

Who said Android apps can’t look good? - ikhare
http://devblog.bu.mp/who-said-android-apps-cant-look-good

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jeffchuber
Unfortunately I agree with Mike (on site) on his comments.

Consumer apps used to compete on functionality - now everyone can mostly do
that part.

Design (both graphic and interaction) is where companies will compete for
consumers.

Bump has needed a TON of help in the past and even does tdoay (even with their
iphone app, [http://www.iwebsnacks.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/Bump-2....](http://www.iwebsnacks.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/Bump-2.4-App2.jpg)).

Please - start with a new logo.

~~~
tewks
Thanks for your feedback. That screenshot is pretty old; iTunes Preview has
newer ones which reflect our newer, more attractive refresh. As always, we are
hard at work at awesome new stuff.

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bump/id305479724>

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njharman
Um, no one. Mr Strawman sir.

~~~
cube13
That's what I thought, too. I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that it's
flat out impossible to make something look good on Android, just a bit more
difficult than iOS because the Android SDK doesn't have the UI/UX helper
methods that the iOS does.

~~~
rahoulb
Actually I'd say the difference is MacOS/OSX/iOS has a culture of ultra-
criticism of UI decisions, meaning developers for other platforms don't have
the same pressure to produce fantastic interfaces (just read Pierre Igot or
Gruber's early works). Of course this isn't universal - there are many iOS
apps with terrible UIs. But the overriding principle remains.

~~~
LokiSnake
Apple also provides very detailed human interface guidelines for all their
OSes. They are all more than 100 pages long, and describe how every single UI
element should act and what the user should expect. When designing a UI using
Apple's provided graphical tools, it actually guides the programmer to follow
those guidelines, in terms of button sizes, spacing, etc. Apple cares about
UI/UX, and it trickles down.

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dpcan
A lot of Android Apps look nasty because they were created by individuals with
the intent to solve a problem, and that problem is rarely - that Android Apps
look bad.

Then, when they have solved the problem, why not put it in the Market.

Any Android App can look great. It's just a matter of taking the time to make
it so.

~~~
joebadmo
I couldn't detect a value judgment either way from your comment, but I agree,
and I think that's a feature, not a bug. I've got plenty of utility apps on my
Android phone that I interact with very rarely to change some setting on the
phone or run some background service. I'm glad that the developer of each of
these didn't feel the need to divert resources to making a beautiful UI before
releasing or improving the functionality.

Not to say I don't appreciate beautiful UI design, but I think there's room
for beautiful apps and ugly but functional apps.

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FuzzyDunlop
Android being open-source, there's probably an expectation from Google for the
community to provide a range of solutions to a 'boring/inconsistent/shit UI'
problem, be it through providing boilerplate code or UI component libraries or
whatever.

I'm going to say though that if anything is at fault, it's not necessarily the
learning curve but the base assumption of expert knowledge applied to every
bit of documentation Google produces.

For a purely technical piece of writing they'd win many awards, because they
can get down to the nitty gritty for sure. To the guy who's new to it all who
wants somewhere to start, he's fucked. It's documentation for people who
already understand it (personal experience: the C2DM doc, maps API, their PHP
library that makes it harder to use their APIs than rolling your own code,
etc.).

So thanks to that those fabled UI solutions turn up in the form of PhoneGap,
jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, etc. All of which abstract the concept of app
development to merely be a case of designing a website for a small screen.
With HTML and JS and CSS. (Of course the other reason is platform agnosticism
but application homogeneity is another thread entirely.)

And, thanks to the point raised in the article ('Android UI design is easier
coz it's XML so you can do it programmatically!'), the people who do know how
to create an app are the developers who may or may not be very good at working
the UX side of things and may settle for the utilitarian solution.

~~~
antrix
> Android UI design is easier coz it's XML so you can do it programmatically!

That is absolutely not the point raised in the article. XML based declarative
UIs help to keep your view code separate from the application's logic allowing
for faster iterations. I don't think anyone manipulates XML views in code
except in corner cases.

The simplest way to get a big picture idea about Android's XML based UI is to
think of them as HTML+CSS with the addition of good layout managers.

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adambard
Hah! My strongest memory impression of using Bump is that it's hideous. Good
work.

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jrockway
If you use a non-standard UI, your app does not look good. Nobody wants to
learn a new interaction paradigm for every application they touch; that simply
doesn't scale.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Used the web?

~~~
cbs
Yeah, and its a pain in the arse. While native widgets aren't perfect, I'm
much happier to deal with them instead of a reimplementation of one. Even when
the web guy tries, they never work exactly the same, and they hardly ever try.
The browser is a box where users have to throw away all the assumptions they
have about the way controls behave because everything is done wildly different
everywhere.

Users are forced to return to figuring everything out as they go, and then
start over again at square for the next website. Visual cues are frequently
sacrificed for the visual mess someone called a "design". For people highly
familiar with native widgets, they just can't navigate around as easily in a
webapp as they can in a first-class gui citizen. Not only because everything
is different, but because the extended functionality that comes baked into
real toolkits just isn't present in the web reimplementation. Things like the
history api are even further eroding what assumptions can be made about gui
behavior on the web.

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gte910h
I have this vague, disquieting feeling that Three20 became self aware and
ported itself to Android

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freddealmeida
I think the belief that Android apps have been less than well designed grew
from earlier generations of Android. That current versions have built better
UI tool sets, that more UI/UX level testing packages are becoming available,
and builds using web technologies have made some apps equal to the iOS levels
of design is clear.

However, a purely native approach (without titanium or phonegap for example)
still has many issues in developing well structured UI.

It is clear however, that BUMP's application, while better than their previous
design, does lack something. Android design is not particularly easy and I
personally think that the various screens, disparate versions of the OS, and
capabilities of the phones make development that much more complex. In a very
real sense we need UI testing that automates this as much as possible. It
really is too much work.

Still I think that there are UI frameworks coming out for Android that will
alleviate all this complexity and allow us to build consistently well designed
apps. Just not right now.

~~~
jasonostrander
I'm curious, what UI frameworks are coming?

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foobarbazetc
Hehe. If the app didn't still look half as good as the iOS version, this post
might be onto something.

Clearly, this post was posted by the resident Android dev. :)

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dendory
I would say the app looks fine from these screenshots. However they put it up
as great design, and I disagree. It's nothing special.

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devinmrn
Who said Android apps look bad?

~~~
baddox
I've said it before. Most are bad. Which do you feel are examples of great
design?

~~~
juliano_q
Google+, Viber, Maps, SPB Shell 3D?

Yes, many Android apps looks bad (a lot of them appeared in the beginning of
Android, made by hackers that dont care about design or poorly ported from
other platforms) but this is not the case anymore.

~~~
kelnos
Add to that Foursquare, GroupMe, Spotify. Maybe it's not fair to include
Google apps, but YouTube, GMail, and the current incarnation of the Market app
are great.

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jacobbijani
The margins are off.

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dsl
> Who said Android apps can’t look good?

Apple. They spent the time to "get it right" with iOS, and when Android came
along they had to settle for second best in most areas to avoid looking like
an iOS clone.

~~~
karolist
I agree with you mostly. Android is slooowly catching up in the looks
department, but Apple is still way ahead. My first impression of Android was
that they desperately copied Apple UI, but failed to make it as good either
because of lack of skill, care or not wanting to look like an iPhone.

If you want examples of how well Android can look try the MIUI rom. These guys
built mostly everything from scratch to create a pleasant, unified look
(contacts, phone, messaging, browser, music player etc. and they all are best
Android apps I've seen). Sadly, it does look much like what would Apple do.

Disclaimer: not a fanboy, I have both, iOS and Android powered devices and I
actually develop on them both.

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filthylucre
There are three painfully obvious reasons Android apps do not look as good as
iOS apps. iOS has UIKit and Android has fragmentation along with a myriad of
devices with different resolutions.

1\. UIKit - Apple made it easy for developers to implement consistent
navigation, views, and transitions. Android Ice Cream Sandwich is providing a
new UI library which will bring this much needed iOS advantage to Android. Is
it possible to mimic UIKit on the current Android devices? Yes, but it's a
pain in the ass and not practical for most developers on a deadline.

2\. Fragmentation - Device Android version lock has caused problems with
development. You are only as strong as your weakest link which unfortunately
rings true with some developers who choose to develop on an older version of
Android to remain compatible with as many devices as possible. Google has
addressed this issue by obtaining agreements from many manufacturers to update
their devices on a consistent basis.

3\. Screen Resolution - Any web developer will tell you it's much easier to
create a beautiful and consistent website if the site is fixed width. This is
especially true for mobile development because you dont have to concern
yourself with repeating tiles, resolution detection, and adjustable spacing
when you know the exact dimensions of the device. There are only 2 iOS
resolutions (not counting retina) making it easy to utilize space and perfect
the UI in the most efficient way possible. Can it be done on Android? Sure,
but without a UIKit to handle many of the little nuances it will yet again be
a big pain in the ass and will take up time that the developer does not have.

