Designing for iOS and Android

Walden Systems Geeks Corner Designing for iOS and Android tutorial how to Rutherford NJ New Jersey NYC New York North Bergen County

Over fifty percent of apps downloaded on Apple's App Store and Android Play store are deleted after first use. One of the many reasons that people delete apps almost immediately is that it is not user friendly, i.e., doesn't have a good user experience. We can entice users to keep their apps by designing our apps with the user experience in mind. One thing to keep in mind is that as Android users or as iOS users, each group is used to a particular look and feel. It gets confusing when some apps are designed on one platform and then ported to another. We will discuss some differences between Android and iOS when it comes to planning the user experience.

First, the two platforms have different principles when it comes to UI design. Google's design principle is called Material Design and Apple's design principle is Flat Design. These are subtle differences but users of each platform are used to their apps looking and feeling a certain way and if it doesn't, users may get confused and frustrated with your app.


One difference is the icon design, iOS icons tend to look flat as if it was a piece of glass while Android icons tend to give the impression of real world items. Android does this with the use of shadows and gradients giving them a slightly 3D look. IOS, on the other hand, tend to look flat with lines and little shadowing. IOS' design used to be 3D but that all changed with iOS 7. Android's icon design hints through their slightly 3D, that certain items can be interacted with. Apple's design tends to look more modern as if everything is on a flat surface like Star Trek's tricorder while Android looks more traditional by hinting at real world items.

Another difference in design is navigation. In iOS, the back button is usually a greater than sign that is in the upper left hand corner. In Android, it is a hardware button. The functionality of the back button is also very different. In iOS, the back button brings you up the hierarchy rather than bringing you back to the previous screen. In Android, the back button brings you back to the previous screen just like a web browser's back button.

IOS applications tend to use tab buttons at the bottom of the screen to navigate between different areas of the app whereas Android tends to use menus which tend to slide in and out of the screen when a user presses the 3 horizontal lines, which are sometimes referred to as a hamburger menu. Each have their upsides and downsides. In iOS, we are limited to five tabs which gives us only five areas to navigate to from any given screen. In Android, since it is a slide out menu, we don't have any limits but we don't want to confuse users by giving them too many choices. The iOS design forces the designer to keep things simple and is always present to the user. The Android design makes the designer discipline themselves when it comes to giving users choices and is hidden until the user presses the menu button which means that users may not know about the other screens.

Another difference between iOS and Android is the treatment of text hierarchy. In Android, the title tends to be left justified while in iOS, the title is centered. In Android, visual hierarchy in text is determined by size while iOS tends to determine them by font-weight. Android's choice of determining visual hierarchy comes from web and looks more traditional or what people are used to while iOS tends to look more modern.

One major difference between iOS and Android is that Android has a drop down list while iOS uses a wheel. The wheel must be sufficiently large enough to let the user know that it is a wheel otherwise the user may confuse it with a textbook. The wheel will take up more real estate than the drop down but at the same time, the wheel won't cover any other controls when activated unlike a dropdown that Android uses. Again, Android takes their design cues from what is familiar to users on the web and iOS takes their design cues from other items that may be familiar to users.

Nowadays, developers and designers tend to design apps on one platform and ports it over to the other. When porting over the app, keep in mind the different design philosophies to prevent causing confusion and anger to the users. Knowing the differences between iOS' and Android's design philosophy will lead to a better user experience on both platforms.