[This place is by Roman Nurik, who is aroused most icons. Tim Bray]
With thousands of newborn apps existence publicised in Android Market every week, its decent more and more essential to proactively effect at breaking finished the clutter (hooray for marketing jargon!). One artefact of rising your apps saliency in the ecosystem is by deploying well-targeted ambulatory business campaigns and cross-app promotions. However, theres added time-tested method of supplying the impression-install-ranking cycle: meliorate the product!
A meliorate app crapper go a rattling daylong way: a higher calibre app module translate to higher individual ratings, mostly meliorate rankings, more downloads, and higher retention (longer establish periods). High-quality apps also hit a such higher probability of getting whatever unanticipated shaping message such as existence featured in Android Market or ethnic media buzz.
The upside to having a higher-quality app is obvious. However, its not ever country how to write a so titled meliorate app. The line to rising app calibre isnt ever well-lit. The constituent quality, and its near cousins polish and fit and finish arent ever well-defined. In this post, well begin to light the line by hunting at a couple of key factors in app quality, and furthermore, countenance at structure of rising your app along these dimensions.
Listen to your users
Given that pretty such whatever manoeuvre of the success of an app involves user-related poetics such as sort of downloads, daily actives, retention rates, etc., its a beatific idea to start intellection of your apps calibre as it relates backwards to your users.
The most manifest artefact to center to users is by datum and addressing comments on your app in Android Market. Although the comments arent ever arable or constructive, whatever module wage valuable brainwave on aspects of your app that you haw not hit consciously thoughtful before. Its essential to advert that users hit the possibleness to modify their ratings and comments most an app as such as theyd like.
Now, since Android Market doesnt currently wage a bidirectional act job for developers and their users, you should ordered up your possess hold and communicating destination(s). There are whatever enthusiastic hold tools discover there that crapper put you in touch with your users directly such as Google Groups, Zoho Discussions, getsatisfaction.com and uservoice.com. Once you intend ordered up with such a tool, attain trusty to fill in the hold unification in your Android Market listing -- users do click finished to these.
Another artefact to meliorate center to your users is by having a public beta or trusty tester program. Its pivotal to hit whatever turn of actual individual testing before emotional something in Android Market. Fortunately, you crapper dispense your apps to users outside of Market via a website; this website crapper order a login or be publicly accessible — its entirely up to you. Take advantage of this possibleness by offering your incoming designed update to whatever primeval adopters, before submitting to Market. Youll be astonied by how whatever little, still impactful, improvements crapper become discover of crowd-sourced, real-user testing.
Improve unchangeability and eliminate bugs
I wont go into discourse most ground this is important, because hopefully its obvious. And hopefully youve been datum this journal and mass the prizewinning practices outlined in previous posts, so you hit a solidified idea on how to meliorate in this arena.
One noteworthy and still relatively underused agency for catching unchangeability issues same crashes, is the UI/Application Exerciser Monkey (aka Monkey). Monkey module send random UI events to your apps activitie, allowing you to causing individual flows that crapper exhibit unchangeability problems.
Also, with the newborn error reporting features in Android 2.2, users now hit the knowledge to report application crashes to developers. These exhibit up in aggregative in the Android Market developer console. Make trusty to feature these reports and act on them appropriately.
Lastly, ready an outside bug and feature letter tracker. This module enable your users to vow with the app at a fireman level, by mass features and bugs that change them. User frustration with app problems crapper be effectively managed with diligent supply tracking and communication. Some of the accord hold tools listed above substance supply tracking features, and if your send is unstoppered source, most favourite intimate hosting sites such as Google Code and GitHub module substance this as well.
Improve UI Responsiveness
One sure-fire artefact to tick off your users is to hit a slow UI. Research has shown that pace matters... for whatever interface, be it desktop, web, or mobile. In fact, the grandness of pace is amplified on ambulatory devices since users ofttimes need their aggregation on the go and in a hurry.
As Brad Fitzpatrick mentioned in his Google I/O 2010 talk, Writing Zippy Android Apps, you crapper meliorate your appss UI responsiveness by moving long-running dealings off the applications main thread. See the speech for detailed recommendations and debugging tips.
One artefact to meliorate UI action is to derogate the complexity of your layouts. If you unstoppered up hierarchyviewer and wager that your layouts are more than 5 levels deep, it haw be instance to simplify your layout. Consider refactoring those deeply nested LinearLayouts into RelativeLayout. As Romain Guy spinous discover in his World of ListView speech at Google I/O, View objects cost around 1 to 2 KB of memory, so super analyse hierarchies crapper be a instruction for disaster, causing regular VM garbage assemblage passes which country the main (UI) thread.
Lastly, as Tim spinous discover in Traceview War Story, tools same traceview and ddms crapper be your prizewinning frends for rising action by profiling method calls and monitoring VM module allocations, respectively.
More resources:
Designing for Performance
Designing for Responsiveness
Improve usability
Ill feature it again here, center to your users! Ask a containerful of actual Android device users (friends, family, etc.) to essay discover your application and observe them as they interact with it. Look for cases where they intend confused, are unsafe how to proceed, or are astonied by certain behaviors. Minimize these cases by rethinking whatever of the interactions in your app, perhaps employed in whatever of the individual programme patterns the Android UI aggroup discussed at Google I/O.
In the same vein, digit problems that currently smite Android individual interfaces are small tap targets and likewise small type sizes. These are mostly cushy to mend and crapper attain a big impact. As a generalized rule, optimize for ease of ingest and legibility, while minimizing, or at small carefully balancing, aggregation density.
Another artefact to incrementally meliorate usability, based on real-world data, is to compel Analytics throughout your app to log practice of portion sections. Consider demoting infrequently used sections to the options menu, or removing them altogether. For oftenly-used sections and UI elements, attain trusty theyre immediately manifest and easily reachable in your apps UI so that users crapper intend to them quickly.
Lastly, usability is an comprehensive and well-documented subject, with near ties to programme design, cognitive science, and another disciplines. If youre hunting for a crash-course, start with Donald Normans The Design of Everyday Things.
Improve attendance and aesthetics
Theres no unreal for a actual individual programme designer — ideally one whos well-versed in ambulatory and Android, and ideally accessible with both interaction and visual design. One favourite venue to place openings for designers is jobs.smashingmagazine.com, and leveraging ethnic connections on Twitter and LinkedIn crapper opencast enthusiastic talent.
If you dont hit the luxury of employed with a UI designer, there are whatever structure in which you crapper meliorate your apps attendance yourself. First, intend old with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks, or whatever another raster ikon editing tool. Mastering the art of the element in these apps takes time, but honing this skill crapper help physique polish crossways your programme designs. Also, officer the resources hold by studying the hold UI assets and layouts and datum finished the newborn resources documentation. Techniques such as 9-patches and resource directory qualifiers are somewhat unique to Android, and are pivotal in building pliant still aesthetic UIs.
The recently-published Android UI Design Tips motion deck contains a some more prizewinning practices for your consideration.
Deliver the correct ordered of features
Having the correct ordered of features in your app is important. Its ofttimes cushy to fall into the trap of feature-creep, building as such functionality into your app as possible. Providing fast satisfaction by immediately display the most essential or relevant aggregation is pivotal on ambulatory devices. Providing likewise such aggregation crapper be as preventative (or modify more so) than not providing enough of it.
And again, center to your users by collecting and responding to feature requests. Be careful, though, to verify feature requests with grains of salt. Requests crapper be rattling useful in aggregate, to intend a sense of what kinds of functionality you should be employed on, but not every feature letter needs to be implemented.
Integrate with the grouping and third-party apps
A enthusiastic artefact to deliver a delight individual experience is to combine tightly with the operative system. Features same app widgets, live folders, orbicular search integration, and Quick Contacts badges are fairly low-hanging production in this regard. For whatever app categories, base features same app widgets are par for the course. Not including them is a sure-fire artefact to tarnish an otherwise shaping individual experience. Some apps crapper achieve modify tighter OS integration with the newborn contacts, accounts and sync APIs acquirable in Android 2.0 and later. A some sample apps that exhibit how to ingest these APIs are SampleSyncAdapter (bundled with the SDK samples) and JumpNote.
Third-party integrations crapper wage modify more individual delight and provide the individual a feeling of device cohesiveness. Its also a rattling nice artefact of adding functionality to your app without composition whatever player code (by leveraging another apps functionalities). For example, if youre creating a camera app, you crapper allow users to edit their photos in Photoshop Express before saving them to their collection, if they hit that third-party application installed. solon aggregation on this person is acquirable in the Can I Use this Intent? article.
More resources:
Designing for seamlessness
Pay attention to details...
One portion discourse Ill call discover is in picture calibre and consistency. Make trusty your app icons (especially your armament icon) are crisp and pixel-perfect at every resolutions, and follow the picture guidelines, at small in fiber if not in letter. If youre having pain or dont hit the resources to organisation the icons yourself, study using the newborn Android Asset Studio agency (a send Ive recently open-sourced) to create a set.
...and more...
Along with this blog, attain trusty to follow @AndroidDev on Twitter — were constantly collecting and sharing tips and tricks on Android application development that you wont ever find anywhere else. And of course, dont be afeard to ask questions in our hold forums on Stack Overflow and Google Groups.
Thanks for reading!
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