CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-22 18:14:50 (0 comments, 13 reshares, 45 +1s)

This is part 2 in a series. You can read part 1 here: https://plus.google.com/+AdamWPowell/posts/2zi4DXd3jkm

One of the first decisions we made around navigation drawers was to leave the action bar fixed and we published this stipulation in the Design Guide very early. This was for a couple of reasons.

First, the action bar is part of what we call the window decor. A window’s decor is extra decoration around the window’s primary content that is owned and controlled by the framework. Nothing actually guarantees than an app can walk up the view hierarchy and see something consistent from version to version or that inserting a new, arbitrary parent view above the action bar in order to move it and the rest of the content around is going to actually work without crashing on later platform versions.

Second, the action bar forms an important structural anchor for the activity.It’... more »

2013-05-18 05:30:48 (4 comments, 13 reshares, 101 +1s)

Hey Android devs,
I want to point out a neat feature now on developer.android.com that improves search/navigation. If you haven't already noticed, typing in the search box now reveals suggestions for design docs, training classes, API guides, etc. But there's also an easier way to begin searching: hit the slash button /. The escape key also close search.

I've found this very useful when I'm deep in a doc and want to switch to another one I know of. I simply hit /, type a word to reveal the document I know of, then I'm there.

Hat tip to +David Chandler for the / shortcut idea.

2013-05-17 17:21:40 (0 comments, 54 reshares, 186 +1s)

Android Design for UI Developers

Slides from +Roman Nurik & my #io13  talk.  You can also watch a recording of the talk here: Google I/O 2013 - Android Design for UI Developers

2013-05-17 00:54:19 (20 comments, 8 reshares, 51 +1s)

So +Nick Butcher and +Roman Nurik just "re-announced" ActionBarCompat. I can't give an ETA, but the fact that the #io13 app is currently using it should tell you that it's not very far away.

#AndroidDev

2013-05-16 06:18:55 (9 comments, 9 reshares, 72 +1s)

I'll be speaking at I/O again this year: Cognitive Science and Design, all new content for 2013.

If you missed last year's I/O session you can check it out here: Google I/O 2012 - Advanced Design for Engineers

and if you just can't get enough of my design talks, here's another:
Designing Firefox - Alex Faaborg

2013-05-16 02:23:55 (24 comments, 31 reshares, 139 +1s)

Very happy to announce a new design pattern for the Android Design Guide: The Navigation Drawer.

Navigation drawers have been a community-driven pattern for a while. We have now formalized its use on the Android platform with a new chapter in the official Android Design Guide. If you're interested in using this pattern in your app, or want to update your existing drawer to match best practices and recommendations, head on over and take a look.

2013-05-13 21:32:33 (3 comments, 28 reshares, 127 +1s)

My newest app, Android Design in Action, is now live in the Play Store!

Easily access all videos and resources of your most favorite +GDL show!

Main features:
 - Watch all shows on your Android device
 - Access Google+ stream of the #ADiA  and #AndroidDesign  hashtags
 - Share multiple slides with your co-workers or on the social network of your choice
 - Directly share the YouTube-Link of a show via Android Beam™
 - Receive notifications about upcoming shows
 - Receive a notification just before a show starts
 - Optimized for phones, tablets and everything between

Big thanks to +Roman Nurik, +Nick Butcher and +Adam Koch for their tips and suggestions as well as for their engagement in the Android Design community!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astuetz.android.adia

#ADiA  #AndroidDesign... more »

2013-05-10 18:21:23 (26 comments, 44 reshares, 179 +1s)

+Matias Duarte and his Android UX Superfriends have been fine-tuning this new drawer for literally months. We'll have a bit more to say about it at Google I/O, but in the meantime I, for one, totally share AP's enthusiasm.

#HOLOYOLO #BroDoYouEvenHolo

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/05/10/finally-google-has-come-up-with-a-predictable-intuitive-sidebar-navigation-design-now-please-add-it-to-everything/

2013-05-09 23:12:57 (2 comments, 10 reshares, 50 +1s)

Everything you need to know to enjoy Google I/O, in person or online.
 
Link  http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/05/android-at-google-io-2013.html

2013-05-09 02:42:05 (29 comments, 60 reshares, 156 +1s)

#io13 #Android #AndroidDesign

It's here… the Google I/O 2013 app is now live on Google Play!

You can read about all the cool things it can do by checking out te detail page on Google Play, but I wanted to quickly call out some #AndroidDesign notes:

• Like last year, the app works on a wide variety of form factors—it's optimized for 7" and 10" tablets in both portrait and landscape orientations.

• The lighter color scheme, Roboto Light type, and ubiquitous circle masks (e.g. on track icons and Google+ or speaker avatars) help soften the app visually and shift the visual contrast from chrome to content.

• Session track icons and colors help guide you visually across the hundreds of sessions at the conference, and help provide additional context on detail screens.

• The add-to-schedule button has been givensome extra p... more »

2013-05-01 19:44:14 (8 comments, 35 reshares, 147 +1s)

#AndroidDev   #AndroidDesign  

On day 2 of #io13 , +Nick Butcher and I will be giving a talk called Android Design for UI Developers. We hope to see you there! And if you're not attending the conference, don't fret, as the session will be live-streamed on YouTube.

I also wanted to provide a bit of background for the talk. While developer.android.com/design is a fantastic (and very important) resource for designers, we still get lots of questions from developers about how to implement all those guidelines*. In this talk, we'll help answer some of those questions by providing some key recipes for implementing proper navigation, responsive design, and the Holo visual language.

(*) Yes, we are working on ways to improve navigation of and between our docs!

2013-05-01 05:09:37 (12 comments, 9 reshares, 67 +1s)

#AndroidDesign #ADiA

Going to be at #io13 this year? Make sure to add our design lab Android Design in Action Live to your schedule!

Also worth noting that the show will return from hiatus shortly after I/O.

EDIT: And if you're looking for another great design lab at I/O, focused more on UX design, check out UX Design for Developers, run by +Nazmul Idris:
https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/355690278

2013-04-30 22:00:26 (1 comments, 12 reshares, 32 +1s)

A new Android training class was published a week or so ago. This one is on accessing contact data using the system Contacts Provider and Intents. Kudos to +Joe Malin for writing this up! There's also a straight forward but (hopefully) useful code sample included written by yours truly.

#AndroidDev  

http://developer.android.com/training/contacts-provider/

2013-04-26 02:51:25 (4 comments, 11 reshares, 48 +1s)

There's a new Optimization Tips page in the Developer Console that lets you quickly see how your app is doing against basic guidelines for tablet app distribution and quality.

If you've developed a tablet experience for your app, visit the Developer Console and check out your app's Optimization Tips today. If you see any issues listed, address them in your app as soon as possible and upload a new binary for distribution, if needed. 

2013-04-04 19:39:31 (39 comments, 12 reshares, 131 +1s)

At some point in the last year or so visual designers working on various social products decided that circles look prettier than squares.

2013-04-03 23:15:34 (8 comments, 15 reshares, 51 +1s)

The web needs a next generation rendering engine, just as it has seen a new way of modern browsers.

http://ericbidelman.tumblr.com/post/47054222305/blink-chromes-new-rendering-engine

2013-04-02 15:47:01 (11 comments, 39 reshares, 112 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

This week's Android Design in Action episode centered on podcast creation, recording and management as well as design software tools. Rather than list all the things +Adam Koch and I talked about, I'll just leave it to you to check out the recording here: Android Design in Action: Podcast Creators and Design Tools

Slides attached to this post, as always. Enjoy!

2013-04-02 05:32:51 (8 comments, 101 reshares, 297 +1s)

#AndroidDesign  

Digging through some old screencasts, I found this one I published a year or so ago on creating custom button assets. More important than creating custom buttons is the demonstration of a 4px grid + XHDPI canvas, creation of nine-patches in Photoshop, and support for touch feedback using a pressed visual state.

2013-04-01 21:26:01 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 20 +1s)

Tomorrow's #ADiA  will be pretty jam-packed, but if you'd like to nominate Android design news for us to share in tomorrow's show, please comment here with a brief description + link.

2013-03-30 01:59:43 (17 comments, 4 reshares, 96 +1s)

Eye in Sky Weather now has a #DashClock extension! This is a much more robust and customizable weather implementation than DashClock's built-in one so definitely consider switching to it. I won't be offended if you do… and may actually do that on my devices :-)

2013-03-26 03:56:53 (37 comments, 21 reshares, 221 +1s)

Android 4.2 Daydream for #DashClock Early Look

The clock slowly undulates back and forth across your screen (at ever-so-slight tilt angles), slowly fading out and back in at each edge. If you have more extensions than can be shown onscreen, the list slowly scrolls up and down. In silence, it's kind of mesmerizing, and reminds me of a pendulum clock in slow motion.

As soon as you touch the screen, the clock and your extensions zoom up to let you dive into the details. A subtle change in the touched item's foreground color (which is customizable) helps provide touch feedback, in addition to the standard blue background touch highlight.

/cc +Daniel Sandler

UPDATE: v1.5 Beta, including the Daydream, is now available at dashclock.com/beta

2013-03-22 14:01:37 (65 comments, 188 reshares, 610 +1s)

#AndroidDev   #Protip  

Android Development Protip / Plea: Stop using ProgressDialog. Inline indicators are your friend.

This one's quick. Stop using ProgressDialog and other modal loading indicators. They're extremely interruptive and annoying, especially when:

• You see one every time you switch tabs.
• You can't Back out of them.
• They say "Please wait." No thanks, I'd rather just uninstall.

Either show loading indicators inline with your content (e.g. http://goo.gl/Pv7uQ) or better yet, load small amounts of data in the background so that you minimize the need to even show a loading indicator.

More about progress & activity in the design guidelines: http://goo.gl/OfJ5N (thanks for the reminder +Peter Siegmund)

h/t +David Chandler 

2013-03-20 11:52:17 (10 comments, 31 reshares, 87 +1s)

Google Maps Developer Shortcut

Get started with the Google Maps Android API in under 5 minutes.

http://github.com/googlemaps/hellomap-android

#androiddev   #googlemaps   #mapsapi  

2013-03-20 13:36:19 (40 comments, 5 reshares, 180 +1s)

In case anyone's interested in #DashClock progress, updates to the app have slowed down a bit due to Google I/O preparation and whatnot. Having said that, here are the next set of things I hope to work on:

• Add more translations (there's quite a backlog, thanks to all translation volunteers!)
• Fix bugs related to all-day events
• Fix date localization issues
• API improvements (v2)
• Improved weather using the Wunderground API (although I'm not at all sure how quota's going to work)
• A Daydream

Can't wait to find more time to work on it!

UPDATE: I've added a beta 'channel', although there isn't yet a way to subscribe to updates: https://code.google.com/p/dashclock/downloads/detail?name=DashClock-beta.apk. A few new translations and minor fixes are included in the latest beta.

2013-03-19 15:49:00 (24 comments, 235 reshares, 515 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

Today on Android Design in Action, +Nick Butcher, +Adam Koch and I discussed some UI behaviors to enhance the news consumption experience:

• Two-finger swipe down previews on lists, ala Android 4.1 notifications
• Alternative item collection presentations for photo-rich content
• Customizable navigation drawer
• Flattening topic hierarchies using search
• Specialized detail contexts for the beginning, middle, and end of an article

We also did a deep dive on units of measure, including:

• Density-independent pixels (DPs) for keeping things the same physical size across devices and as the primary unit for layout (as opposed to pixels)
• Scale-independent pixels (SPs) for sizing and spacing text
• Best-practice layout grids (4dp grid, 48dp rhythm)
• Wireframing in MDPIso that in your wiref... more »

2013-03-18 18:41:53 (14 comments, 5 reshares, 30 +1s)

#AndroidDesign  

Are you an Android designer based in or around NYC? Then come to the very first New York Android Designers meetup, next Thursday Mar 28 right here at the Google NYC office in Chelsea!

/cc +Adam Koch +Paul Burke 

2013-03-14 09:05:36 (11 comments, 110 reshares, 205 +1s)

#AndroidDev  

Ever wanted to learn how to build common touch gestures [1] into your app's custom UI components? Learn about the correct way to implement scaling, dragging, scroll animation, and more in our latest update to the Using Touch Gestures training class!

Check out the updated class here: http://developer.android.com/training/gestures/index.html

The update includes new documentation on the proper usage of GestureDetectorCompat, ScaleGestureDetector, OverScroller and EdgeEffectCompat.

It also includes a new Interactive Chart sample app that demonstrates how to put it all together to create a custom charting component that responds naturally to touch input. Screenshots attached :-)

Kudos to Katie M on the Android Developer Relations team for putting together the docs update! (Also, I wrote the... more »

2013-03-05 16:37:36 (0 comments, 19 reshares, 83 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

This week on Android Design in Action, +Nick Butcher, +Adam Koch and I did a deep dive on home screen widgets, including:

• General approach at when and how to include a widget for your app
• Visual and interaction design guidance, with loads of pointers directly from developer.android.com/design/patterns/widgets.html
• Constraints within the widget framework that designers should be aware of
• Examples of widgets in action

Although widgets are a fairly well-understood pattern on Android, there were some great morsels in the episode regarding the finer points of widget design.

As always, you can catch the recording here on YouTube: Android Design in Action: Home Screen Widgets or check out the presentation slides, attached to this Google+ post.

2013-03-05 16:28:34 (15 comments, 102 reshares, 178 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

This week on Android Design in Action, +Nick Butcher, +Adam Koch and I did a deep dive on home screen widgets, including:

• General approach at when and how to include a widget for your app
• Visual and interaction design guidance, with loads of pointers directly from developer.android.com/design/patterns/widgets.html
• Constraints within the widget framework that designers should be aware of
• Examples of widgets in action

Although widgets are a fairly well-understood pattern on Android, there were some great morsels in the episode regarding the finer points of widget design.

As always, you can catch the recording here on YouTube: Android Design in Action: Home Screen Widgets or check out the presentation slides, attached to this Google+ post.

2013-03-04 22:03:00 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

Pretty delicious new cocktail video from +Jeffrey Levy & co. #CocktailsAtHome  

2013-02-26 16:23:30 (0 comments, 16 reshares, 77 +1s)

We’re rolling out Google Play services v3.0, which introduces Google+ Sign-In and Google Maps Android API improvements.

Use the Android SDK Manager to download the latest Google Play services API, and learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, from the Google Services area of the Android Developers site.

Link: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/02/google-sign-in-now-part-of-google-play.html

2013-02-26 16:09:41 (4 comments, 60 reshares, 112 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

This week on Android Design in Action, +Alex Faaborg stopped by and shared some thoughts on the when and why of notifications as well as the Google Now team's design process. Some of my favorite snippets from the show were:

• Limit your interruption of the user's flow. An interruption is kind of like blocking the user's 'thread'. One case where you do want to interrupt is if another person is 'blocking' on them (i.e. waiting for an IM response).

• Tailor the level of fidelity of your mockups based on the level of feedback you're expecting to get. Providing full-fidelity mockups isn't all that useful in a product's early stages, unless you're trying to demonstrate the product vision with executives or other important stakeholders.

• Think about both visual complexity as well astemporal... more »

2013-02-16 23:01:51 (74 comments, 5 reshares, 123 +1s)

#DashClock

I guess sometimes you have to accommodate common user demands even though the result is a somewhat compromised design. This screen isn't pretty but then again I'm hoping most people will just never need to use it.

Coming in v1.2.

EDIT: DashClock v1.2 is now published. Full changelog here: http://code.google.com/p/dashclock/wiki/Changelog

2013-02-12 22:29:35 (23 comments, 119 reshares, 302 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

This week on Android Design in Action, +Nick Butcher, +Adam Koch and I did a deep dive on the now ubiquitous action bar pattern. We touched on:

• The action bar's general organization and layout
• How it adapts to different screen sizes and device form factors, with different dimensions, the split action bar mode, and support for devices with hardware menu buttons
• The contextual action bar
• The various view control types, including tabs, spinners, and navigation drawers
• How to choose which action buttons, and how many of them, to show on-screen (the FIT scheme)
• Key styles for branding and other tips on styling the action bar
• When to use the 'overlay' action bar style
• Common types of custom action views, including a refreshing indicator, expanded search view, and sharepack
• Done +... more »

2013-02-12 13:23:06 (211 comments, 307 reshares, 733 +1s)

#Android

My side project, DashClock, is now open source and live on Google Play!

DashClock is a replacement lock screen clock widget for Android 4.2+. It also exposes additional status items called extensions. The widget comes bundled with extensions that give you instant access to:

• Your current local weather
• Missed calls and unread text messages
• Your next calendar appointment
• Unread Gmail inbox or priority inbox conversations
• Your next scheduled alarm

To add the widget to your Android 4.2 device's lock screen, simply swipe to the left-most page of your lock screen and touch the "+" icon. Then, select "DashClock" to customize and add the widget. You can make this the primary lock screen widget, replacing the default clock, by first touching-and-holding it and then dragging it horizontallyto the very r... more »

2013-02-08 05:30:10 (0 comments, 17 reshares, 42 +1s)

Android Anti-Patterns i.e. things to avoid.
This week:  scheduling future network activity

The basic principle:  never(1) schedule future network activity with a non-wakeup alarm, or with a simple deferred message or Runnable on a Looper.  [(1) Never?  Well, hardly ever.  See below for possible exceptions to think about.]

This isn't quite obvious.  Non-wakeup alarms & Looper are attractive because you feel like you're conserving battery.  You aren't waking up the device in someone's pocket; you're just taking advantage of the next time that the device is in use anyway, so you're keeping things lean, right?

Well, that's only part of the story.  The other part is that you're not the only app on the phone, and that device isn't the only one on the network.

Users turning on the screen, directly using thedevice, ... more »

2013-02-05 16:41:31 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 31 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

No amount of HDMI screen-flickering could stop us from flying through another jam-packed 30-minute episode of Android Design in Action! After a brief technical issue (or kerfuffle, as I like to say), +Nick Butcher and I kicked things off, looking at design explorations for the European football (a.k.a soccer) tracking app Live Score Addicts. We also spent some time discussing the basics of launcher icon design, including some recommendations about content, sizing, 3D perspective, and so on.

Per usual, the slides are attached to this post, and you can catch the recording on YouTube here: Android Design in Action: Football Apps + Launcher Icons

2013-02-05 16:29:03 (14 comments, 40 reshares, 118 +1s)

#AndroidDesign   #ADiA  

No amount of HDMI screen-flickering could stop us from flying through another jam-packed 30-minute episode of Android Design in Action! After a brief technical issue (or kerfuffle, as I like to say), +Nick Butcher and I kicked things off, looking at design explorations for the European football (a.k.a soccer) tracking app Live Score Addicts. We also spent some time discussing the basics of launcher icon design, including some recommendations about content, sizing, 3D perspective, and so on.

Per usual, the slides are attached to this post, and you can catch the recording on YouTube here: Android Design in Action: Football Apps + Launcher Icons

2013-02-05 11:59:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Join +Nick Butcher, +Adam Koch and +Roman Nurik as they discuss various elements of Android Design. In this week's episode, we'll look at apps that help you follow European football leagues and do a deep dive into app launcher icon design.

2013-04-25 17:30:51 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 24 +1s)

#HTML5  I really wish I could use Canvas.toBlob.

Chromium bug: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=67587
WebKit bug: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71270
Firefox: it works!

2013-01-29 23:00:31 (9 comments, 27 reshares, 135 +1s)

Here's an +Android Developers-branded wallpaper for your Android device(s). We used this in some of our screenshots a few weeks ago on Android Design in Action. To get the full-size version, open up the photo, select Options at the bottom, and then Download full size. Enjoy!  #Android

2013-01-28 16:18:16 (0 comments, 40 reshares, 100 +1s)

#AndroidDev

If you've ever found yourself needing to extract platform drawables to use in your own projects (either to customise them or because they aren't exposed by the framework) you might be interested in a new feature I've added to the Android Resource Navigator.

Right-click on the GitHub page for any drawable resource and select 'Download Drawable' to download a .ZIP file archive containing the file assets at all pixel densities. For XML resources, the download archive will contain ALL dependent file assets at all pixel densities including the XML.

The downloaded archive is conveniently organised with the appropriate Android resource folder names. Send it to your designer or extract it straight into your project. I will also remove any '@android:' prefixes from the XML so everything is nice and relative.

This works not only in... more »

2013-01-26 05:21:53 (15 comments, 6 reshares, 132 +1s)

Writing some insane code recently, delving into parts of the Android framework I never really knew existed. I'm talking crazy Parcelable stuff, AIDL versioning, Context#createPackageContext, Intent serialization, obscure RemoteViews features, etc. Will open source as soon as I get the approval. Some really good stuff in this personal project.

EDIT: Just counted, 7700 lines of Java, and who knows how many resource files :-/

2013-01-24 23:01:37 (0 comments, 36 reshares, 150 +1s)

I’m starting a small new series of articles about Android design on my spare time called #TeaMeal .

Tea Meal is a series of light hearted articles about some quick ideas or experiences I have had or learn about working as an Android designer, for this first edition let’s start with one of the often forgotten but most certainly primordial aspects of design: Fonts and our beloved Roboto.

Yesterday I was playing with the different weights and styles of Roboto while also conceptualizing the different emotions that they could provide and found myself missing a bit of “softness” and “tenderness”, has designers emotions are a vital part of every project and approaching a visual style while projecting the emotions that we or the project requires to evoke on the end users has proven on my experience always a successful strategy.

Roboto is a font of the Sans-serif family[1] and mor... more »

2013-01-18 19:56:35 (106 comments, 128 reshares, 812 +1s)

#AndroidDesign  +Nexus

Nexus 4 device photos (PSD)

A week or so ago, +AJ Lopez (a talented mobile UI designer who's very active [1] on Dribbble), suggested that it would be great if there were more high-res renders of Nexus devices at unique angles for designers to use in their mockups (and for publishers to use in marketing materials).

Well, short of 3D renders, I convinced our [awesome] Android marketing team to let me share some Nexus 4 device photos. I've also added Photoshop Smart Objects to make it easy to swap in screenshots as needed, without having to re-transform flat screenshots for each angle. A quick preview of these PSDs is attached to this post.

Download the PSDs here: http://j.mp/nexus4renders

And of course, if you don't want to muck around with Photoshop and just need a facing-forward framed screenshot,you... more »

2013-01-18 03:32:52 (0 comments, 21 reshares, 77 +1s)

Huge web type news: +Christian Robertson’s Roboto (6 weights + italics) and Roboto Condensed (3 weights + italics) are now available on Google Web Fonts! #font   #squee  

http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Roboto
http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Roboto+Condensed

2013-01-17 03:58:16 (0 comments, 13 reshares, 40 +1s)

We are excited to announce the new Google TV add-on compatible with Android 3.2 for the Android SDK. It includes some bug fixes and the Chrome browser for Android emulator for Google TV. 

Previously, Android emulator for Google TV was only supported on Linux systems with KVM. With this release, Google TV emulation is also supported on Windows and Mac operating systems. To get the best performance from your Android emulator for Google TV we highly recommend that you configure Virtual Machine Acceleration  for your operating system.  Among other improvements, web browsing and web search functionality are now supported through a new Browser application on the emulator.

The Emulator can be found in the Android SDK Manager > API Level 13 > Google TV Add On.

2013-01-16 15:25:09 (21 comments, 70 reshares, 236 +1s)

Remember, 48dp or higher suggested, 32dp bare minimum. #AndroidDesign   

2013-01-15 17:15:03 (3 comments, 9 reshares, 33 +1s)

#AndroidDesign #ADiA

In today's Android Design in Action, +Nick Butcher, +Adam Koch and I covered iterative improvements, or incremental visual design tweaks that can transform your UI from zero to hero. More specifically we took the following incremental steps:

1) Added the Holo theme and action bar, dropping the legacy menu button and showing actions onscreen
2) Added a branded color scheme and app icon, cleaning up the action bar and introducing an accent color throughout the app
3) Added proper use of whitespace with margins and element spacing
4) Tweaked the treatment of thumbnails to provide better visual alignment
5) Made better use of typography to convey visual hierarchy and reach an overall more abeautiful aesthetic
6) Added swipe views to allow quick navigation across detail... more »

2013-01-15 16:50:50 (36 comments, 125 reshares, 376 +1s)

#AndroidDesign #ADiA

In today's Android Design in Action, +Nick Butcher, +Adam Koch and I covered iterative improvements, or incremental visual design tweaks that can transform your UI from zero to hero. More specifically we took the following incremental steps:

1) Added the Holo theme and action bar, dropping the legacy menu button and showing actions onscreen
2) Added a branded color scheme and app icon, cleaning up the action bar and introducing an accent color throughout the app
3) Added proper use of whitespace with margins and element spacing
4) Tweaked the treatment of thumbnails to provide better visual alignment
5) Made better use of typography to convey visual hierarchy and reach an overall more abeautiful aesthetic
6) Added swipe views to allow quick navigation across detail... more »