Fantastic Read : Google Android’s 3 UX Design Principles and 2 Jars of Marbles

 

First thing first, I am an Apple fanboy and love every moment of my iPhone past one year since I got it. But my love for technology/innovation and intention to constantly improve the UI(User Interface) thereby leading to a better UX(User eXperience) has always superseded my brand bias. If something is good, it is, if something is bad, it is, if something is ugly, it is. And everyone be it Apple, Samsung Google has everything(design is vastly subjective!)  though the level of each differs from time to time.

A user may take something for granted as it has cost him something in order to experience it. Be it swipe gesture on an app, be the beautiful colors and physics on a game, be the simplicity of a product, be the display, etc. But what usually goes unmentioned is what goes behind the screen to provide the experience to the end user. What is simple to the user is incredibly hard for the developers to pull it off. Any one can present complexity, but to present simplicity is quite complex!

So when I came across the article headline as mentioned in the title of this post, I was eager to read what goes behind in Google’s Android to provide the front Android experience. And I must say I am very impressed the way Google is always working very hard to improvise the UX and is also willing to share its design process.

Though Android developers would already be familiar with these as its part of the developer site, but as a non-developer(so far) I was very inquisitive about it. Also since I am a heavy app user and do try new apps quite often, I tend to notice which apps make me want to come back and which I am not very keen to go back as the UX is so bad even though the content may be worth revisiting.

Read the article on Medium.

Visit the Android Developers site for more.

 

Anirudh 🙂

Project Loon by Google X Labs – Balloon powered Internet Access

This is fascinating and really EXTRA-ORDINARY!

 

Sebastian Thurn on the Universal Law of Innovation

Seeing such videos charge me instantly and want me to go out and change the world with the help of technology! In life we have many dreams at different phases of our life..my dream for a long time is to work for Google and with immensely(understatement!) talented people like Sebastian and thousands of crazy people like him out to make the world a better place in radical different ways!

Sebastian Thurn has been involved in Google’s Self-driving Cars innovation, then the radical Google Glass(wearable tech) and now onto change how education system works with his online education – Udacity! Hats off!

 

Google I/O 2012 : Whats brewing at Google lately!

P.S. – I should have posted here long time back, but better late than never!

Day -1

Day-2

Though I am an avid Apple user, its exciting to see what Google is doing with its Android and other products!

Below are the few things which excited me the most about their latest Mobile OS : Jelly Bean –

1. Send email to all meeting invitees from the calendar reminder itself. This is super useful.

2. Smart app update, just update the portion of the apk which has changed instead of downloading the whole thing again. This will make the update super-fast and save on data also if you are using 3G.

3. Maps available offline. Useful for obvious reasons!

4. Nexus Q – social streaming device. It looks beautiful!

5. Google Plus Events, pre, during, after. What a cool way to gather all photos from various people for a particular event.

6. Auto sync of chrome across devices and even the signed in info, login/password gets synced. If I have opened some sit on Chrome on my Mobile or on any other device, same would reflect on all my devices which have Chrome. Say for example, I am on some site on my laptop and I have to leave for lunch. Even while having lunch I can see the same site on my phone or tablet or any other device! And since its already opened on my laptop, when I open on any other device, the page is pre-fetched! Super cool!

Googlers are doing some real zappy innovative work…but then whats new in that! 🙂

Google Search Redefined – Knowledge Graph

Its amazing how Google is taking technology to the next level! This was launched on 15th May 2012 and we all have been using it ever since without explicitly knowing it existed all this while! Google is seeping into our lives like never before!

 

Official announcement on the Google Blog!