Android App Surgery: "MySettings" by Reto Meier

Reto Meier is an Android Developer Advocate for Google in London. He's also the author of Professional Android 2 Application Development.

MySettings is a relatively simple app that displays a single screen of shortcuts to some of the most commonly used system settings and toggles.

I’m actually really glad this was one of the most popular nominations last week because it lets me talk about some common UX stuff that I'd like to cover.

User Experience

The overall UX is pretty good - the layout is simple and intuitive, it looks good and works well in both landscape and portrait orientations on both HVGA and WVGA devices. In particular I liked that it featured:

• optimized layouts for landscape and portrait views (how-to).
• screen size and resolution independence with optimized high-res assets (how-to).
• support for trackball navigation (hopefully using StateListDrawables).
• A PreferenceScreen to implement "standard" application preference screens.

Like a lot of apps they've implemented some custom UI behaviour.

One of the beauties of Android is the freedom to do whatever you like when it comes to UX, but with freedom comes risks.

• The app is presented in a partially transparent floating window. That's pretty unusual and I found it a little off-putting. I've seen this before, but more commonly only when the app is launched from a widget.
• The custom menu. Pressing the menu button brings up a menu, but rather than the standard menu mechanism they've implemented a totally custom UI. This introduces some potential UX issues:
• It's unexpected and unfamiliar. I know what to expect when I hit menu, a custom menu makes me stop and think about what I'm looking at and how to use it.
• It doesn't include the text labels I'm expecting, and it doesn't use the standard icons I'm expecting (particularly for accessing settings).
• It doesn't support trackball navigation.
• The regular menu is modal, this one isn't.
• The menu has an "Exit" Button. Thanks to the Android application lifecycle there's no need for it - pressing "Back" will exit the app just as effectively.
• The "About" dialogue doesn't derive from Dialog and pressing back exits the app rather than closing the dialogue. An alternative is to use the AlertDialog and completely replace its UI. It's also good practice to let the Activity handle the Dialog lifecycle.
• The standard behavior for a long-press on Android is to display a ContextMenu. In this app a long-press performs an alternative action (opening a contextual settings screen). While useful,  overloading an existing UI metaphor is risky.
• Enabling or disabling WiFi and Bluetooth doesn't provide any feedback on what's happening. They could use Toasts to provide updates. The system broadcasts Intents that announce changes to both WiFi and Bluetooth device state.

Android Features

I thought the (optional) ongoing notification as a shortcut to the app was clever, and I loved their use of Intents to open specific system preference screens.

What might be nice additions are a Live Wallpaper and a some Widgets.

A Live Wallpaper is fully dynamic and interactive, so you could implement the entire UI as one, though with homescreen real-estate being crowded as it is, a widget might be better.

I'd love to see them include a widget that looks just like one of the settings buttons. It could use a configuration Activity that lets users select which of the settings buttons they'd like it to represent. Then you could add multiple, different, settings shortcut buttons to the homescreen.

Stability / Performance / Risks

The app stability is great (I got no crashes) and it's nice to see that no unnecessary Services are being created.

One thing that worried me a little is that the app is directly toggling some system settings. Earlier releases have moved some of these toggles (notably GPS) into the read-only secure settings table. It might be worth confirming the settings are directly modifiable, then falling back to open the right page in the System Settings if they aren't.

Hopefully you guys found that useful

Original article - http://blog.radioactiveyak.com/2010/05/android-app-surgery-mysettings.html

Thanks for the review, Reto Meier.