With more than 450,000 Android apps now available, Android developers must work harder than ever to differentiate their apps. Leading Android app developer Ian Clifton covers every step of the design and coding process, showing how to create effective designs, organise them into Android components, and move from idea to wireframe to comp to finished app.
Build Android 6 Material Design Apps That Are Stunningly Attractive, Functional, and Intuitive As Android development has matured and grown increasingly competitive, developers have recognized the crucial importance of good design. With Material Design, Google introduced its most radical visual changes ever, and made effective design even more essential. Android 6 and the design support library continue to push mobile design forward. In Android User Interface Design, Second Edition, leading Android developer and user experience (UX) advocate Ian G. Clifton shows how to combine exceptional usability and outstanding visual appeal. Clifton helps you build apps that new users can succeed with instantly: apps that leverage users’ previous experience previous experience, reflect platform conventions, and never test their patience. You won’t need any design experience: Clifton walks you through the entire process, from wireframes and flowcharts to finished apps with polished animations and advanced compositing. You’ll find hands-on case studies and extensive downloadable sample code, including complete finished apps. • Integrate Material Design into backward compatible Android 6 apps • Understand views, the building blocks of Android user interfaces • Make the most of wireframes and conceptual prototypes • Apply user-centered design throughout • Master the essentials of typography and iconography • Use custom themes and styles for consistent visuals • Handle inputs and scrolling • Create beautiful transition animations • Use advanced components like spans and image caches • Work with the canvas, color filters, shaders, and image compositing • Combine multiple views into efficient custom components • Customize views to meet unique drawing or interaction requirements • Maximize downloads by designing compelling app store assets Step by step, this guide bridges the gap between Android developers and designers, so you can collaborate on world-class app designs...or do it all yourself! “This well-presented, easy-to-grasp book gets to the heart of Android User Interface Design. Well worth the reading time!” --Dr. Adam Porter, University of Maryland, Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering "Ian's grasp of Android is fantastic, and this book is a great read for any developer or designer. I've personally worked on 30+ Android applications, and I was learning new tips with every chapter." --Cameron Banga, Lead Designer, 9magnets, LLC
Author Jason Ostrander walks developers through the different choices available on their way to creating a well-designed application for Android. While building a simple application, Jason works through the basics of Android UI development including layout, event handling, menus and notifications. The author then shows the proper way to load and display images, create advanced dialogs and progress indicators, add animation, and how to build custom UI elements. Jason discusses the proper way of adding interaction through gestures and the advanced graphical options available using Canvas, Renderscript and OpenGL. Finally, he discusses tablet development, the unique differences between phone and tablet UI, and the new APIs available to tablet developers.
Plan, design, and build engaging user interfaces for your Android applicationsAbout This Book*Take an initial idea for an Android app and develop it into a detailed plan, supported by sketches and wireframes*Provide a better experience for your users by following best practices and the new material design principles*Work more efficiently and save time by testing your ideas at an early stage by building a prototypeWho This Book Is ForIf you are a Java developer with a keen interest in building stunning UIs for your applications in order to retain customers and create great experiences for them, then this book is for you. A good knowledge level of HTML, CSS, and some grounding in Android Development is assumed.What You Will Learn*Develop a user interface that adheres to all the core material design principles*Transform your initial app idea into a concrete and detailed plan*Add Views, ViewGroups, layouts, and common UI components to your own Android projects*Use fragments and various strategies to gather user input*Create a new Android Studio project and develop it into a prototype*Identify and solve problems with your app's UI to deliver a better user experienceIn DetailGreat design is one of the key drivers in the adoption of new applications, yet unfortunately design considerations are often neglected in the face of "will it work," "can we make it quicker," or "can we get more people using it"?This book seeks to redress this balance by showing you how to get your PM to start treating the design phase of your project seriously. This book is focused entirely on the development of UI features, and you'll be able to practically implementing the design practices that we extol throughout the book.Starting by briefly outlining some of the factors you need to keep in mind when building a UI, you'll learn the concepts of Android User Interface from scratch. We then move on to formulate a plan on how to implement these concepts in various applications. We will deep dive into how UI features are implemented in real-world applications where UIs are complex and dynamic.This book offers near complete coverage of UI-specific content including, views, fragments, the wireframing process, and how to add in splash screens-everything you need to make professional standard UIs for modern applications. It will then cover material design and show you how to implement Google's design aesthetic in a practical manner. Finally, it ensures the best possible user experience by analyzing the UI using various tools, and then addressing any problems they uncover.By the end of the book, you'll be able to leverage the concepts of Android User Interface in your applications in order to attract new customers.
GUI Design for Android Apps is the perfect—and concise—introduction for mobile app developers and designers. Through easy-to-follow tutorials, code samples, and case studies, the book shows the must-know principles for user-interface design for Android apps running on the Intel platform, including smartphones, tablets and embedded devices. This book is jointly developed for individual learning by Intel Software College and China Shanghai JiaoTong University, and is excerpted from Android Application Development for the Intel® Platform.
Master the challenges of Android user interface development with these sample patterns With Android 4, Google brings the full power of its Android OS to both smartphone and tablet computing. Designing effective user interfaces that work on multiple Android devices is extremely challenging. This book provides more than 75 patterns that you can use to create versatile user interfaces for both smartphones and tablets, saving countless hours of development time. Patterns cover the most common and yet difficult types of user interactions, and each is supported with richly illustrated, step-by-step instructions. Includes sample patterns for welcome and home screens, searches, sorting and filtering, data entry, navigation, images and thumbnails, interacting with the environment and networks, and more Features tablet-specific patterns and patterns for avoiding results you don't want Illustrated, step-by-step instructions describe what the pattern is, how it works, when and why to use it, and related patterns and anti-patterns A companion website offers additional content and a forum for interaction Android Design Patterns: Interaction Design Solutions for Developers provides extremely useful tools for developers who want to take advantage of the booming Android app development market.
Master the art of creating impressive and reactive UIs for mobile applications on the latest version of Android Oreo.About This Book* A comprehensive guide to designing and developing highly interactive user interfaces for your app.* Design responsive and agile applications targeting multiple Android devices (up to Android Oreo) using Android Studio 3.0* Write reactive user interfaces with minimal effort by leveraging the latest Android technologies, such as Architecture components and the Lifecycle API* Avoid common design problems and pitfalls with the help of shared UI design patterns and best practices.Who This Book Is ForThis book is for novice Android and Java developers who have a basic knowledge of Android development and want to start developing stunning user interfaces.What You Will Learn* Create effective and efficient user interfaces that allow users to carry out tasks smoothly* Understand the fundamentals of Android UI design, and take a look at the basic layouts, Inputs, and controls* Learn about various UI components provided by Android, which include structured layout objects and UI controls that allow you to build the graphical user interface for your app* Explore various styles and themes that allow you to customize the look and feel of your app* Leverage the animation and graphics APIs to improve user experience and draw custom 2D graphicsIn DetailA great user interface (UI) can spell the difference between success and failure for any new application. This book will show you not just how to code great UIs, but how to design them as well. It will take novice Android developers on a journey, showing them how to leverage the Android platform to produce stunning Android applications.Begin with the basics of creating Android applications and then move on to topics such as screen and layout design. Next, learn about techniques that will help improve performance for your application. Also, explore how to create reactive applications that are fast, animated, and guide the user toward their goals with minimal distraction.Understand Android architecture components and learn how to build your application to automatically respond to changes made by the user. Great platforms are not always enough, so this book also focuses on creating custom components, layout managers, and 2D graphics. Also, explore many tips and best practices to ease your UI development process.By the end, you'll be able to design and build not only amazing UIs, but also systems that provide the best possible user experience.Style and approachThis book takes an easy tutorial approach to help you learn how to create consistent and efficient user interfaces for your apps. The book first takes you through the basics of user interfaces such as basic layouts, inputs, and controls, and also covers animations and graphics. By the end of the book, you will have learned best practices and will be able to develop inspired interfaces that look good and also work subtly in the background.
When you’re under pressure to produce a well designed, easy-to-navigate mobile app, there’s no time to reinvent the wheel. This concise book provides a handy reference to 70 mobile app design patterns, illustrated by more than 400 screenshots from current iOS, Android, BlackBerry, WebOS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian apps. User experience professional Theresa Neil (Designing Web Interfaces) walks you through design patterns in 10 separate categories, including anti-patterns. Whether you’re designing a simple iPhone application or one that’s meant to work for every popular mobile OS on the market, these patterns provide solutions to common design challenges. This print edition is in full color. Pattern categories include: Navigation: get patterns for primary and secondary navigation Forms: break the industry-wide habits of bad form design Tables and lists: display only the most important information Search, sort, and filter: make these functions easy to use Tools: create the illusion of direct interaction Charts: learn best practices for basic chart design Invitations: invite users to get started and discover features Help: integrate help pages into a smaller form factor "It’s a super handy catalog that I can flip to for ideas." —Bill Scott, Senior Director of Web Development at PayPal "Looks fantastic." —Erin Malone, Partner at Tangible UX "Just a quick thanks to express my sheer gratitude for this pub, it has been a guide for me reworking a design for an app already in production!" —Agatha June, UX designer
Build Android Apps That Are Stunningly Attractive, Functional, and Intuitive In today’s crowded Android marketplace, it’s more important than ever to differentiate your apps. Great design is the best way to do that. Now, leading Android app design expert Ian G. Clifton shows you how to make your apps come alive and how to deliver apps that users will want, love, and buy! Reflecting the Android 4.2 SDK, this book serves both as a tutorial for the entire design and implementation process and as a handy reference you’ll rely on for every Android development project. Clifton shows how to create effective designs, organize them into Android components, and move gracefully from idea, to wireframe, to comp, to finished app. You’ll learn how to bring your own voice, personality, and style to your app designs; how to leverage advanced drawing techniques such as PorterDuff compositing; how to test designs on diverse Android devices; and much more. Android User Interface Design details each step of the design and development process and contains extensive downloadable sample code, including complete finished apps. Learn how Android has evolved to support outstanding app design Integrate app design with development, from idea through deployment Understand views, the building blocks of Android user interfaces Make the most of wireframes and prototypes Build efficient layouts and integrate smooth animations Make apps more useful by automatically updating ListViews Combine views into custom components Use image compositing and other advanced techniques Work with the canvas and advanced drawing Leverage Google Play and Amazon Appstore assets One step at a time, this guide helps you bridge the gap between Android developers and designers so you can work with colleagues to create world-class app designs...or do it yourself!
