Analysis of mobile interaction design for Android 4.0 application interface design

Compared with IOS, the Android interface has a variety of uncoordinated interfaces, and the application interface itself lacks a uniform specification. While Android's openness offers the greatest possibility of application autonomy, it is not necessarily a bad thing if the system itself can provide standard examples, after all, many applications do not necessarily require an original interface. Starting with Android 4.0, the system interface has improved in consistency, so how should the interface of Android be designed? If you look closely at Google's recent series of apps, you should be able to find some guiding points that are being used by third parties.

Android apps should not be a replica of IOS apps, so what should it look like? androiduipatterns Web site for the Android application of the interface design put forward some normative suggestions, it is worth reference.

Main interface

What should be the application's main interface (starting interface)? Look at this spec diagram below.

What applications use such a starting interface? Look at these three examples: Aldiko,evernote and Google +.

Sub-Interface

How to design after entering the application interface, look at the example below.

The above line is the action bar: the leftmost is the application icon (perhaps including the Back button), click Back to the starting interface, the middle part mainly consider the application of coordinated color; the rightmost is the action that can be done under the current situation.

Look at the example below

List interface

The application may need to process a large amount of data, while the list is a way of rendering the data rule-based. The list interface should be clear enough to provide a good overview of the user, while the action bar of the list interface should allow users to perform single or multiple actions on the list.

Two of the better examples are Aldiko and Google Mail. Note that the list selection box is usually on the left, but in Aldiko, the folder icon is very prominent on the left, so the Aldiko selection box is placed on the right side to achieve a balance on the interface.

Load List

Applications may need to handle a lot of information, such as Twitter's timeline. For users, this means that the length of the list is almost endless. At present, many applications have adopted a more general approach, which automatically loads more information when it slides down to the bottom edge of a list of buffered items.

Here are two examples: Android Market and Twitter.

Long Press

To operate on a single item of information, one way to interact is to have a long press. This may not be the most obvious operation, but save screen space, but also very consistent with the "scenario menu" concept.

Here are three examples: Aldiko,astro file Manager and Google +.

Multi-Select operation

To select a list, it is a good idea to add a selection bar to the item on the list, as shown below:

When you have selected more than one item, the action Bar is given below the screen.

Label

Starting with Android 4.0, the system has further highlighted the category label. Below the top action bar, there is usually a tab bar that you can click or slide around, as shown below

Android Market and Google + are two examples

Although Google does not give too many restrictions on the interface, as the Android platform develops, it should be a trend for the application interface to evolve into a uniform set of rules and interfaces. Does this mean that all applications must follow the rules? That's not necessarily true. The Path interface, for example, does not necessarily conform to the specification of any platform. If you have a groundbreaking interface, and you can guarantee ease of use, you might as well go to bold innovation, otherwise, follow the existing good specifications may let you take a little detour.

Author: building Blocks

Article Source: ifanr.com