Android Design Philosophy (or the lack thereof)

Might just be a matter of personal taste, but I like it. I think the web model of design works fine. Survival of the fittest has done pretty well in history. Cream will rise to the top (MySpace vs. Facebook), standards will populate, and the experimentation allowed without a HIG leads to a more interesting, and over time, better experience. Even right now, I don't use a single ugly Android app. Sure, the average app may look like a car wreck, but 90% of everything is crud.<p>I'd rather have the ones with talent experiment so the best get better than enforce guidelines so everything is mediocre.

<i>“Instead, I offer the web. Here there’s beautiful examples of very customized, very different feeling websites.” </i><p>I think Duarte has the right idea, but I think it overlooks something very important: It's really hard to make a great looking website. It takes a lot of design skill, graphic art work, and lots of experience with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.<p>Where Android is failing is providing a way for new developers with little design experience to make great looking apps that fit in with the rest of the OS. They should be providing awesome built-in UI objects and containers that provide great look and feel.<p>If a developer wants to go their own way and make their app look totally different, they don't <i>have</i> to use the built-in UI elements.<p>They should provide a solid foundation for anyone to make great looking apps, but not <i>require</i> that it be used, or even make the framework extensible and flexible.<p>I've been looking at the WebOS SDK recently and it only takes a few lines of JavaScript to build nice looking apps because all the components are provided. You can still make your own custom components if you want to. Layout is done with various built-in layout components with nice options. The tutorial example has a nice looking interface by the second lesson without any design or graphics work at all.<p>So, Android should provide a UI platform but still allow developers the flexibility to do what they want. They get the best of both worlds.

You know, as a recent convert, I still haven't seen the clearly better app quality that everyone's been talking about. Maybe it's just the apps I use, but I generally find the quality to be about the same, overall.<p>Android's system preferences and overall look seems _more_ polished to me.

I kinda agree with Duarte on this one. An OS should just be a window into the content, not its master. And the content should be as diverse in style as there are cultures/tastes/fetishes on the planet.<p>I love those annual Best of the Web design recognitions. They are all so differently beautiful in appearance and function. It would be boring if they all followed the same theme or trend.

Most people aren't designers, the point of hiring designers and doing things like the HIG are so that regular programmers can create pretty good looking apps out of the box.<p>Yes, the guys at Flipboard will probably be able to out do the HIG but it's a great starting point. Not having a HIG means that regular programmers will have to reinvent the HIG themselves.<p>I've had app rejections for HIG violations and to be honest I'm sure I could have kept my bad design if I replaced some stock Apple buttons with my own, but when I thought about it it made a lot more sense to just go with the HIG. (I was using a detail disclosure button for a login button)

The two paragraphs above the quoted ones are interesting too, for context:<p>&#62;“There’s this thing that’s happening right now in user interface design that I find kind of shackling. The faux wood paneling trend, and the airport lavatory signage trend.” He laughs when he says this and pulls up a slide on his computer, a split screen of an Atari 2600 and… airport lavatory signage. It’s an obvious dig at both Apple and Microsoft.<p>&#62;But what about Microsoft and their “authentically digital” design? “The problem with going too starkly systematic, forcing everything into this completely constrained, modernist palette, for both of them, you’re not leaving any room for the content to express itself.”