The Android Dribbble client
v1.1.0 – The what and why
October 23, 2010The UI
So following our initial release we had some quite scathing comments on the the look and feel of our app. Correcting this became one of the key things we had to put straight in our next release.
These were comments were understandable (and fairly spot on) in our opinion since we really wanted to be first to market with a Dribbble application for Android… and as such no hard feelings were taken. We also new that if we were building an app for designers then serving them up something which looked like dog food wouldn’t go down well for long (if at all in some cases).
Then along came Chris Dalonz and John Rowley. These 2 Dribbble community members both of who provided feedback in our initial beta phase also came up with some design ideas which were head and shoulders above what we have in the beta (or even the 1.0.1 release).
It was this “kick up the ass” from these guys (and specifically inspiration from John’s proposals) which made us review our colour-scheme and overall UI. The original colour scheme was going to be based around basketball court flooring but this seemed to pale in comparison of the type of thing John had suggested. So going back to the drawing board and taking the Dribbble colours as a starter we came up with our new palette.
We all our UI components through this and then added some subtle depth through gradients and shadow and we come to where we are now.
We also decided to stick with our approach of using Android’s gallery widget for displaying the shots… this seems to be the slickest way of getting the shots as big as possible and retaining that “inherent app” feel that comes across when swiping your finger across a touch screen.
There were some other minor UI fixes too such as use of icons in the menu and better menu title handling… Of course we still think the UI and deisgn can be improved upon but we also had features to build… oh yeah the features!
The Features
So what did we add:
- Shot sharing – a common utility across many apps… one that was certainly needed for anything to do with communities.
- Visibility of Views, Comments and Likes – handy for seeing how debuts are fairing and exactly how may folk love the top shots
- Rebounds – as well as a count you can also view a shot’s rebounds.
- Date of shot
- Link through to the user’s Dribbble profile on Dribbble.com
- Link through to the user’s twitter profile (if they have one).
All in all we hope you like the direction we’re going… we certainly do.
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