
Why don’t designers take Android seriously? - amitkumar01
https://medium.com/p/a649db399f42
======
Zigurd
I was able to successfully train a designer to use the Android SDK's tools
when appropriate, and check in graphical assets. In preparatory meetings I
insisted the designer be in the room with the coders and product managers as I
explained how Android is different. I taught them all how to use conditional
layouts and how to test apps for good practices by changing font sizes to see
if they really are geometry-independent. Once they saw how easy it is to make
other developers' work look less than competent, I could see the switch in
their minds flip: They were not doing to be tripped up by users who change
font size.

This client was the typical kind of client who could easily have fallen into a
"portitis" pattern of not designing for the capabilities of Android's layout
system. If all parts of the system - product managers, coders, and designers,
not have bought into thinking about their part of the project differently from
an iOS implementation, the designers would have had no inputs from those other
parts of the team re how they were modifying their approach for an Android
version of their product.

Android has a richer system for adapting code modules to different layouts,
and therefore a more sophisticated UX for tablets. It's a pity than many
Android apps are low-bidder porting jobs that plaster right over that.

~~~
LordIllidan
I'd be interested in reading more about this - I'd love to show it to some
designers I work with.

At the moment, I'm struggling to get the designers to acknowledge that Android
and iOS need to be designed seperately. iOS designs can look pixel-perfect due
to having only 2 resolutions to care about (ok, iPhone 5+ have taller screens,
but same width)

Android is a whole different story.

~~~
Zigurd
This is how I introduce Android to teams that are making their first serious
non-game app:

1\. How to scale the app across all screen geometries:

    
    
       a. Let Android choose the layout from among the alternatives you create for different geometries
       b. This means different numbers of Fragment objects can be displayed
       c. This means different functionality can be available 
       d. This means you have to organize functionality in a hierarchy (for the smallest screens) that can be unfolded and flattened (for the biggest screens)
    

2\. Then I get into Activity and how the code that used to be in activities
should be organized into Fragment subclasses, and about top-level layouts.

3\. Then I get into Relative Layout and how to make your layouts "stretchy"
enough that you don't have to specify a different layout for every combination
of size, density, orientation, and text size.

4\. Now that the coders and designers understand how they fit together in
making a UX that "folds up" and "unfolds" I teach the designers how to check
in to the client's repos, and how to edit layouts in Eclipse, so they can be
responsible for their own work getting into the project and build and run the
app to see how their layouts work.

This is still a vast simplification, leaving out things like Android remote
methods and high-level (Intent) IPC and how hat affects UX, and numerous other
areas where Android is substantively different from iOS's app environment.

------
my3681
I develop apps for both major mobile platforms, and when I speak with
designers and artists about Android and iOS, they overwhelmingly prefer iOS.
Since they use iOS devices themselves, it is their go to platform. It is
almost always the one they want to work with.

Oddly, when I ask them why, the answers are mostly qualitative. It has nothing
to do with "reaching the most people" or "getting exposure". It's a simple
matter of taste. Designers tend to choose iOS products because they identify
with them. They see Apple as an institution that they would enjoy being a part
of in some way. Almost all the designers I know that are worth their salt use
and love their macs for working in Photoshop and Illustrator, so it naturally
follows that they prefer the iOS platform, regardless of numbers and market
share.

Admittedly, my sample size is only around 50 or so, but this has been my
experience.

~~~
ryanSrich
As a designer this is exactly why.

No android phone nor interface is close to the level of what Apple is putting
out - both from an experience and product standpoint. This is also the same
exact same reason why I purchase all apple products.

I really don't understand the argument of "You're paying more for a lesser
product when you buy Apple". Ok - so the hardware isn't as good/powerful,
fine, but that's not why I'm buying an Apple product. I'm buying it because of
the UX, because of the way the phone feels in my hand, because of the way the
keys feel on the keyboard when I press them down, because of how great the
applications look and feel when I use them.

If android came out with something that looked and felt great I would
certainly consider using it. In fact, I purchased a Samsung Galaxy S3 several
years ago when it first came out. The phone was absolute garbage - plastic
bevels still had molding pieces around the edges, the unnecessary bloatware
(which would have been fine if it was remotely useful) was very poorly
designed, and overall the phone felt very light and cheap.

~~~
rsynnott
> Ok - so the hardware isn't as good/powerful, fine, but that's not why I'm
> buying an Apple product.

The funny thing is, that's kind of a myth, particularly in phone land. The A7
(the 5S's SoC) had pretty much class-leading performance when it came out,
except in highly parallel tasks, and to a large extent it _still does_.

------
wallflower
From personal experience and from hearing 1st person stories of startups who
went Android second, it takes at least 2x to even 3x the amount of time to
build an Android app.

This is why when a very talented Android engineer like Sarah Haider (Twitter's
Android lead) goes from Twitter to Secret, it is a big deal. There are many
strong, capable iOS technical leads out there and probably a fraction thereof
in Droidlandia (using Pareto's famous rule, probably 4 - 5 good iOS technical
leads for every 1 good Android technical lead).

To make an app on Android look good, the responsibility lies much more on the
developer than the designer. The designer on iOS can easily use IB. Not so
much Android Studio or Eclipse.

At the highest levels (slightly below Jake Wharton), talented Android
developers who care about the user experience and can deliver compelling,
beautiful apps can name their own price.

~~~
tomasien
Eclipse is also HORRIBLE. Horrible, horrible horrible. Objective-C isn't
exactly easy to understand, but Xcode is. I could functionally make things
work in Xcode in 2 days having no experience with C or Objective C, I've
probably spent 6 weeks in Eclipse in my life and I still couldn't really tell
you how to do things. I have to re-learn it every time I want to do something,
especially with the UI.

~~~
sigsergv
I can say the same for XCode — it's insanely horrible and completely unusable.

~~~
aeberbach
Congratulations on the most ridiculous comment on HN today. How many apps on
the app store was that now, 1,000,000+ according to the admittedly non-
authoritative Wikipedia. And all of them created with hex editors, you would
have us believe. Not the completely unusable Xcode.

~~~
ygra
(a) opinions about things can vary among people

(b) people might suffer through substandard products because they're the only
reasonable way of developing software for a platform (you see that sentiment a
lot of times from people who claim to be forced to do development on Windows)

Just saying that a single person claiming that XCode is an unusable, horrible
piece of shit probably says as much as 1 million apps being written for that
platform. At least not about usability of the development environment.

------
sedev
> The other replies were mostly variations on the theme that Android users
> don’t pay for apps, they don’t have data plans, you can’t monetise them
> easily, and designers are all iPhone users and don’t really understand
> Android users … Socially, excluding Android users seems almost prejudicial.
> Unlike Android is difficult, this isn’t about about mere convenience; it’s a
> value judgment on who is worth designing for. Put uncharitably, the root
> issue is “Android users are poor”.

This position sells the opposing argument short. It's not so much "designers
believe _a priori_ that Android users won't pay for good design," it's
"Android users have a _long and well-established track record_ of not paying
for good design." People are still experimenting, and I think that this is
actually a case you can rely on market mechanisms to handle. If Android users
start demonstrating a willingness to pay for good design commensurate with the
difficulty of producing good design for Android devices, there'll be a market
opportunity there. Someone will get rewarded for providing people with what
they're willing to pay for.

This leads into how Bowles sells the other argument short: he conflates
_design_ and _graphic design_ when he address the "Android is hard to design
for" argument. Design is, to borrow a famous phrasing, _how it works._ Sure,
it was tough to do good graphic design for Gingerbread and it's much easier
now. Great. However, the fragmentation and glacially-slow upgrades have a real
cost here - to design the same _functionality,_ may require spanning multiple
API versions. The comparison to the diversity of Web browsers and viewers
doesn't work because that diversity, relies on web standards. The equivalent
of web standards that would allow an Android app to do responsive design in
the manner of a web app, devices don't have or respect.

Fundamentally, it seems like Bowles doesn't get that the answer to his
question is "because doing good design work on Android is more expensive and
people pay less for it." Sure, you could ask designers to make speculative
investments in Android, but I suspect that'll go about as well as asking
people to make speculative investments of their professional time and skill
usually goes. Professionals who respect their own time and worth, go where
they can do good work and get paid well for it. Currently, that means they
don't go to Android.

~~~
fpgeek
> The equivalent of web standards that would allow an Android app to do
> responsive design in the manner of a web app, devices don't have or respect.

Oh, really?

Let's take a look shall we:

1\. Using new APIs if available and falling back gracefully if not:
[http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-
devi...](http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-
devices/platforms.html)

2\. Adapting your layout and UI to each device based on screen size, density
and other features:
[http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/index.html](http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/index.html)

3\. Libraries to help use newer features while being backward-compatible:
[http://developer.android.com/tools/support-
library/index.htm...](http://developer.android.com/tools/support-
library/index.html)

And so on. Looks to me like there's plenty of infrastructure to help building
responsive apps if you want to.

~~~
nemothekid
You posted three links to the android documentation that don't address sedev's
point at all.

Your first point doesn't address the "falling back gracefully" part. The
second part of that example, the ActionBar, which was introduced in ICS, IIRC,
only has a _community_ shim. Granted if you want to use a new API that may not
have as much community support as the ActionBar, you either code one yourself
(strengthening the sedev's point that you have to design the same
functionality across multiple versions).

Your second point is even more off base. With the web's responsive design, I
have to make one HTML file, and one CSS file, and if my design is sane, it
works across all screen sizes. Your second link requires you to hand code
different layouts for every device size which is hardly a solution - infact
you are back squarely where you started. And I'm unsure if you actually read
those tutorials but they don't even seem to have been updated since _eclair_.
IIRC, you only had to deal with 3 sizes then - ldpi, mdpi, and hdpi. I haven't
done Android dev in a while, but I'm sure the number of layouts have tripled.

If you really want to counter sedev's point, you should point to an app with
the relevant code that actually does what sedev is talking about and not some
links to the documentation. Everyone is already aware of the documentation,
and if it actually worked as you said it did, we would not be having this
conversation.

~~~
noobs
You are not really aware of the documentation are you?

ActionBar is not a community shim anymore, a compatibility library down to
gingerbread is provided and supported by Google:
[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v7/ap...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v7/app/ActionBar.html)

As RyanZAG explained, your multiple layout files should only re-organize
fragments.

Yes Android dev is hard, with multiple versions, sizes, formats and bugs. But
there is documentation, tools and example to adress them. Deal with it.

If you are willing to try again, as so many things have changed since Eclair,
you can have a look at this exemple where you will see how you can use new API
and a fallback when they are not available: [http://code.google.com/p/android-
protips-location/source/bro...](http://code.google.com/p/android-protips-
location/source/browse/trunk/src/com/radioactiveyak/location_best_practices/utils/)

------
mrxd
> My uncharitable interpretation for this class of responses is simple
> laziness

What does this mean? If I was uncharitable, I'd say it sounds like he wants
designers and developers to work nights and weekends. If there's a business
case for supporting Android, then you need more headcount. If not, calling the
team lazy is unnecessary.

> I do hope, given tech’s rhetoric about changing the world and disrupting
> outdated hierarchies, that we don’t really think only those with revenue
> potential are worth our attention.

Most designers work for for-profit companies where revenue potential is an
extremely important consideration, irrespective of whether they personally
sympathize with the poor.

There's a valid point buried in here somewhere. It's possible that companies
are underinvesting in Android because they've underestimate the opportunity,
but blaming this on designers preferring iOS is just weird. A decision as
important as the choice of platform is rarely left up to the personal
preference of the designer.

------
taspeotis
Granted I'm a developer who's just starting out with Android, but for the life
of me I can't figure out any reasonable way to position things with
percentages and maximum widths. I tried weight_sum and weight and
gravity=center and that gets me percentages but then maxWidth is ignored.

Most of the advice online seems to be "you must construct additional
LinearLayouts".

~~~
georgemcbay
I've been writing Android code for close to 3 years now and I can tell you the
problem isn't you. Android layouts are like CSS in that eventually they warp
your brain to the point where you can mostly understand them and be productive
with them, but they are still kind of ridiculous and make doing things that
should be relatively easy much harder than they ought to be.

Sadly the whole way the layout system works seeps into the programmatic APIs
in all sorts of bad ways too -- like, I just want to set the width of this
view... there's no setWidth, wtf? Oh... LayoutParams? What in the hell is all
this. Not to mention things like every layout type having its own LayoutParams
class and all the fun that comes along with changing say a RelativeLayout to a
LinearLayout and then having to both change all your different dpi xml files
to match (especially on tablet/phone hybrid apps), and also make a ton of code
changes to correct your Java casting, etc. bleh.

~~~
chroem
Really? I picked up CSS in a few hours but I still can't begin to wrap my head
around how to properly work with Android layouts.

I really wish Google would let people use HTML and CSS instead of that bizarre
relational XML stuff.

~~~
Nilzor
WebView is your friend.

~~~
baddox
That can quickly turn into "now you have two problems."

------
logn
>A browser permanently playing catch-up will always be an additional,
potentially redundant, layer in the technology stack. If a single OS ends up
running >90% of the world’s connected devices, why bother writing software for
the browser?

I can't agree here. I think the OS world will be fragmented for a very long
time (forever) and that the browser world will always have a core set of
functionality to write apps once that run everywhere. I don't think Android,
iOS, or the desktop browser are going anywhere fast, and so the only platform
you can write for that reaches all three is the browser.

I suppose the author is predicting the end of desktops/laptops being relevant
but even given that (which I don't think will ever happen) there will still be
iOS and Android. That's still double the work to release one app on both.
People will always try to find the common denominator and the browser is it
(even if in another incarnation, e.g., Cordova/PhoneGap).

And assuming Android beats iOS, I can't imagine it beats the WWW too. I'd like
to see a statistical breakdown of "native" apps with embedded browsers vs
actual native apps. And if Cordova simply won't ever offer an elegant enough
user experience, then I think Firefox OS will become the winner. The WWW is
just so much bigger than Objective C or Dalvik, no one's going to port all
that. So, even assuming that one OS rules >90% of devices, what percent of
existing webapps/websites is that? And what percent of existing mobile apps'
tech stacks is that, accounting for apps that are seemingly native but
actually built on web tech?

~~~
psionski
Also it spares you from having to write Java, or worse - Objective C. I went
for HTML5 just because I could use a (relatively) sane language and not be
forced in walled gardens in the process - like having to buy a $3000 Mac to
use a language that looks like it's straight from the 80's (and now they're
trying to get me to buy a Mac just so I can view the console output of my
Javascript app - I'm starting to think Apple HATES the people that develop
software for their devices).

------
Aloha
I wonder how much of it had to do with how graphically inconsistent Android
was until 4.x

I had Stock Android 1.x and 2.x devices (before switching to iOS), and there
was no consistent UI anywhere to be found, even different parts of the base
system did things differently, not to mention non-scrollable UI elements
that'd render off partially the screen (parts of the menus for example) - and
thats just the interface - while android is better now, you still have the
supposed fragmentation issues, and the fact that if you have a single device
that has some issues with your app, you can end up with comments and ratings
that reflect that minority rather than the majority of users for whom it works
fine.

------
dannyr
Designers don't take Android seriously because they are mostly iOS users. It's
hard to build on something you cannot really relate to.

~~~
nysv
There also seems to an element of elitism among Apple fanboys, thinking their
design is the only one that matters.

"Android users obviously picked their device for other reasons than design, so
it doesn't have to look as good."

~~~
sbuk
> _... "element of elitism among Apple fanboys,"_

Let's not use pejoratives. While we are at it, let's not project our own
assumptions as points of fact.

~~~
nysv
You are right, I have but a little anecdotal evidence. In my experience there
does exists a group of designers who view Apple to be the gospel of UI design,
which can sometimes lead to them ignoring other schools of thought.

~~~
tomelders
So if I've got this right... It's those nasty lazy designerses fault, and has
nothing to do with Androids colossal shortcomings either as a platform to
develop for, or to earn a living from?

~~~
nysv
No. And I said, these designers are a minority. Android is definitely hard to
get "right" design-wise, but it can be done.

But if all you are trying to do is make it look like iOS, you are on the wrong
track.

Monetization issues are a separate problem as far as I can see. While money
can shift priorities, but shouldn't affect design.

------
joelgrus
Why don't designers make their stacked area charts really oddly proportioned
and with muddled palettes so that they're difficult to read?

Oh, wait, they do!

~~~
sbuk
The chart is from a well known and respected former Nokia analyst who,
incidentally, has a degree in computer science. I guess the question should
be; "Why do people on the internet consistently mouth off without checking
their facts, which are always a mere search away?"

------
wisty
> Socially, excluding Android users seems almost prejudicial. Unlike Android
> is difficult, this isn’t about about mere convenience; it’s a value judgment
> on who is worth designing for. Put uncharitably, the root issue is “Android
> users are poor”.

How about "Android users want a phone, not apps". If you want a phone, you get
an Android. If you want apps, you get an iPhone.

Look at the stats for web use. In 2012, there was more Android Webkit use of
cellular (more users?), but far more Mobile Safari if you included WiFi. An
iPhone / iPad is used as a computer, Android is a phone and mobile browser
(for when you can't use a real computer).

~~~
szatkus
No, Android user wants apps. iPhone is just expensive as hell. Android is much
cheaper alternative. People who want "just phone with browser" usually buy
Nokia Asha or feature phone.

~~~
dagw
A touchscreen Nokia Asha or other feature phone is not actually cheaper than
an Android phone and very few shops carry them. You have to be quite into
phones to even know they exists and have any reason why you'd want one. If a
person who wants a cheap phone with a browser walks into a shop and asks for a
cheap phone with a browser, they'll be walking out with a low end Android
phone.

~~~
rsynnott
Really, even if they just ask for a cheap phone; at least in Europe, many
telecoms don't sell consumer feature phones anymore _at all_.

------
rikthevik
Has anyone seen good results with the new Qt mobile tools? I realize that it
won't look quite native - but Qt's got a pretty good track record, and if I
could write apps using C++ instead of Java, and get some cross-platform
capability, I'd certainly be interested.

~~~
stefan_kendall3
I've been burned by cross-platform tools. I tried Sencha Touch, and it was a
horrible 2-year mistake.

Something that compiles might do better, but at the end of the day you really
want to be calling into the cocoa touch framework directly. If Qt lets you do
this, great. If it doesn't, look elsewhere.

------
watwut
"My uncharitable interpretation for this class of responses is simple
laziness"

That does not make sense. Those designers will not go home sooner for using
web. They work how much they work regardless of technology choice. Those who
work hard will work hard on both Android and web and those who slack will
slack on both. What changes is how much they achieve during their work-time.

"it’s a value judgment on who is worth designing for. [...] I do hope, given
tech’s rhetoric about changing the world and disrupting outdated hierarchies,
that we don’t really think only those with revenue potential are worth our
attention. "

This argument does not make much sense to me. Those are designers working for
companies. Both companies and designers gotta pay bills. Even if they do not,
owners want to get rich and there is nothing wrong with it. That is what
business is.

As for disrupting rhetoric, that one is just a buzzword used to get attention.
Getting attention is needed to earn money. Anyone with half a brain know that
"disrupting" means either "new" or "has earning potential" these days. By
definition, you will disrupt nothing by releasing apps nobody wants to buy

WhatsApp and few other successful apps are outliers and not a norm. They did
not become successful by nice design only, they become successful by figuring
out which features matter right now for their business.

------
drawkbox
They design for the devices they have. They also design for the largest part
of the viewing traffic of the web (ios). Apple is still a design deity.

Apple had the first big app platform and clients still demand iOS first. In
game and app development, it still gets the most focus.

Finally, and a bit of a trick almost, is the review times are longer for Apple
when talking about apps, this causes a focus on iOS earlier many times.
Projects tend towards getting iOS ready early and in the queue and approved
and the Android platforms second because Google Play is instant almost (Amazon
is as slow as Apple on reviews). Like complaining customers that get the most
focus, the more difficult to approve platform gets the most focus but only
because of its market share and past (new entrants need to be easier).

However with Google's beta system on Play more and more projects are starting
there now that a good chunk of clients have Android devices. Apple really
needed to buy testflight because they didn't have anything as nice. Android is
becoming a better test market and something you can iterate on faster early to
prepare it for iOS, lots of game developers are thinking this way now,
primarily because iOS is so hit driven at launch you have to get right and
Google is better long tail is seems.

------
bowlofpetunias
Yes, Android is gobbling up marketshare, but the growth is at the low end. The
cheap plastic boxes made for people for whom design is not a deciding factor.

When given a choice, most designers will work for companies and customers that
appreciate good design and are willing to _pay_ more for excellence in
experience, even at the expense of raw specs. Apple has built its success on
aiming for that market.

You see this in all products, from phones to cars to houses, so why should
Android be any different?

The best designers will work on premium products, and Android just isn't.
Google doesn't care much for design, and neither do the Android hardware
manufacturers (with the possible exception of HTC, and you can see how popular
that is in the Android market...), so that creates an ecosystem in which
design, visual, industrial and UX, is secondary.

Just like good developers don't like to work somewhere where good code is not
considered important, designers don't want to work in a market where their
talent isn't valued.

------
mmuro
Fragmentation is a real thing, not laziness. Almost 98% of Android users don't
run KitKat.

~~~
georgemcbay
It is both a real thing and laziness. With decent technical design and
Google's Android support library you can pretty much code as if 98% of people
run KitKat and not worry about it, the support library will fallback
gracefully down to all the OS versions you do care about.

Most of the time when I hear designers complaining about Android fragmentation
they are really just using "fragmentation" as a scapegoat to bemoan they fact
that they can't just create a very small set (1-3) of universal "pixel
perfect" mockups and ship those off as a PSD to a developer as the end-all,
be-all "visual spec". They have to worry about things like how different parts
of the app should scale as more real estate is made available, really
understand DPI (I've met more than a few designers who shockingly don't really
grasp DPI scaling), etc. Some designers are awesome at this and welcome the
challenges (and benefits!) that "responsive layout" brings with it, but a lot
of them ( _most_ of them, in my personal experience) just want to punt on all
that shit.

~~~
runewell
So you're saying it's easier to design on iOS then.

~~~
LordIllidan
It IS much easier. Given that you only have to worry about 2 devices, with 2
resolutions (2x scaling is handled pretty well), it's perfectly possible to
make a pixelperfect layout off a PSD (of course, things get a bit complex with
font sizes, etc, but autolayout helps out).

------
badman_ting
Elephant in the room = adoption rate of current OS version. "Kit Kat is
awesome!!" That's great. Who is using it?

~~~
DiabloD3
I am. On my Nexus 5. Compared to a iPhone 5s, this runs circles around it. I'm
not trying to start a flamewar or anything, but why are iOS devices so slow
and clunky, and why is the UI so... fruity? Its just weird.

~~~
youngtaff
I am.

I've also got an iPad and seriously considered getting a iPhone instead of my
Nexus 4 but iOS's poor keyboard i.e. key caps are always uppercase regardless
of shift state, it's hunt and peck rather than swype, and the lack of intents
were a deal breaker for me.

~~~
bluedino
The key caps on my desktop and laptop are always uppercase regardless of shift
state.

~~~
youngtaff
Yes but sure the key idea behind soft keyboards is they can change to reflect
what I'm going to type, as for example the iOS keyboard does when I hit the
number / punctuation shift key

------
justincpollard
Rather than asking "Why don't designers take Android seriously?" I'd ask "Why
don't companies take Android seriously?" Once a company decides to take
Android seriously, it isn't all that difficult to create compelling apps, with
or without a designer that is dedicated to the Android platform. While I don't
advocate simply copying the iOS experience on Android, a developer with some
knowledge of how the platform works doesn't necessarily need a designer's help
to modify the iOS experience to fit Android paradigms.

------
mruniverse
Most designers I see have iPhones. I think they just like designing for a
platform that they like. It's natural. People who like Linux develop for
Linux, etc. Why would you do otherwise?

~~~
ntlve
Make more money perhaps, no source on whether or not well designed apps drive
more revenue, just a guess.

------
weixiyen
Money is in iOS, so companies prioritize it first. After Android becomes the
main platform for monetization, it will probably be taken a lot more
seriously.

Right now it goes like this in every company.

1) Lets make an iOS app

2) okay we have an iOS app, can someone clone an Android one real quick? It
doesn't have to be perfect, just get it done ASAP.

> I recognise that I have a fairly rare stance, given the ideology that
> surrounds platform issues.

It's not a rare stance. Android is the hot thing now and has been gaining tons
of momentum.

------
lvturner
I one thing to consider, is that emerging markets also generally spend less
money on applications, and good design is expensive.

I've seen two identical apps (games specifically) on Android and iOS, the iOS
versions made considerably more revenue than the Android version.

So I guess the commonly asked question is "Will we make the same amount of
money with a cheaper design?"

Obviously this is a bit anecdotal, but I think it's a contributing factor.

------
huhtenberg
> Why don’t designers take Android seriously?

Perhaps simply because design doesn't appear to be instrumental to the success
on this platform?

------
andric
Android doesn’t drive early adoption, so it would make sense to leave it out
while you let iOS “take the cake” so to speak, for a while at least. Android,
being the dominant platform with a huge mass of people in the early-to-late
majority part of the bell curve, makes sense for when you want to scale.

~~~
chetanahuja
_" Android doesn’t drive early adoption"_

Surely you're going to provide data or some citation to back that huge
assertion.

~~~
tomelders
Feel free to refute them with your own evidence.

------
cclogg
"However, the growth patterns of Android are what give it such power. Android
utterly dominates in emerging markets."

The last point there is an important one. In the US (and various other
markets), iOS and Android are not that far apart in user count. In fact I
believe in the US now, iOS is taking share back (albeit a minor share lol):
[http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2014/3/comSc...](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2014/3/comScore_Reports_January_2014_US_Smartphone_Subscriber_Market_Share)

But anyway, I've enjoyed reading the comments here, and I think the point
about designers themselves being more mac-oriented (historically) is a pretty
valid reason!

------
rmrfrmrf
Probably because when Android evangelists (not necessarily Google) market
Android as the "anti-Apple" OS, you remind a lot of current Apple users about
the days when Windows ruled the earth and all of the anti-usability that came
with it.

------
programminggeek
Because great designed Android apps don't sell any better than mediocre ones.

------
mrottenkolber
I don't take native apps in general seriously. The future will be cross
platform web apps, and even if its not, I couldn't be arsed to write software
for proprietary platforms.

~~~
psionski
Buy a $3000 Mac computer so you can write software in a language that doesn't
work anywhere else (and for a good reason)? Sure, where do I sign up :D

------
stefan_kendall3
I'm not going to get acquired by Facebook for releasing my powerlifting app on
android. So I truly do need to consider the "Android users are poor"
statement.

They are.

I did some math, though, and the time it will take me to learn android and
build the android app should be worth my time if I can convert a decent
percentage of my old android paid users over to the designed, native app.

------
anuraj
We apply unidesign (works equally well on iOS and Android) for all our apps
these days. But we take iOS as the base for design. This is because Android
still do not have the design consistency of iOS. Also Android devices come in
variety of shapes and sizes and resolutions making it difficult to visualize
end result.

------
berrypicker
Part of why Android development is so frustrating for me is the tools we have
to use. If I'm not bashing my head trying to understand fragments and layouts,
I'm battling with Eclipse -- constantly closing/refreshing project -- and that
incredibly slow emulator.

~~~
ch0wn
Android Studio is way better in every conceivable way the old Eclipse-based
ADT and I haven't had speed problems with the Android emulator since they
released the x86 images. Have you actually developed for Android in the last
year?

~~~
berrypicker
I never used Android Studio, only Eclipse, since it was what everybody else
was using. This was my experience from around 2012/13 sorry for sharing it but
it put me off Android.

~~~
ch0wn
Things have drastically improved. You should give the new toolchain another
try. It's far from perfect, but a huge improvement.

------
mokkol
A friend of mine is making at this moment a vector based Android skin file in
Sketch. You guys should check it out when it is ready (very soon).

[http://android.sketchtricks.com/](http://android.sketchtricks.com/)

------
saltyknuckles
This was more complaining. I wish he would show an example with android UI

------
girishkolari
Apps in Android market are not under pressure from design competition, people
drive the way things they need ... when people accepts things the changes are
really slow -- people push change.

------
thought_alarm
...

Or, "How to get me to stop reading after the first paragraph".

~~~
Kiro
Why?

------
ThomPete
they dont take it seriously because Google doesent

