In today’s mobile era, the User Interface(UI) of any mobile application plays a very important role as it acts as a mediator between application users and application functionalities. For Android developers, it is very important to consider best practices while designing the UI of applications from the end user and application performance perspective. Applications with user-friendly User Interfaces appeal to users to keep using an application.
One of the most popular mobile platforms i.e., Android is continuously evolving and user expectations also soaring. Following best practices while designing UI is essential. In this article, we will explore 10 key points that Android developers must consider while developing Android applications.
What is Android Development?
The process of creating applications that can be installed on devices that run the Android Operating System is referred to as Android development. Android is an operating system developed in 2003 by Android Inc. It is a widely used mobile operating system. It powers millions of smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and other devices. Java and Kotlin are the languages that developers use to Develop Android Applications, which further has steps like coding, testing, and deployment of apps.
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What is Android UI Design?
The process of creating UI design for the applications that run on Android devices is called Android UI design. UI contains all visual elements and components that users can view and interact with, including Edit text, Buttons, Icons, and Navigations. For responsive, consistent, and user-friendly design, Google introduced material guidelines in 2014.
10 Best Practices For Android UI Design
Now Let’s explore 10 key best practices for Android UI design to create an exceptional user experience.
1. Adhere Material Guidelines
For designing modern and visually appealing UI Google has introduced a framework called Material Design. Material Design contains a set of components (Icons, Buttons, Inputboxes) and a set of principles(Elevation, Shadow, and Motion) that developers need to consider while designing the UI of Android applications.
- Developers should choose a color palette that aligns with Material guidelines, that focuses on Bold and Vibrant colors.
- To enhance User experience, developers should include animations and motion in application development.
- By adhering to Material guidelines such as effective iconography, typography, motions, and animations in the application, the developer can create a UI that enhances the user experience and helps to strengthen the app’s brand identity.
2. Responsive Screen Designs
Android is an open-source operating system, various device manufacturers such as Samsung, Nokia, Xiaomi, and others have powered their devices with Android OS. All these devices from multiple manufacturers come in different screen sizes and resolutions. Supporting responsive layout in UI design includes creating a UI that adjusts UI and layouts according to screen size, orientation, and resolutions. Ensuring screen responsiveness in applications makes an app look and function the same in a wide range of devices. By following the best practices listed below, Android developers can create responsive layouts
- Use constraint layout, a powerful layout manager introduced by Google allows developers to create responsive layouts.
- Developers should avoid giving hard code sizes in layouts such as giving fixed height and width.
- Consider different layouts for different sizes and orientations such as mobile, tablet, portrait, and landscape.
3. Importance of Consistency
Android UI design consistency refers to maintaining uniformity across the various elements of your application’s interface. Maintaining consistency in-app results in better user experience and quality app. Here are some aspects that developers should consider while aiming for widget/element consistency.
- Developers should provide visual consistency across the app, such as color schemes, icons, fonts, etc. If developers use different color schemes, fonts, and icons on different screens it results in a bad user experience.
- UI components such as Buttons, menus, and text fields must be consistence across the applications. Developers must use standard UI components and adhere to Material guidelines.
- While designing screen layout, developers must keep spacing, margin, and padding between UI elements consistence. Developers must consider layout guidelines while designing to give the best user experience.
- Developers must establish consistence navigation patterns across the app, so users can seamlessly navigate to different screens within the application.
4. Easy Navigation
Easy navigation within the application is a critical aspect that developers must take into consideration, as it directly impacts the user’s experience and app usability. Developers should use a standard navigation drawer, bottom navigation, and navigation tabs that allow users to seamlessly from one screen across the application. By following below best practices developer can provide easy and seamless navigation in the app.
- To give a predictive and best user experience, developers must use consistence navigation patterns. Using different patterns for different screens may give a bad user experience.
- As per current trends most users use gesture navigation for navigating and going back to previous screens, developers must design gestures that align with Android standard navigation gestures.
- Implementing search functionality in the app and navigating to the targeted screen from searched content give a seamless user experience for navigating in targeted screens.
5. Accessibility Support
The success of apps also depends on the users targeted for the app, the developer must target the users with disabilities and provide a way for them to use the app. They must adhere to guidelines for accessibility and ensure that all users can navigate, interact, and understand the content of the application. Below are the key aspects the developers should follow while giving accessibility support.
- Google provides Material design accessibility guidelines and Android accessibility developer guidelines, developers must consider those guidelines and apply them to UI components to give an easy user experience.
- UI elements should be semantically marked up with accessibility attributes, for instance, the developer must provide content descriptions for widgets such as Images, buttons, and links.
- Using proper color contrast, Scalable Text size, providing screen recording compatibility, and providing audio and haptic feedback are some important aspects to consider while giving accessibility support.
6. Performance Optimization
Application UI performance must be optimized, by ensuring smooth scrolling for listing content, less loading time for content, and efficient usage of resources. Avoiding unnecessary use of animations, using proper layout structure, and leveraging Android Studio tools for performance optimization such as Profiler can help developers to design UI efficiently. Below are performance optimization key aspects that developers should consider.
- Complex layout hierarchy and overlapping unnecessary views can increase screen rendering time which can affect app performance. The developer should use a constraint layout for complex screen design.
- Consider the use of pagination when the screen has many items to load and the use of lazy loading while users wait for images to render.
- Consider the use of an Image-loading library such as Glide, or Picasso to load images efficiently.
7. Importance of Typography
Paying attention to the use of Typography is also a critical point to consider while designing UI. Typography includes the use of readable font size, ensuring text is legible on different screens and backgrounds. Developers should use a typography hierarchy by considering content priority. Let’s look at best practices to follow Typography constraints.
- The main purpose of typography is to make content easily readable and easy to understand for users. Choosing the proper font style, type, size, and color can help users to read content more comfortably.
- Consider establishing a visual hierarchy within your app by taking users’ attention to the important content of the app, such as using bold and big fonts to indicate the title on the screen.
- Consider typography if the app supports different device sizes such as mobile and tablet in such cases developer must consider enough space is given to text on smaller devices.
8. Collect User’s Feedback
Give a provision in the app to gather users’ feedback about UI, and performance in the form of surveys, feedback forms, and reviews. This helps developers understand how users interact with the app, and what they like and dislike in the app. Once the user’s feedback is collected, developers should implement suggestions to improve the app UI. Consider below key aspects for collecting User feedback.
- Try to collect information about user’s preferences, and expectations. Collecting that information directly from users can help developers to understand user’s needs.
- Try to collect user feedback at various stages of app development, developers can identify areas of improvement in the early stage of development.
- User feedback can be used in identifying app bugs, glitches, and other UI bugs.
9. Support Visual Feedback
Supporting visual feedback refers to providing users with clear visual clues or responses to the actions that users perform in the app. Considering visual feedback in the application helps users to understand their interaction in the app and receive guidance in the app to understand app flow. Below are key aspects that need to be considered for Visual Feedback.
- Use light animations and effects to draw the user’s attention, for example, provide ripple effects on Button tap.
- Show progress bar and loading animations where the user needs to wait for a response, so the user can have an idea about the background process.
- In case an error occurs while interacting with an app, show an error dialog with information to users so they can correct their actions by providing correct inputs.
10. Stay Updated with Platform Trends and Updates
Staying updated with trends and the latest guidelines provided by the community is very essential for app UI because it helps the app to remain in the user’s favorite list. By staying informed about the latest trends, features, and guidelines developers can deliver exceptional user experience to users who access the huge range of Android devices. Below are some key reason that highlights the importance of staying updated with platform trends and updates.
- Android platform guidelines and design rules evolve over time, which is reflected in user behavior and design trends. Staying updated with trends such as material design ensures that the app aligns with best current practices.
- Android platform updates bring new features and functionality that developers can leverage into their apps to enhance the app’s user experience.
- Staying updated with trends allows developers to adopt new UI changes that support the latest device size and configurations
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Conclusion
Creating attractive and Fascinating UI is the key success of Android applications. By adhering best practices mentioned above developers can create exceptional user experience. From adhering to material guidelines to prioritizing accessibility and performance, and incorporating above listed best practices into your Android app UI design developers can create apps that stand out in the crowded app marketplace.