All right. 1
So let's address one of the most commonly neglected design issues and that is one of the differences 2
when you're designing for iOS versus when you're designing for Android. 3
So here's a test. If you're long term Android user or if you're a devoted Apple fan, 4
have a look on the screen and see if you can identify which one is Android and which one is iOS. 5
For most people who've been faithful to one or the other environment, you'll find this incredibly easy. 6
The one on the left is Android design and the one on the right is iOS. 7
Now why is this differentiation important? 8
Well, one of the most common questions that we tend to get is "can I use a service such as phonegap 9
accelerator or ionic to develop a non-native app and then deploy it on both the Android platform and 10
the iOS platform without having to rebuild two of the same thing?" 11
And a lot of people see this as a huge convenience 12
not having to rewrite all the code in two different languages Java and Swift. 13
But the problem is that to somebody who is used to one or the other environment, iOS or Android. it looks 14
incredibly jarring. 15
So this is an example of a company who decided to port their iOS app directly into the Google Play store 16
and one of the biggest problems that arises immediately is that in the iOS environment it is common 17
to use a tab bar to separate the different screens and to use for navigation as you can see on the bottom 18
over here. And on Android 19
this is a strict no no. 20
And the reason is because on Android phones there are usually these three buttons at the bottom of the 21
screen which are hardware buttons so they're always going to be present. 22
That means if you put a tap bar right on top of those three buttons you have this classic bad design 23
of two rows of buttons. 24
And in most people our thumbs are not delicate or sophisticated enough to actually figure out which 25
button did I press, the photo button or did I accidentally press on the return button. And that can cause 26
a really really bad user experience and make the app really frustrating to use. 27
So, if I was a android user and I happened to download this app, I would pretty much be immediately 28
put off by it. 29
Given the stats currently are that out of every hundred apps that people download 50 of those apps will 30
get deleted after the first time they get opened. 31
So thinking about those stats, we have to work incredibly hard to make sure that the design is good, that 32
it fits with the environment 33
whether if its iOS or Android and also we provide a good user experience. 34
So this is certainly not the way to do it but let's have a look at some of those differentiations between 35
iOS and Android design and learn about how we can make our designs look better on the individual platforms.