I'm working at a company that until recently wrote exclusively for iOS. As one of the first Android developers to be brought on, I've found that the most common problem I've faced is that our entire creative team uses iOS. We don't have a single Android designer. Worse still, we'll have the designer spend a week or so designing the app for iOS, then spend a couple hours adapting that design for Android. As you can guess, the end result is not pretty.
The creative team is responsible for setting our customers' expectation, and usually gives the customer a high-level design well before the developer is brought into the loop. Because of this, we as developers have relatively little say in how the final design comes out. If there's a technical issue preventing us from implementing something they'll rework it, but otherwise we're expected to code it as planned. Has anyone else successfully dealt with this kind of problem? I've been trying to propose solutions, and they are generally receptive, but not having a team with dedicated Android designers has my hands somewhat tied (especially if I can't just do the designs myself). Ideally the UI would be done as two separate but parallel designs, preferably by two different designers (each specialized in their platform) that would coordinate with eachother. As this isn't possible just yet, what approaches would you suggest, and how would you convince your creative team it's a good idea? Another issue is that they seem to value consistency between the two platforms as a design goal. This seems silly to me. How many of our users will have both an Android phone and an iPhone, download the app on both, and jump back and forth between them? This approach means you're either going to end up with a lowest common denominator design (bad) or one of the platforms is going to be slighted (worse). Am I wrong on this or does anyone have any support? I'd like to approach every app I write as if it were going to be a permanent fixture in my portfolio and that at the end I'll be showing it off in front of my friends. I don't want to have to preface them with a disclaimer that the design was done by someone who has no clue about the Android ecosystem. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-discuss/-/DXqr4v4qo20J. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
