Principles of Material Design for Android

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DevSnack #27: in this week’s DevSnack we bring 5 interesting links on Material Design for Android. Learn about existing tools to apply Material Design principles to your app, how to style your app to engage your users and how to master some of the features of the new Design Support Library. Also, check out a few showcase apps and a must take Udacity’s free online course. Enjoy!

#1 – Material Design for Developers: Getting Started

This link should be the starting point of every Android Developer (@AndroidDev). Learn how to get started with Material Design. Also, how to apply the material theme and use system widgets to create consistent layouts, following material design guidelines.

# 2 – Android Design Support Library

Consequently to the release of Android Lollipop 5.0 and the introduction of Material Design, Google I/O 2015 presented a new support design library with the intention to provide developers a consistent way to include material design components, keeping backward compatibility down to Android 2.1. In this post Ian Lake (@ianhlake) showcases how to use the official Android Design Support Library to add Navigation Views, Floating Action Buttons, Snackbars, motions and scrolling techniques to our app. Furthermore, checkout Chris Bane’s (@chrisbanes) Cheesesquare app available on Github, which demos the usage of this support library.

# 3 – Mastering the CoordinatorLayout

In this post Saul Molinero (@_saulmm) teaches us how to master one of the core features of the Android Support Library: The CoordinatorLayout. Learn how to integrate different widgets such as AppBarLayout and CollapsingToolbarLayout to achieve material design patterns and scrolling techniques (parallax, quick return, etc) and also customise behaviour dependencies and interactions between siblings Views and/or its parents.

# 4 – Plaid: Android Material Design Showcase App

Check out this showcase app created by Nick Butcher (@crafty), an Android Developer Advocate at Google. It makes use of material design principles to create “tactile, bold and understandable UIs”. You can check out the code at Github and install the app from the play store (beta testing)

# 5 – Udacity’s free online course: Material Design for Android Developers

In this course created by Google in conjunction with Udacity, Nick Butcher (@crafty) and Roman Nurik (@romannurik) show us how to leverage your app in order to include some platform-specific design patterns to keep your users engaged and improve your UX. A must among Android Developers/Designers

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