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Why does anyone involved in payments not bother to QA their Android offerings? I can point out about 20 UI issues just in the screenshots on Google Play. Instal

Why does anyone involved in payments not bother to QA their Android offerings? I can point out about 20 UI issues just in the screenshots on Google Play. Installed the app; hitting menu items in the drawer stacks Activity upon Activity, breaking the interaction. Everything is non-standard or ported from iOS, when it takes all of half an hour to pop in the support library and use the official Action Bar and Navigation Drawer components. Even worse, the entire app is locked in portrait orientation. It's shit like this that degrades the Android experience, and it needs to stop. Stop treating Android like the "second platform". Hire people who can push back against shitty design. Use the tools that the platform provides.

untog 13y ago
To counter that: what difference does it make? Are users going to abandon this service because the Android app does not conform to UI norms? T-Mobile are going to start caring about this when they have an incentive to spend the time and money on it. So far that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm the last person to defend Apple but their App Store review process will often reject an app like the one you describe. Google won't. So people develop better apps for iOS because they have to.
- tadfisher 13y ago
  My objections come from supporting the platform as a whole, not T-Mobile's bottom line. As more popular apps abandon official design guidelines in favor of custom UI that doesn't work, it makes using the platform an inconsistent and jarring experience, and that hurts the platform as a whole. Really, I'm surprised that T-Mobile doesn't get this, as their business relies in part on selling this platform to customers. Google could do more, yes, but doing so would erode the relative openness of Play Store app submissions. They provide the tools and the guidelines, and that should be good enough. I can't think of any other platform where a straight port of another platform's UI is a standard or acceptable practice.
  - MBCook 13y ago
    > My objections come from supporting the platform as a whole T-Mobile doesn't care. The same thing is common in the Apple world. I use an app all the time that faked their own drop-downs to the point that the 'labels' are actually editable text fields. They don't care. Been there for months and a few updates.
toomuchtodo 13y ago
Minimum Viable Product. Don't waste time iterating until there's traction. Isn't that what we preach around here?
- tadfisher 13y ago
  In this case, they put in extra work to port the UI from their iOS app. Doesn't exactly scream "MVP" to me.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    If the purposely dragged the iOS design into the Android app, instead of designing the Android app around its native UX support, that's a bit of a cockup.
    - wmf 13y ago
      In some cases this is a case of branding over consistency. In other cases people would rather spend the effort of cloning the iOS UI rather than learning Holo.
  - fpgeek 13y ago
    In fact, given the target users (e.g. prepaid customers) why would an MVP for this service include an iOS app at all?
Zigurd 13y ago
There is a very big difference between an app that can be limited to newer Android versions and one like this that must run on buggy, old, un-capable of using newer UI widgets versions. While inclusion of ActionBar compatibility is a big improvement in the usefulness of the Support Library, it's still not a zero-cost, zero-risk decision. Some of what you are complaining about is valid, but an up-to-date UI can reasonably NOT be the top priority for an app of this nature.
- tadfisher 13y ago
  In what world does dropping in a Google-supported library, tested on multitudes of hardware and OS combinations and used widely by developers, cost more than rolling your own UI components and testing them yourself?
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    In a world where they are not building their software from the ground up, themselves, which they almost certainly did not do.

untog 13y ago

To counter that: what difference does it make? Are users going to abandon this service because the Android app does not conform to UI norms? T-Mobile are going to start caring about this when they have an incentive to spend the time and money on it. So far that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm the last person to defend Apple but their App Store review process will often reject an app like the one you describe. Google won't. So people develop better apps for iOS because they have to.

tadfisher 13y ago
My objections come from supporting the platform as a whole, not T-Mobile's bottom line. As more popular apps abandon official design guidelines in favor of custom UI that doesn't work, it makes using the platform an inconsistent and jarring experience, and that hurts the platform as a whole. Really, I'm surprised that T-Mobile doesn't get this, as their business relies in part on selling this platform to customers. Google could do more, yes, but doing so would erode the relative openness of Play Store app submissions. They provide the tools and the guidelines, and that should be good enough. I can't think of any other platform where a straight port of another platform's UI is a standard or acceptable practice.
- MBCook 13y ago
  > My objections come from supporting the platform as a whole T-Mobile doesn't care. The same thing is common in the Apple world. I use an app all the time that faked their own drop-downs to the point that the 'labels' are actually editable text fields. They don't care. Been there for months and a few updates.

toomuchtodo 13y ago

Minimum Viable Product. Don't waste time iterating until there's traction. Isn't that what we preach around here?

tadfisher 13y ago
In this case, they put in extra work to port the UI from their iOS app. Doesn't exactly scream "MVP" to me.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  If the purposely dragged the iOS design into the Android app, instead of designing the Android app around its native UX support, that's a bit of a cockup.
  - wmf 13y ago
    In some cases this is a case of branding over consistency. In other cases people would rather spend the effort of cloning the iOS UI rather than learning Holo.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  In fact, given the target users (e.g. prepaid customers) why would an MVP for this service include an iOS app at all?

Zigurd 13y ago

There is a very big difference between an app that can be limited to newer Android versions and one like this that must run on buggy, old, un-capable of using newer UI widgets versions. While inclusion of ActionBar compatibility is a big improvement in the usefulness of the Support Library, it's still not a zero-cost, zero-risk decision. Some of what you are complaining about is valid, but an up-to-date UI can reasonably NOT be the top priority for an app of this nature.

tadfisher 13y ago
In what world does dropping in a Google-supported library, tested on multitudes of hardware and OS combinations and used widely by developers, cost more than rolling your own UI components and testing them yourself?
- Zigurd 13y ago
  In a world where they are not building their software from the ground up, themselves, which they almost certainly did not do.