Question

I wanna get some help from you guys about, design. I’ve been working on an application for android, for a while and whats left is the design part. After a few hours of trying and working i’ve realized that im not actually not that good at it.

So, i wanna ask all of you:

Where do you get your main ideas from?

How do you start?

What’s important to think about, to highlight, and so on?

Any other tips?

Thanks!

Answer 1

1) Keep all touch surfaces big enough for fingers

Many developers coming from desktop development make the mistake of introducing too many small tap surfaces designed for mouse coursers rather than fingertips

2) Make it obvious what is tap-able

Indenting buttons works wonders for usability.

3) Watch the font size

In general, never go below 8pt fonts. They become unreadable. For anything you expect a user to read on the go (on a moving train), stick to 10pt or larger. (Personal experience, YEMV)

4) Leave out animations

It’s always tempting to put animations in menus and screens. Generally, leave them for transitions. On static screens, users will rather be distracted.

5) If necessary, split across several screens

A user has a much easier time processing 2 well-built, easy-to-understand screens of data after one another than making his/her way through one overly complex screen including all those items.

6) Since you also have the iPhone tag, try the iOS Interface Guidelines

If you are a registered developer, you can access them from the Developer Portal. Also, check out this years WWDC talks – a few of them covered interface design.

7) For actual graphics, check out these sites

1. PSDGraphics (3$ royalties)
2. MySiteMyWay (royalty free icons)
3. CGTextures (royalty free textures)