Why this site?

As UNITiD interaction designers, we love existing pattern libraries for the web, like Yahoo, Welie, and patternry. They contain interaction design patterns, short hand summaries of design solutions that have proven to work more than once. Since the launch of the Android platform we were gradually longing for those kind of resources to design Android applications, because we felt that Android’s developers environment didn’t provide us with the guidelines that could really help us out. We started collecting screenshots, and halfway 2010 the first Android interaction design patterns were published.

For who?

This site is build mainly for interaction designers like us, who want to design Android applications that work well. In our practice we often encounter design questions like ‘How should I make that work?’ or ‘Is this a common solution, or should I do it differently?’ These questions are the starting point in this site, and the answers to the questions are the actual patterns. Each pattern is demonstrated in a wireframe and provided with descriptions of when and when not to use it, the pro’s and con’s, and screenshot examples.

Androidpatterns.com is open!

The design community is responding really well to our efforts, and that’s fantastic! Designers can now also work with us in improving the collection of patterns, by adding patterns of their own. There are lots of patterns yet to discover or to develop, so join us! You will be given full credits and linked to your site.

Code examples

We get a lot of requests for code examples too. We are thinking about ways to get some code in, or to link to code, but we could sure need the help of you guys by providing us with feedback on how to do that.