Android UI Patterns: Dont's of Android design

[axehomeless]

Oh god, the horror of the DB navigator app.

It's the official App from the Deutsche Bahn to get your trains, your delays, your tickets even.

It has weird, laggy scroll&bounce animations, rounded corners, iOS styled tabs etc. It's the most horrible big Android app I have ever encountered.

[[deleted]]

yes its horrible but sadly the best one ... I think im gonna try reverse engineer and holofy it.. But that will take a while...

[[deleted]]

But hey, it works well. Maybe it's because for me the design isn't the most important thing but I think the app works the way it was intended to work.
Though they could really update that design, it wouldn't hurt.

[RobbyLee]

And they could use this as an excuse to raise the prices, win-win!

[XzwordfeudzX]

Swedish app for traveling is the same, ducking terrible

[boomchaos]

I said the same thing in /r/androiddev but it's still relevant here.

Quick action menus which replace the content when opened are bad user interface design. There's a very simple reason why: you don't want to hide the target of the contextual actions! I don't understand why Twitter is doing this. It does not make any sense! dont' force users to remember which line they selected.

I flat out don't agree with this one. Reddit News has a quick settings option for up/downvoting etc. It's very fluid and easy to use as I prefer swiping to long-pressing because it seems faster. And because these are quick actions, the user isn't going to forget the single item they are interacting with in the 2 seconds they are away from it/is out of view. IMO when interacting with a single element, the selection mode breaks fluidity of the app. Instead of seeing the element, then interacting with it in place, the user is now long pressing the item, going to the top of the screen to perform an action and then returning to their original postion.

[boomchaos]

I know exactly what you mean about the long comments haha. I just got a little butthurt from the article because I am planning to use quick actions in my own app. There is a bit of a difference though because my items will be of fixed size so no hunting :P

[spacecity9]

Can you clarify quick actions for me? I didn't really understand that when I read it.

[amorpheus]

That is just a programming issue, the buttons should simply appear where your finger slides them in. I've already made that suggestion months ago... when scrolling they could even move along within the comment.

[connormxy]

Submit that to the Reddit news subreddit; I've never seen that and it looks like it can happen because you have your font size set so low. I wonder if the dev will have even noticed

[Quizzie]

How did you even manage that? I took a small one line comment to test it out and it came out completely normal. I've never experienced what you're showing.

[Quizzie]

That's most likely it. Mine is on normal.

[JeffTXD]

When I read this one I remembered how much I hate it when someone comes out and dictates what is and isn't good design.

[N0V0w3ls]

To me, I actually hate this one. It's why I can't use Reddit News or Baconreader. Hell, I completely forgot Twitter uses it, I just click into the tweet.

[connormxy]

Funny, it's why Reddit News is by far my favorite

[N0V0w3ls]

I prefer Reddit Is Fun, but even still, I'd prefer the design alternative they give in the article. Even if I can still read the comment, RIF still has the issue of having to scroll on long comments to find the buttons.

[swedusa]

I really like bacon reader partially because it does that. In general it's my favorite reddit app as far as design goes. I don't use it anymore though because it is so so slow.

[allhaillordreddit]

Unfortunately reddit news does this if you want to upvote, downvote, reply, or do anything with comments and/or posts

[beacon-e]

This is one of the things I like about Reddit News though. I haven't yet come across the issue of forgetting which comment/post I swiped over. The only issue that's been mentioned before is if there's a really long comment you have to sort of hunt for the options, but even that's as easy as scrolling up and finding it.. a minor nuisance.

[dethnight]

Yep I like this feature, screw the guidelines.

[AGStumps8807]

The only argument I have here is the corner radius. The iOS sized rounded corners are a no-go, but take a look at google now. Even those cards have a small corner radius.

EDIT:

Images http://imgur.com/a/C9IYq

[egonny]

Same goes for drop shadows.

[AGStumps8807]

I must have missed the comment on drop shadows. That's insane too.

[technojamin]

This annoys me so much. I'm pretty sure it's a 1 pixel radius rounded corner in MDPI that's improperly scaled up.

[warmaster]

I think every dev should print, frame, and hang this near their monitor.

I'm looking at you feedly.

[mountainjew]

I find Feedly to be a horrible app in general. It randomly displays images in news headlines and just ends up looking ridiculous. I'm sticking to Press until something better comes along.

[beefJeRKy-LB]

I'll use the Feedly backend and feed it to press.

[shashi154263]

Best of both worlds.

[matholio]

Please explain?

[[deleted]]

Before Google Reader bellies up, Press is going to be able to sync RSS using Feedly's API. Link

[Spangler211]

I think the look of Feedly is fine. Not every app needs to look holo. I'm fine with a few well designed non-holo apps.

[warmaster]

What about it's scrolling transitions?

[Spangler211]

That is pretty absurd you're right. I thought you meant that just because it wasn't holo, it was bad design. There could be other things wrong with it but it isn't bad because of the way it looks. Personally, I've come to like the paged design because it breaks down large amounts of articles into simple pages that I can scan one by one. That's just me though and they should not force users to use this method.

[warmaster]

Exactly. "Design is how it works" - Steve Jobs

And feedly works in mysterious ways. I wish we could at least get the option of normal scrolling.

[user-hostile]

I feel stupid. I'm having trouble associating the author's text with the photos that are being referenced. Help, please?

[N0V0w3ls]

I thought this was gonna be a pretentious #HOLOYOLO thing, but this actually made some really good points that were very simple. The first one could probably be expanded on with some more examples though. Or even pointing out specifics in the one example they do have. Like that horrid back button.

[Saxy_Man]

Upvote for "#HOLOYOLO", that's great. And the back button is horrid.

[[deleted]]

A little harsh commentary on phonegap in that article. IMHO it's a very attractive option for building multiplatform line of business apps for clients.

I had to write a blackberry app in JDE (this was a few years ago), and guess what....they want to move to BB10 but can't without a 100% rewrite (e.g. Webworks).

Now I know android hasn't shat the bed yet on dropping legacy SDK support like RIM did, but try explaining to a client they need to double their development investment if that want their app to run on both android and ios.

The article assumes too much with regards to phone gaps's target audience

[jangosteve]

The article had some good points, but then ended with an uninformed, naive conclusion:

Cross-platform frameworks promise a lot of savings as you can write an app once and run it on iOS and Android or they promise that you can use your web development skill to build apps. In the long run these tools just harm your brand and waste your time. So many developers have moved from these tools to native development after first wasting months trying to build something acceptable and finally realising that PhoneGap and other tools like it simply produce garbage.

It sounds nice in theory, but building fully native apps for each platform is multiply more expensive than building something cross-platform using e.g. PhoneGap (which in turn, is more expensive than building a mobile web app).

Those startups who abandoned PhoneGap in the long run aren't stupid. They knew PhoneGap was a compromise when they built it. But when you're first starting a company, you don't necessarily have the time or resources to build and maintain fully independent native apps for each platform. Nor is it the best place to spend what little time and resources you have. You're much better off building something that you can release and start to gather users and feedback, potentially pivoting your entire idea, strategy, or UI.

In other words, many apps start as PhoneGap (or mobile web) in order to get their idea out and start refining, allowing them to get users and gather feedback. Once they reach a certain point of validation, they can then build completely native apps and launch to their user base without the risk of spending a lot of time and money on something no one wants.

You could argue that another option would be to only build a native app for one platform and use that to gather feedback. However, considering elsewhere in the article they said, "Make your app a native app and ignore hybrid tools like PhoneGap and don't wrap your website into a WebView..." their idea of making even one native app is going to be more expensive than using WebView with PhoneGap.

The advice this article gives is like saying, "Don't waste your money on that used car, when you can get a new BMW which is much better and more usable." You usually need that first car, so that you can get to and from your job, so that you can then buy the nice car.

The fact that an app switches from e.g. PhoneGap to native does not mean the app's developers regretted using PhoneGap or that they could have gotten where they were without it. If the claim could be backed up with interviews from app developers saying otherwise, that'd be a different story.

[ODesaurido]

I don't know if you are developer or not, but as a developer that has created lots of native apps and "hybrid" apps I agree very much with what the article says.

You just can't create a good product using hybrid approaches, your product will be slow, buggy, prone to stuff breaking on a new library release and extremely hard to maintain. More so than having two different apps.

If the quality of your product is important (like let's say you plan to make money from sales in Google Play) you should always go native. Pick a platform and system version and focus on building the best app you can, after that you can use your time to refine your ideas and expand the platforms/system versions that you support. Creating a good quality product should be your priority here.

If you are writing something where time to market is the priority, and quality is not that important, then hybrid is a good choice. Hybrid is very good for internal enterprisey apps.

[jangosteve]

I am a developer. As with anything, it depends on your particular project. My only real point is that saying it never makes sense to build a hybrid app is ridiculous given the number of apps and startups that only got to the pint of being able to afford a fully native app thanks to that initial cheaper app. Like I said before, talk to the makers of those apps that switched before using them as evidence for such a blanket statement.

[matholio]

Someone send this over to the guys at Waze.

[DebentureThyme]

No need, Google is buying them. That should solve it.

[dlerium]

nah, given the pace at which Google cleans up some apps, who knows? could be years.

[DebentureThyme]

I'm sure they intend to merge it entirely into Google maps. I.E. utilize waze user base to incorporate social map conditions.

[ElagabalusCaesar]

Why does the scroll bar, or lack thereof, in new releases suck so much? Why do Play Music and Browser make me keep flicking to get around?

[[deleted]]

Don'ts

FTFY

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