Android App UI Advise. Screenshots Included

carlmango11

Hi,

EDIT: spelled advice wrong sorry

I'm working on an tablet-only Android app at the moment as part of a project. I really want to make the UI look nice. I have a strange love for beautiful apps and I've seen far too many awful ones on Android. However, I'm far from a graphic designer and while I can appreciate good design, I'm not very good at making it.

The app is aimed at secondary, maybe primary school students. I put together a "skeuomorphic" look but my supervisor said he thinks there's maybe a bit too many different elements on the screen, which I can see myself now.

Problem is though I don't have a better design to implement in it's place. I don't really want to go back to standard white background, black standard text for everything. It's too boring to read and this particular app needs to display a fair amount of information on the screen.

So basically I've attached a load of screenshots of the main screens and what I have at the moment. Any advice, suggestions, criticisms, links, articles, resources etc. would be very much appreciated.

Here's the screenshots

Thanks in advance :pac:

miralize

The first problem I see with it is that there is very little consistency, you have a several different visual metaphors and its a bit all over the place. Skeumorphism isnt just about familiarity but consistency. I'm not much of a fan of skeumorphic design, but even design in general needs a consistant rhythm. For example you have a book element and overlayed on top of it is a blue box. I do like the fact that you have a handwritten font on the notepad and page elements, it's a bit hard to read but its a nice touch.

The logo itself is a bit too large for the nav bar, mabye scale it down at fill in the logo

In a few places on that grey background you have grey text and buttons, make them a bit more prominent.

Functionally it looks all there, it just needs to be refined a bit. Take a look at this article for some pointers & examples on skeumorphism. Hope I wasnt too harsh!

solarith

First off: I am neither right nor wrong, but these are my initial thoughts.

You might think I'm mad - but initial thought is you're using an Apple background for Android only App, it's interesting but seems off. It's a background that comes with a lot of baggage, both good and bad - people expect certain things with these elements.

I like the colour scheme, but it gets inconsistent when adding more elements, they don't fit as well. A lot of things look okay on their own but together not as much.

carlmango11

No no harsh is good. Yeah I definitely need more consistency. Some sort of unified style or "brand". So hard to do though.

I think one of my problems is that I tend to come up with the UI as I code rather than designing it independent of the technical stuff. I need to sit down with a box of colouring pencils and go through it all :pac: Thanks for the link too.

solarith wrote: »

First off: I am neither right nor wrong, but these are my initial thoughts.

You might think I'm mad - but initial thought is you're using an Apple background for Android only App, it's interesting but seems off. It's a background that comes with a lot of baggage, both good and bad - people expect certain things with these elements.

I like the colour scheme, but it gets inconsistent when adding more elements, they don't fit as well. A lot of things look okay on their own but together not as much.

Yeah it is the Apple background! I found it somewhere and didn't realise until a friend pointed it out. I intend on changing it to something similar but non-Apple.

Yeah I think the screen is definitely getting cluttered with the different elements. Designing a nice, unified style should help this.

Thanks for the comments