Android Design

This is a long overdue but very well put-together UI and Usability Guide for Android Developers. My only qualm from reading it thus far is the very last section under Navigation [1] regarding System-to-app navigation:<p>"For the Back key, you should make navigation more predictably [sic] by inserting into the task's back stack the complete upward navigation path to the app's topmost screen."<p>No. This piece of advice is the sole reason why the back button is confusing to users. Injecting activities artificially onto a user's Back Stack based on some arbitrary and imaginary path that they might have taken to get there is horrible. If I'm in the middle of reading a book and get an email notification, and I touch that notification to quickly read the email, that Back button better damn well take me BACK to what I was doing. Don't take me UP to the list of emails in my inbox. This is where the average user will become lost and not understand why they aren't taken back to reading their book, and will just end up touching Home out of frustration.<p>Bad Google!<p>[1] <a href="http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html</a>

As an Android developer for many years I was excited when I read the blog post about the site. When I went to the site, I was very disappointed. I've spent the better part of 10 minutes on the site so far and haven't seen anything other than marketing text and screenshots of what my phone looks like.<p>How do I make these "beautiful designs" work across all Android phones? How do I use an Actionbar on a non 3.0+ device without external libraries? How can I supply a consistent look and behavior for my application when some android OEM keyboards don't even offer the same modules as other ones?<p>How am I supposed to follow these guidelines when every Google application has a different implementation of the Actionbar itself?

Ha! I love that they are using Hipster Ipsum:<p><a href="http://developer.android.com/design/static/content/ui_overview_app_ui.png" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/static/content/ui_overvi...</a><p><a href="http://hipsteripsum.me/" rel="nofollow">http://hipsteripsum.me/</a>

The website felt odd to me. It's clearly aimed at developers, given the subject material, but it felt like it was written as an ad for prospective buyers.<p>It listed a bunch of features and user interface methods that apps <i>should have</i>, but I couldn't find any resource for actually implementing what they suggested, apart from the link to the android developer page at the end.

Regarding the Design Principles page: <a href="http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/get-started/principles.h...</a><p>I love that they included the ICS home screen's "glass desktop" effect in the "Delight me in surprising ways" section (<a href="http://developer.android.com/design/static/content/principles_delight.png" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/static/content/principle...</a>). It's a completely unimportant feature, but the first time I swiped past the edge of my rightmost homescreen and saw the effect, I appreciated the attention to detail.<p>Where I disagree is with their "Pictures are faster than words" suggestion. I completely agree that many things are best said with images, but I've had a hard time identifying the function of several features in the icon-driven UI's featured in both ICS and in new Google web redesign. In ICS's Gmail app, I'd understand the words "Mark Unread" much quicker than the "sealed envelope" icon which I had to experimentally discover.<p>It's also interesting to note that in ICS Gmail, Mark Unread is an icon and Report Spam is text, where in web Gmail, Mark Unread is text and Report Spam is a stop sign.

I kind of agree with the sentiment that a few others are having. I've spent the past 4 months working on an Android project and when I opened this page I was in shock.<p>Everything looks so awesome and shiny - but where is the actual implementation? Is this stuff just a ICS theme (I haven't used it myself as our app is in 2.2 land)?<p>Others pointed out to check the "Developer" link - but that is just the standard Android docs I've been digging through for months already. Searching for things like "Index Scrolling" (which would be awesome to add to an app) or "Switches" doesn't return anything useful - so what are the Building Blocks and how do I get them into my app?<p>This page should either a) include demos (or links to the demos if they exist already) or b) be embedded in the code docs (android.widget.GridView should show the screenshot and UI guidelines).

Do they have a schedule for when Google's apps will follow these guidelines?

I think this is the most consistent UI for Android so far. It still feels a bit more like a "style guide" rather than "human interface guidelines", but it's a great step forward.<p>Kudos

Am I missing something? I'd like to get my hands on the templates, mocks, wirefames, etc. Let me play with those (as a designer) and I'll be able to better follow the specs and guidelines.<p>Note: Microsoft (for once) actually one-up Big G. here. They provide the PSD and fonts for Windows Phone 7 on MSDN + the UX Guidelines.<p>Also, for Apple, 3rd party made all the PSD and templates for them...

Simply put, and coming from an Apple fan-boy, this is REALLY nicely done. I honestly think this will significantly improve the usability of the platform as a whole by attracting the right designer/developer talent.

I know it is silly and offtopic but that gorgeous website's navigation does not work without Javascript for no good reason.

I like the density-independent pixel concept...

Interesting how they make sure to say that you shouldn't use bottom tabs like in iOS. For my project I decided to do exactly that instead of using an Android standard action bar, because:<p>1:The bottom bar fits 5 items. An action bar needs to have the app name as well, which means it can't have 5 items anymore. Having a "More" option is just dumb.<p>2:The iOS bottom bar has text underneath its icons and the action bar doesn't. I'm afraid the icons I have aren't obvious enough without text.<p>3:This is a conversion from iOS so the images are already made<p>4:Getting an Android action bar to work on older versions is very difficult. The Android compatibility library doesn't help here, and the third party libraries I looked at were not mature enough. I'm doing this work as part of a fixed price contract so I can't waste days getting it to work reliably.<p>Bottom line: Android apps would look a lot better if doing things the right way was also the easiest way.

I like this bit on using multipane layouts to be flexible on both tablets and mobile:<p><a href="http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/multi-pane-layouts.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/multi-pane-layo...</a><p>Good advice for rich web apps too.

I wish they'd make this searchable. This is from Google after all.<p>Does a button marked "on" indicate it is already on, or that pushing the button will make it "on"? I'd like to see that standardised.

I like the date picker<p><a href="http://developer.android.com/design/building-blocks/pickers.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/building-blocks/pickers....</a>

This is great! If apps start following this it should significantly improve the Android user experience, as well as making it much easier to design good Android apps.

I tried browsing this on my old Android phone... I couldn't get past the first page. I hope "people should be able to read your content" is one of the guidelines...

I find the "app structure" schematic (<a href="http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/app-structure.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/app-structure.h...</a>) a very useful visualization to see the screens of an app in one glance.<p>Any ideas how they made this schematic?

For Android/Google on web, it's possibly the most apple.com-like designed page I've seen yet.

Why did choose to put 2 phones on the homepage? Because one phone has 3, the other 4 buttons? Isn't that still a bit redundant. (If it where not for a design-centric page it wouldn't have troubled me)

Utterly worthless. This looks like a web designer on crack had too much time to promote the beauty of the new Android.<p>However, from a developer's point of view this is almost unusable. By not providing the according XML/Java code, we are forced to reimplement everything from scratch, making smaller and larger errors, introducing inconsistency and making the look and feel not quite the same between apps.<p>Then again, it fits well with the current way Google is doing UX design (<a href="http://minming.posterous.com/google-currents-yet-another-contribution-to-t" rel="nofollow">http://minming.posterous.com/google-currents-yet-another-con...</a>).

I'm going to assume the internet has already somehow collectively dealt with the fact that the Android name for a drop-down list control is a "Spinner."

Finally!. Isn't too late? Are OEM and carriers going to follow the same principles? Or they can build whatever skin/mess they want as they did so far?

Google, good work on the Android design guidelines, but is that enough to tame the wild west in the marketplace and the current "anarchy"?

Does anyone know how to see Roboto font as anti-aliased in Windows7? In my windows 7, Roboto font looks really jagged and weird.

All we need now is an accessibility document for Android.<p>Accessibility is notably absent from the design doc.

"Android Design"<p><pre><code> .../index.html </code></pre> It's the little things that matter. This is shameful for a company so big.

This site is really useless. As an android developer I was hoping for more steps rather then another marketing docs. Its funny how little android provides out of the box and I have to just keep searching source to find how things are implemented and best way to implementing such designs. Sad state of affairs as I have to waste most of my time trying to understand these designs and corresponding code designs in source.<p>Another thing I hated about the website is how sparse it is in technical details. If Google really hopes us to make use to these pattern why not release some of these as widgets or templates.

Isn't ICS like just around 0.5%(or was it 5%) of Android handsets as of December 2011? This design guide is ALL about ICS and nothing about the 99% of the Android handsets used by people.

I know some will criticize this is ticky-tacky, but it's one small thing that, when added with a lot of other little details, make Android feel like it's still designed by engineers.<p>They've "touched nearly every pixel" and "App icons are works of art in their own right" but the contact name on their contacts icon is "Lorem Ipsum". Not exactly a warm, human feel.<p><a href="http://developer.android.com/design/static/content/design_elements_landing.png" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/design/static/content/design_el...</a>