making your ui look good on android
DESCRIPTION
My talk at Barcamp Bangalore 11 about "How to Make Your UI Look Good on Android". I talked about some really bad UI and how you can make avoid making those kind of UI and instead make more mobile and user friendly UITRANSCRIPT
Who am I
Saurabh Minni Developer at Intuit India Work for TurboTax SnapTax for Android Switched to Android after 5 years in
desktop world. Developer of
Auto Complaint Bangalore ( Also for Mumbai)Barcamp Bangalore AppNavkar Mantra and others
Where can I be found
Twitter - @the100rabh http://the100rabh.blogspot.com http://100rabh.com https://market.android.com/developer?p
ub=100rabh
Some comments about Android UI Its unpolished compared to iPhone Android still very rough Android is only for geeks
Are all the comments true ?
The truth is…
Many of the Android apps are indeed unpolished
Want some proof ???
Why does it happen ??
No punishment for bad UI Often devs translate their experience
from desktop to mobile Lack of support from UX Community
What can you do…
Make good Android Apps
Some simple tips…
Skip the menu, embrace actionbar
Avoid menu means, all menus
Use Quick Action bar
Tabs are another possible junkyard
View flow to the rescue
You tell me whats wrong here
Bring in some gestures
Pull to refresh
Endless List
Crowd the view and suffocate
Govinda or Amitabh style
Use standard buttons
In case you need help with buttons, head to Android Asset Studio http://android-ui-utils.googlecode.com/hg/asset-studio/dist/index.html
iPhone App Design to Android Result
An iPhone App running on AndroidAndroid user feel alienatedAndroid user feel being treated 2nd class
citizens Finally an app which is super crappy
Use gestures where you can
Some things to understand Mobile is mobile Real estate is costly Gestures and interaction styles are
radically different.SwipeDragPinch relatedTouch
Some 3rd party libraries for you
http://code.google.com/p/android-wheel/ http://actionbarsherlock.com/ https://github.com/pakerfeldt/android-vie
wflow
https://github.com/chrisbanes/Android-PullToRefresh
http://commonsware.com/cwac