Book Image

Android UI Design

By : Jessica Thornsby
Book Image

Android UI Design

By: Jessica Thornsby

Overview of this book

<p>Great 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”?</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Android UI Design
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Creating a prototype in Android Studio


Conveniently, one of the best tools for creating Android prototypes is something you probably already have installed—Android Studio.

This IDE features an advanced layout editor that's ideal for rapidly creating digital prototypes. This layout editor automatically opens whenever you open any XML layout resource file in Android Studio.

The quickest way of creating a digital prototype is to select the editor's Design tab (where the cursor is positioned in the previous screenshot). A new area will open displaying a canvas preview of your app's layout, plus a Palette containing lots of ready-made UI elements called widgets. You can quickly create a prototype by dragging widgets from the Palette and dropping them onto the canvas.

Note

When creating prototypes (and Android apps in general), you should use the default widgets unless you have a very good reason not to. Not only do these ready-made widgets make your life as a developer easier, but most Android...