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Google Launches Style Guide For Android Developers
mspohr writes "On Thursday, Google launched Android Design, a website created specifically to help aid developers in the creation of applications for ICS. The site offers a comprehensive visual to third-party application developers, giving suggestions on everything from how to implement different visual elements to overall back-end patterns for the OS itself. In theory, it will help developers better understand just how the Android team thinks about layout and implementation, while simultaneously giving suggestions to interaction designers on how to maintain visual integrity. Basically, it will help both first-time developers and Android veterans make apps look less crappy. 'We haven't really had a style guide,' Duarte says. 'We haven't really given you a lot of guidance on how to migrate your application from a phone, perhaps, to a tablet. We've done so only by example.'"
It's good to see Google admit that large amount of Android apps aren't really standardly designed and suffer from huge fragmentation issues, both with hardware and design. It's just weird to see Google CEO saying there isn't such issue while at the same time the company is launching design guide to help fix some of the issues.
I think this is also part of a longer plan for Android's issues. I think Google is finally starting to see that the supposed freedom they gave to manufacturers and telcos backfired and resulted in fragmented hardware and non-standard design within apps and phones. I believe they will soon announce some similar guidelines and policy changes to try to get Android more together. Especially now that WP7 market share is starting to climb as a result of Nokia's new phones.
1 developer, 1 way of doing things.
2 developers, 2 days of doing things.
etc.
Too familiar with this these days as I code replacements for crappy apps. What I'd really like to know is if people actually think about their interfaces, rather than patching them together as they go along.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The document should have been on the street before it was released.
Google like Microsoft has no style or taste. They are a bunch of really smart programmers but damn few of them know diddly shit about U/I interfaces much less standards.
Android will never have the polish that iOS has and that may be a hard fact for the Android loyalists, but it is a fact never the less.
Every piece of Apple software has a beautifully designed U/I and that is because Steve Jobs had taste and style and that will carry on because he trained his designers to look at history to look at beautiful manuscripts and books.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I appreciate that the Google pages are a draft and work in progress, but they're a far cry from the level of detail provided by IBM's CUA (which got right down to function key actions), Microsoft's Windows Style Guide (which tells you how you should USE the widgets built into the system, not how to MANUALLY HIGHLIGHT touchpads like Google's guide does), or Apple's obviously detailed specifications.
On the other hand, IBM spent a LONG time writing and editing the CUA style guide before it was published, and Microsoft and Apple also have had a few iterations and updates under their belt.
So, great idea, keep at it, but it's not there yet. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
...speaking as someone who has formally studied design, it's not even close to sufficient to just train designers "to look at history to look at beautiful manuscripts and books" [argh, the run-ons...]. You need to understand design theory, your target audience, and have a bit of a magic touch (one that I personally, sadly, seem to lack) for figuring out where things go. Just looking at a few pictures isn't going to help. They provide inspiration and you can draw commonalities from them, but really you have to practice design and learn from your mistakes if you want to be any good at it -- like just about anything else.
As for iOS vs Android, I agree that iOS has more polish but I think you're mistaken about it carrying on. I suspect now that Steve Jobs is not micromanaging every design decision, we'll see slippage in Apple's design output. The key difference between Apple and Android is that Apple had every design aspect of its products micromanaged by ONE MAN for years. If you have everything designed by one talented designer or a team of designers who have worked together for years, you get something much more consistent and beautiful than when the result is a "good enough" effort by the designer or design team of the year. I think it's a natural consequence of the fact that a group of people can't really "share" any design goal since they all have slightly different mental images of what the end result should be (unless they have worked together for years and have learned to understand what the effect of each member of their team is on the final result). So unless Apple has some new superstar designer who can crack the whip of conformity and beat down dissenters across its product line going forward, I expect to see it slipping in the future.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
Understanding how to use white space (as well as other design concepts) is different than just using excessive white space because it is the thing of the day. There is a difference, I think, between using a design concept and choosing to use a design concept. There has to be a reason to use it. Design is all about the why not the how.
Balderdash!