Google Android Platform - The Android Log

An interesting thread started in the Google Android Developers group, why hasn’t Google provided a User Interface Guide for Android? Is it up to the Android community to write these type of documents? Until recently, Free-Software has not had a celebrated history of creating outstanding GUI experiences. What will the Android experience be like if every developer has their own way of presenting user information and menu choices?

It can be a serious challenge to get hobyists and part-time free-software developers to devote precious time to the creation of style-guides and interface documents. Plus, how would a hobyist Android developer find a testing environment to study user interaction and gather feedback?

For at least six years, companies including Sun and Novell have invested heavily in improving the usability of the Gnome User Interface. The leaps and bounds that the Gnome UI has made since then is very impressive but it took money from large, established companies to create standards guides, provide testing labs and quality-control specialists. In 2001, Linux Weekly News interviewed Calum Benson about the work he was doing as a Sun employee working on the Gnome Usability Group in it’s early days.

The other critical thing is to ensure you don’t *have* to know about all the ways of doing something to complete the whole task. This problem showed up in the study with respect to panel customization, and especially fonts– there’s no one place in GNOME 1.4 to change all the fonts on your desktop, you have to know at least three different places to go.

So yes, it’s important that the key features on a desktop are well signposted, especially if you’re new to that particular environment. But while more advanced features or quicker ways of doing the same thing may not become apparent until you reach a higher level of competence and start experimenting and exploring, they still need to be designed to be
as easy to use as possible.

What kind of documentation is Android missing? Here is a small sample of similar user-interface documents that Microsoft provides independent Windows Mobile application developers.

• Accessibility and Ergonomic Guidelines - Outlines the guidelines for developing an accessible user interface.
• Home and Today Screen Guidelines - Describes the information the user might want instant access to, and ways to display it when the component is selected.
• Mobile Web Site Design Overview - Some general guidelines on how to optimize your Web site design for Internet Explorer Mobile.
• Navigation Guidelines - Describes the various views (list view, summary view, and edit view). and provides recommendations for using them.
• Screen Rotation Guidelines - Describes practical approaches you can take to create screen layouts that accommodate portrait, landscape, and square.
• Soft Key and Menu Guidelines - Describes the role that Soft Keys play in the user interface, and how to properly implement them in your applications.
• Usability Guidelines - Provides a checklist to help you confirm that your application’s user interface meets usability requirements.
• User Interface Control Guidelines - Provides guidelines for user interface (UI) controls.
• User Interface Text Guidelines - Provides guidelines for designing user interface text.

What do you think? Is this a deal-breaker for your mobile applications or is it a non-issue? 

Technorati Tags: Google, Android, User-Interface, Microsoft, Windows Mobile, Apple, Design, Guides

Steven Frank, cofounder of Panic, Inc has updated his blog with reflections on the Android SDK and the market effect it could have:

Having digested the landslide of comments on my previous Android post, I think some of you called it: While Android is not a direct threat to the iPhone, it is very much a threat to Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian. Palm and WM in particular have been languishing for years with successive releases that are barely even an evolution from the previous one. They were never designed to run on phones in the first place, and both carry a tremendous amount of baggage that will be hard to eliminate from both a technical and user satisfaction standpoint. Palm in particular is so busy chasing their own tail that someone should probably call them and tell them about Android, because they might not have heard.

Really, all Android has to be is “good enough” in order to potentially snatch a good chunk of the low-to-mid range smartphone market. This is the point at which my previous missive devolved into an only borderline-related rant about my dissatisfaction with organizations who set “good enough” as a goal — and really how hard does it seem like it should be for Google to outdo Palm, for example. So, after some deep breaths and zen-like introspection, I’m officially upgrading to “wait and see” mode on Android, software-wise.

But now here’s where the whole 34 company committee thing still bothers me: Google wants Android to run on a lot of different hardware, and quite a few hardware vendors have signed on. That’s great, right? Well, it’s sort of great. Commoditizing the hardware will keep the price of Android phones down, which is certainly desirable. But I fear they’re going to run into the same quagmire that Windows Mobile has.

You don’t know if any given Windows Mobile device is going to have a touchscreen, a QWERTY keyboard, a numeric pad, WiFi, cellular access, Bluetooth, GPS… How can you design software that’s in any way elegant for an unknown combination of hardware? How well would the iPhone work if you couldn’t assume a touchscreen?

Read Steven’s entire article, Android, With More Optimism and read some of the great comments.

Technorati Tags: Android, SDK, Apple, Microsoft, Palm, Google, Mobile, Operating Systems

Engadget writes,

Palm’s not the only company that isn’t afraid to speak out on the Open Handset Alliance. Nokia, Microsoft and Symbian made it most clear today that they don’t perceive danger from the new initiative and corresponding Android OS, with Nokia stating it quite bluntly: “We don’t see this as a threat.” Microsoft was a bit more on the defensive. “It really sounds that they are getting a whole bunch of people together to build a phone and that’s something we’ve been doing for five years,” said Scott Horn, from Microsoft’s Windows Mobile marketing team. “I don’t understand the impact that they are going to have.” The Symbian folks stated the obvious: “If Google was not involved the industry would have just yawned and rolled over,” said John Forsyth of Symbian. “We take it seriously but we are the ones with real phones, real phone platforms and a wealth of volume built up over years.” UIQ was a bit more optimistic about the OHA, saying that “Generally, it’s positive for the industry.” Apple wasn’t as commital either way. “We have a great relationship with Google and this doesn’t change anything,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. “They are certainly an important partner for iPhone.”

Some great discussion can be found at the original post at Engadget.com