Design successful user experience design for Android Tablet PC

Article Description: Android Tablet PC design.

There is no longer a need for designers to create experiences for a variety of mobile devices than they do now. As tablets are being accepted, we are in the post-PC era, and the company will take advantage of the quality of the tablet's user experience to capture the user's attention. Successful Android tablet applications require a great idea to encourage users to download, use, and retain, as well as a user experience that makes it intuitive for Android users to find and adapt to the use of the environment.

Next, by understanding the difference between the ipad iOS user interface and the Android 3.x "Honeycomb user interface design specification and elements, you can help designers become familiar with the Android tablet application program." We will also analyze honeycomb design patterns and layout strategies, and then look at some of the very good Android tablet applications.

Note that while Android 2.x apps on smartphones can also run on tablets, the Android 3.0 Honeycomb system is designed and launched specifically for Tablet PCs. Future updates promises to embed honeycomb features into smartphone devices and make it easier to design and build on a wide variety of screen sizes.

For most of us, the first time we touch a tablet is through the ipad. It is for this reason that it is reasonable to begin to compare the user interface between the two. By comparison, we can organize the knowledge of the tablet we already know and focus on the key differences, so that we can meet the unique user interface requirements of the Android user. This can not only make us faster, but also become very important when converting applications that already exist on the ipad onto the Android tablet computer.

Just do it like an ipad, right?

While there are many similarities between the Android tablet and ipad experience (Touch gestures, app launch icons, modal expressions, etc.), designers should be familiar with the differences before making assumptions and drawing screen streams.

Screen size and orientation

The biggest difference between these two platforms is the overall size. The size of the ipad's layout is 768x1024 physical pixels, and the ipad has the vertical display orientation as its default viewing direction.

The Android tablet, with its many equipment makers, is slightly more complex. Broadly speaking, there are 7-inch and 10-inch Android tablet screen sizes (the diagonal lengths from the top left to the lower right), and the size between the two. However, most tablet PCs are about 10 inches.

Convert to pixels, what does that mean? A nice layout baseline is a 1280x752 pixel (excluding the system bar), based on a 10-inch screen size, and landscape (not portrait) as the default orientation. Like on the ipad, content on Android can be accessed in two directions, horizontally and vertically, but the landscape pattern is often more popular.

The left image is a vertical view on a typical 10-inch Android tablet, with the right image on the ipad.

The left image is a horizontal view on a typical 10-inch Android tablet, with the right image on the ipad.

However, for Android, the screen size is only half the difference. The Android tablet also differs in "screen density" (the number of pixels in a particular area of the screen). Instead of paying attention to the details, the designer can only prepare all production-ready alternate bitmaps for three different screen densities, magnifying each bitmap to 1.5 times times or twice times the original size. Therefore, a bitmap that is set to 100x100 pixel size should also have a copy of 150x150 and 200x200 size. By making three of bitmaps with scaled dimensions, you can convert your bitmap into a medium, high, ultra-high-density tablet screen without compromising the quality of the image.

For more information on screen density and image preparation for Android devices, please refer to my previous article "Designing for Android"

System Bar

Although the iOS platform makes the system tray as small as possible, the Android Honeycomb expands the system tray size and includes notification and soft navigation buttons. These include the return button, the Home Page button, and the latest application button.

Android Honeycomb System Bar

The Android honeycomb system bar and buttons always exist at the bottom of the screen, regardless of what application is turned on. You can think of it as a permanent UI fixture. The only exception is the "Turn off" mode, which darkens the system bar to show immersive content, such as video and games.