more originality as well. Besides, when each app takes up all available real estate, do you really need consistency between apps? Distinctive styles are just a nice reminder of what app you're in.

Re: Android can be beautiful

#25

Post by Caballera »

micheljansen wrote: post #2

Some of these are really nice. I'm curious how many of these are Android-specific though. Path looks pretty similar on iOS and so do FourSquare, Flipboard etc. Which of these are examples of good mobile design that holds itself on various platforms (iOS, Android etc.) and which are unique to Android?

Most of them look like their iOS counterparts. For example Catch Note's 'home' screen looks the same on Android as it does on iOS. Same with Flight Track Free and Feedly. Pintrest is more or less the same, with a slightly adjusted menu.

Re: Android can be beautiful

#26

Post by koffiezet »

The problem with the Android UI isn't (only) the lack of beauty, it's the lack of consistency, style and attention to detail. Things like included/used fonts (although the default iOS notes app also fails horribly here), placement of back buttons. And that's exactly one of the things that disturb me in the Android UI, things like the 'back' functionality, which is utterly confusing. In iOS the 'back' button is always on the same location AND tells you where you're going back to. Android has a dedicated button, and it surprised me more than enough where it was taking me back to.

So yes, Android could use a better/cleaner visual style, but that's not it's biggest problem. Also, if a new visual style would be adopted, it should be universal. Right now it's a mess of apps trying to do their own thing because the default style is ugly, and these examples demonstrate that perfectly... Android 4 has shown some improvement but I still don't like it.

There are also quite a few iOS apps that don't necessarily respect the general look&feel of iOS, but some of them succeed in having a distinct style without clashing badly with the rest of the interface. Hell, Google showed that it is capable of doing just this, just look at the Google+ and the new YouTube app, they are pretty neat.

I think Android UI designers should use iPhones and Windows 7/8 phones as their daily device, or switch at least once every week. Then they'd see what's wrong, what irritates them about every OS and find a way around some of the moronic decisions were made in some of these OS's, and all are guilty of this to some extend. Android at this moment however gets the crown in usability WTF's.

Disclaimer: I own an iPhone and iPad, but mainly develop for Android/BB/WinMobile.

Re: Android can be beautiful

#29

Post by lallouz »

Of course Android can be beautiful if you showcase a few screen shots created by some very talented designers. After spending the last 4 years as an Android developer, its clear that the platform falls short in two places at the intersection of UX and UI. I've worked with some of the best designers and they always produced beautiful assets and screens, but we were always left making important UX decisions that caused inconsistency with other apps. The "beauty" that many users come to appreciate with iOS and Metro, is the cross app consistency, experience and cohesion with the operating system itself. Even apps produced by Google have a tremendously wide gap in consistency. The other major problem is development decisions made (and allowed by the platform) by software engineers. More than a few of the apps in this list do unthinkable things like processing data on the UI thread or having terrible offline experiences. This can turn a beautifully designed app into a terrible app very quickly.

It's important to distinguish "looks pretty" and "beautiful".

Re: Android can be beautiful

#30

Post by niho »

pkulak wrote: post #21
dpark wrote: post #14

These seem really inconsistent to me. Feedly looks almost like a metro (sorry, "Windows 8-style") app. doubleTwist looks like an iOS app, as do Square Card Reader and Tumblr. Reddit Sync Pro seems to fit in with Google+, so I assume that's what modern Android apps are supposed to look like. None of these general aesthetics are bad, but the inconsistency seems to be an issue. (Actually, a few of them do look bad to me…

Android doesn't have as much "drag and drop" as iOS. For example, you can't add a tab bar at the bottom, nav bar at the top, table view in the middle, set the text of each cell in the table view, and have an app that looks complete and looks like a stock Apple app. If you do that with Android you're just going to have a flat black screen with lines of text crammed next to each other with 0px of spacing. You really ha…

It's not (only) about the consistency of visual style. It's about the the consistency of interaction.
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