Today the Android team has launched an official ‘Android Design’ portal, featuring an extensive guide outlining UI best practices that developers should work to use as they’re building their apps. You can find the new site right here.

Android’s visual shortcomings have been well documented (you can find a video of me discussing this issue with Android’s Director of User Experience, Matias Duarte, right here). In the old days (say, when the original Droid launched) it really was often downright ugly — and the apps were even worse, with buttons that did unexpected things and UIs that looked generic and amateur.

Things have gotten a lot better since then. Android’s OS updates have progressively gotten better looking, and Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, is a huge step forward. But third party apps are still an issue — there are some exceptions, but generally speaking I still find that iOS apps are better looking than they are on Android.

This may help change things. There’s a lot of material on the site, which includes sections on general style guidelines, design patterns, and ‘building blocks’ that are part of Android’s default UI — and each section has numerous subsections. The guide has an emphasis on UI elements introduced with Android 4.0, like the Roboto font, so owners of older handsets may not see the benefits immediately, but it’s definitely a good move for the long term.

That said, most of the anecdotal stories I’ve heard about the difficulty in building Android apps have been related to the developer tools (and the fact that developers can’t make ‘pixel-perfect’ designs as they can on iOS, because there are a variety of screen resolutions they have to accommodate for). Thankfully we’re hearing that improved tools are on the way as well, and last week’s news that all Android 4.0 handsets that include Android Market will include the default ‘Holo’ theme will also be a big help — though it will be a while before the majority of users are running that OS.

Android Finally Gets Serious About Its Looks, Launches Official Design Portal    - Jason Kincaid @ TechCrunch

That number equates to roughly 40% of Facebook’s currently disclosed 800 millionactive users.

What’s interesting is that Facebook announced in September that over 350 million active users access Facebook through their mobile devices – a number that includes mobile web users as well as users of its mobile apps. Explains Evans, you can track the number of app users by going to the Facebook Page for each app then adding them up. (Alternately, one could use a service like AppData to do something similar).

At the time that Facebook announced 350 million mobile users, there were 250 million mobile app users, he says. That means that over the past few months, Facebook has seen another 50 million+ become active app users. Impressive.

Evans’ findings also back up TechCrunch writer Josh Constine’s earlier report that Android has finally surpassed iPhone in terms of daily active users. But on a weekly and monthly basis, iPhone and iPod Touch are still coming out ahead. In fact, in terms of monthly active users, over 100 million are using iPhone/iPods, says Evans. (The iPad is broken out separately).

BlackBerry devices and feature phones are still somewhat holding their own, while Symbian and the practically insignificant contributions from Windows Phone trail the number of iPad users whether you’re looking at daily, weekly or monthly active user counts.

One thing we don’t know – and can’t know, unless Facebook itself reported it – is how many users only access Facebook on their mobile phone, never visiting the desktop site. Evans estimates that number is high, but it’s impossible to tell using currently published data.

And yet, app discovery remains a challenge. Whether in an app store, on the device itself, or via a third-party service. Whoever cracks the nut of app discovery will have the potential to be the next Google: the search engine of the modern age. The search engine for a web of apps.

App discovery is a key focus for a number of startups. Off the top of my head: Chomp, Quixey, Xyologic, Appolocious, AppsFire, Kinetik, and Crosswa.lk are approaching the challenge of app discovery in new ways. (And yes, you too, millions of companies I neglected to mention).

While that’s a rich topic for examination, it’s not one that can be summed up in a single post. So for today, one aspect of building a web of apps: connectivity.

Why do I keep referring to a web of apps? Apps are not like the web – they are not hyperlinked creations that allow you to move seamlessly from one operation to another…or are they?

Perhaps not yet. But they could be, if more developers chose to implement this functionality. Using something called “app URL schemes,” apps can communicate with each other. For example, on the iPhone, iOS developers can call up the built-in apps, like the Messaging app, Email app and the Phone app. Apple’s URL schemes are published in developer documentation, but all apps have URL schemes available.(On Android, something similar can be accomplished via “intent filters.”)

Apps can launch other apps. Apps can connect to other apps.

It’s still somewhat rare to see this in action, but it’s starting to happen. Facebook is probably the most high-profile example of this. In the iOS app, on the left-hand side an “apps” section will link to Facebook apps which also exist as iOS applications. Tap the app in the list and Facebook launches the app on your phone. If you don’t have the iOS version installed, it launches the App Store instead.

Clever.

Facebook as a portal to the mobile “app web.”

But there are lesser known use cases, too. For example, PhotoAppLink, an open source initiative that aims to simplify photo editing by tying multiple photo-editing apps together. Currently, in order to edit a photo in multiple apps, you have to save the edited photo to the camera roll each time as you move in between applications. But with PhotoAppLink-enabled apps, you simply select another app to use from within your current app.

Another example (actually, a potential example): the educational startup KinderTown offers an iOS app that’s a curated version of the iTunes App Store. Designed to help parents discover kid-friendly, educational apps, KinderTown directs you to the iPhone’s App Store for downloads when you tap the app in question. Imagine if it could also help you find, filter and launch the apps you already have installed on your phone instead of just those you’ve newly discovered.

Meanwhile, at AnscaMobile, a recent tutorial for developers took the concept of app URL schemes a step further. Being able to launch an app using a URL scheme is great, wrote Jonathan Beebe on the company blog, but what’s even better is being able to tell your app to do something in response to being opened via a URL scheme.

“Think for a moment just how powerful this can be,” he says. “You could tell your app to do different things, or start in a different state depending on the URL string that was used to launch your app.”

Indeed, powerful stuff. And sadly under-utilized.

The possibilities for inter-connected apps using app URL schemes are endless, but actually connecting them together is still a challenge. The problem stems from the fact that there isn’t a simple way to discover the custom URLs for the apps you would want to link to.

This summer, a company called Zwapp attempted to address this situation by launching OneMillionAppSchemes.com, an initiative which aims to open source the unpublished custom URL schemes for iOS applications. Using a downloadable tool, Zwapp scans your iTunes library to locate the custom schemes for your apps then uploads those to the website. The goal, as you may have guessed by the name, is to collect one million of these app schemes. It’s not quite there – only 15,066 have been submitted to date.

Despite the Zwapp’s outreach and call-to-action in the app developer community, what it has implemented is really more of a hack – a way to workaround for the fact that there aren’t better tools available.

Whether the usage of URL schemes will ever really take off is unknown. While it’s one thing to launch your own app in creative ways, developers seem to balk at the concept of linking out to other apps. (Send my app’s users, which I fought so hard to acquire, to another app? No thank you!)

But just like hyperlinks allowed users to begin surfing through what’s now a seemingly infinite number of pages on the web, linking apps could prove to be a way to  overcome today’s app discovery challenges, too.

Use Pattern Thinking

Pattern thinking, where you look at what’s working for someone else and apply it to your own situation, is one of the best ways to make big things happen for you and your team. Combining the knowledge of others with what you know about your brand and industry can lead to results that are more than just incremental improvements, they can help you take a giant leap forward.

One example of this happened early in my career when I was head of the Frito-Lay account, which included Nacho Cheese Doritos, at my ad agency. One day I decided to take my team to the grocery store to look around and get some ideas. What was surprising was how much time we spent, not by the snack foods, but in the salad dressing aisle. Ranch dressing was far and away the best seller in the category at the time. That gave my team and me an idea: Would ranch dressing work as a chip flavor?

We went to Frito-Lay with the concept, but then it became a matter of how to position it. So I looked at what had worked for Nacho Cheese Doritos. They had applied a unique image–nacho–to a known quantity–cheese–to make a product that was both exciting and appealing at the same time. So I asked, “How can we do the same thing for our ranch-dressing-flavored tortilla chip? How can we give a bit of uniqueness to the known quantity, which was ranch dressing?” That eventually led to Cool Ranch Doritos, which is now one of Frito-Lay’s biggest-selling and most profitable products.

Pattern thinking requires that you keep your eyes open and actively seek out new ideas wherever you can find them. And you won’t truly have your eyes open unless you have enough humility to admit that the best ideas aren’t always going to come from you.

Become a Know-How Junkie

In 1997, PepsiCo spun off KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, thereby forming Yum! Brands (formerly Tricon Global Restaurants). The restaurant business had been struggling, which was a major reason why PepsiCo leaders thought they’d do better if they spun us off. But in my mind, that gave us the opportunity for what I characterized as a “gigantic do-over.”

To take advantage of our unique position of being a brand-new public company made up of well-established brands, we did a best-practice tour of some of the most successful companies around at the time in order to take inspiration from them and borrow any good ideas we could find. We visited seven companies in all–GE, Walmart, Home Depot, Southwest Airlines, Target, Coke, and UPS–and then came back and crystallized what we’d learned into five things that we called our “Dynasty Drivers.” These were the things that we believed would make us an enduringly great company and included: A Company Where Everyone Makes a Difference; Customer and Sales Mania; Competitive Brand Differentiation; Continuity in People and Process; and Consistency in Results.

That early best-practices tour gave our company a base of knowledge and a focus that we have been building on ever since. It really reinforced the idea in our company that, for any problem we need to solve, learning all we can about it is the best place to start. There is always more to know, and when people ask me what I look for when hiring someone, an avid learner tops the list. People who are avid learners love what they do and seek out know-how wherever they can find it, which makes them a whole lot smarter and their results a whole lot better.

Here are four tactics for being a better know-how junkie:

1. Eliminate “not invented here.” The phrase “not invented here” refers to an unwillingness to adopt something because it didn’t originate with you. As leader, it’s your job to make sure that nothing gets in the way of a good idea, no matter where it comes from.

2. Act like you own the place. I don’t mean that you should act like you own the place in terms of your ego, but more in terms of how you think about the business. If you owned the company where you work, you’d be concerned with all aspects of it. You wouldn’t just think about your own role or your own department; you’d think about the total picture. Adopting this attitude will force you to look at and learn about more aspects of the business, which will give you a broader perspective. It will also demonstrate to others your potential for taking on more responsibility.

3. Keep your big goal top-of-mind. In the information age, knowledge is everywhere, so you have to be strategic about it. Have you ever noticed that when you decide which car you want to buy, you suddenly see that car everywhere you go? Well, that’s not because everyone has the same car; it’s because identifying what you want gives your brain a focus and a filter. You have to do the same for your Big Goal. Keep your antennae up and your Big Goal top-of-mind, and you will suddenly see ideas for how to reach it everywhere you look.

4. Seek out knowledge holders and sources. Be proactive about gaining knowledge by searching for expertise. Who knows something about what you’re working on? Go talk to those people. You’d be amazed how many doors you can open just by telling people you’d like to learn from them. In addition, where can you find information about what you’re working on? Go look up those sources, whether they are case studies, books, business magazines or what have you.

Being open to and on the lookout for good ideas yourself is only half that battle. You have to position yourself so that good ideas can come to you. That means creating an atmosphere in which the people around you feel comfortable speaking up and know that there is a benefit in doing so. If you want to take people with you and accomplish your Big Goal more efficiently and effectively, you need to learn to see every person and every experience as an opportunity to expand your knowledge base.

As Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  I love that quote and wholeheartedly agree, but I would go one more: You will see even further if you stand on the giants’ shoulders and take pride in crediting and thanking them for the view.

David Novak is the chairman and CEO of Yum! Brands, Inc.; this article is adapted from his new book, TAKING PEOPLE WITH YOU: The Only Way to Make BIG Things Happen.

?

Smartphones are the new cool, and they’re here to stay. At the end of last year, 25% of mobile phone users in the US had a smartphone. In just few more quarters, that number is projected to more than double to 49%! This is corroborated by the Nielsen study that claims that that by Christmas next year, one in two Americans will own a smartphone. This means that as a business, you have the option to reach out to a large chunk of your target consumers with the powerful medium of the mobile application.

The opportunity of transacting on the mobile platform opens up a host of possibilities. From restaurant bookings to movie tickets, mobile applications are making the task of transactions on-the-go hassle free and efficient. For irrefutable proof, how’s this for a statistic: 37% of all US based smartphone users made a non-mobile purchase, and this number is slated to grow! This means that if you’re a business owner that is satisfied with an e-commerce portal, chances are that you will lose out on a significant chunk of business that will stem from consumers who are on the move. Jeff might want to download the latest e-book from his favorite author onto his Android powered smartphone to read on his commute, and Jennifer may wish to book a flight ticket for the weekend on her iPhone while on the way back from her yoga class. In either case, being present on the mobile platform may be an edge now, but will be hygiene just about one year from now.

Part of the reason behind the proliferation in applications is that smartphones themselves are becoming a sweeter option. Attractive features, the app economy trend, and affordable prices have all helped in expediting the adoption rate of smartphones among the people. In an age when mobile telephony is revolutionizing just about every walk of life, you ignore this platform at your peril. Just when you thought that you’d crossed the Web 2.0 hurdle, getting your web presence to be interactive and vibrant, here comes a brand new medium to wrap your mind around. But the good news is that the mobile application platform brings with it a level of engagement that is second to none.

At StrApp, we’re focused on creating mobile applications that are not just functional, but ones that push the envelope in the quest to be awesome.

Increasingly prospects are taking a nonlinear approach in getting to know your company. There is a plethora of touch points before “commitment” with an executive; and an equal number of channels that are in play today.

Take this example below. How would you determine which of these activities led to a prospect to become a client (i.e. commitment)?

In the traditional marketing funnel, there are usually three steps in the sales cycle before commitment (sales): awareness, interest and evaluation. Some of these touches align easily to the steps. For example, the first touch point is usually awareness. But then it becomes murky for marketers. When did the prospect move from awareness to interest? Was it when he/she received the follow-up email? Or maybe when they browsed the web site?

Does it even matter?

Forrester Research writes about creating a Customer Life Cycle (CLC) that is better at matching customer activities to your marketing approach. One of the models I have read about in their recent research looks like this:

What makes this model more attractive than the traditional marketing funnel is that it is easier to map the touch points to the 4 stages of the Customer Life Cycle. It is also more flexible – one could have many touch points in “Explore, Buy and Engage” (usually there is only one touch point, the first, that gets credited with “Discover”). However, to me the best part about Forrester’s CLC model is that it is an outcome based model that puts the focus on the customer and shows the importance of retention activities like loyalty – creating raving fans and repeat purchase.

How small companies can become world-class

Becoming world-class is no longer a dream that small companies harbor, it is eminently achievable; the list of companies that are small in size but have it in them to take on the best in the world is just growing with each passing day. Let’s take a look at what the small company needs to do to get there.

Large companies tend to have more meetings; small companies tend to focus more on implementation. In his book ‘Rework’ by the founder of 37 Signals Jason Friend says, “It is unfortunate that meetings are always scheduled like TV shows, you set aside 30 minutes or an hour, because that’s what scheduling software dictates!” He goes on to call meetings as the worst interruption to work. The propensity to do away with meetings leads to a nimble-footedness that achieves results far quicker than most companies that spend more time in arriving at what needs to be done. When coupled with a maniacal attention to quality, you have a winning proposition even if you’re a smaller entity. While resources at smaller companies may be limited when compared to larger organizations, the small firm is often better placed to use the resources available more intelligently, getting more out of the resources available.

When you’re a large company, you come with a legacy of what you know works, and chances are you will retrofit something that is known to deliver results to what you think the customer needs. But a small company does not come with the baggage of legacy. You’re better placed to listen harder to what a customer wants, and deliver a solution that best fits the need, and not what you know has worked before. This flexibility has known to work for customers who are looking for a solution that might is out of the box and needs creative thinking. A case in point is Reva, the Indian manufacturer of electric cars. This company listened to a customer who wanted a small affordable car, and was willing to pay a premium for it if it was non-polluting.

People in small companies tend to have more fun at work than at a large organization. Somehow, being a large corporation warrants systems and processes that vacuum clean fun out of the equation, which is why legitimizing fun at the workplace is a cornerstone of most small companies. Having a foosball table at work instantly lends a vibe to a workplace that a dozen whiteboard markers can never do.

At StrApp we’ve set our controls for the heart of the sun. Not only does it mean we love listening to Pink Floyd, it means we mean business about becoming world class. Check out our services here >>

Find inspiration anywhere… even where it hurts.

The Good

My baby girl was born March 25, 2009. It was the happiest day of my life. The months of anticipation and preparation for this new tiny addition to our family couldn’t possibly prepare me for the emotions I would feel as our little one took her first breath, her tiny body turning from purple to pink right before my eyes. It was such a wonderful moment. I had to document it in a way that was more than just taking a picture or shooting some HD video. I created “Cocktails with God” to celebrate this time in my life. God sits in his holy lounge chair, enjoying a beautiful spring/summer day, sipping a cocktail – the entire world filling his glass.

The Bad

At 7:45am, on February 1st, 2010, my wife of 5 years died. She died on the floor of our office, in our Woodstock, Ontario home. An undiagnosed heart condition called, ‘Long QT Syndrome’ would take her life. There was no warning. She was typing an email to a friend, with our then 10 month old baby girl sitting on her lap, when her heart stopped. I was getting ready to go to work when I heard the crash as she fell from her chair to the floor.

After her skin turned white and her lips went purple, after the “death rattle”, after the CPR; after the strong compressions, the cries from the baby and the internal chaos. As I sat in the hospital, I felt helpless despite the intervention of top medical professionals, immediate emergency procedures and -ultimately- her full recovery. As we waited it out, I felt trapped. I felt immobilized – unable to do anything at all. Later, I would use that feeling to create, “She Will Swim with Angels” – an image of a high rise apartment in the centre of an oceanic world disaster. The view is from the inside looking out. The world is filled with hundreds of feet of water. As you watch the empty cars and trucks float buy, their lights still on from the sudden calamity. A tiny crack develops in the window you’re staring out from. That crack will eventually worsen. That window will eventually burst. The question remains: will you drown slowly in the rising water? Or die quickly when the glass shatters and the water rushes in?

The Ugly

I met a lot of really cool people in design school- true free-thinkers- people that shared their ideas and lifestyle as openly with me, as I did with them. Unfortunately, a large proportion of these people did drugs. I did not. I don’t know why. I just didn’t. Kevin, a great friend, and a good designer to boot, did a lot of drugs. But for all the drugs he did, he never pressured me to do it. He never even asked if I wanted any. He knew I’d say “no”. For Kevin, if I didn’t partake, it just meant there was more for him. Kevin had taken Meth at a party with some “friends”. He had taken the drug and passed out, just prior to the group leaving to go clubbing. They all left except for one. A girl at the party said she’d watch him and make sure he was ok. By the time her friends started spilling back home from the night’s escapades, Kevin was already dead. The girl who was supposed to watch him, fell asleep and Kevin aspirated and died. What a waste. I had no idea what to do with my anger, pain, everything I was feeling about Kevin’s death. I did the only thing I knew how to do and that was to turn my computer on and work. The image entitled, “I Came Apart” would be based on that horrific journey and the loss of a good friend.

Find inspiration anywhere… even where it hurts.

For me, the only way to heal is to use the moments that knock us down in the same way as the moments that build us up. Whether it be death or life, it seems to take me in the same direction. It seems to end at the same place- the desire to create. It’s the way I choose to face each of them head on. Some artists look for inspiration in movies, books, etc.. and they are all good ways to achieve the end goal. But moments of inspiration can come from anywhere. Inspiration comes from the epicenter of the horrific and the heavenly in equal measure. Sometimes it shoots through my brain like a bullet, other times it floats down to me on angel’s wings. Either way, it heals. It saves. It gives me a place to put feelings that would otherwise be too overwhelming and it is the only way to be truly original, truly groundbreaking.
About the Author: Steve McGhee

A Woodstock based graphic designer,  fully indulged in Photoshop, loves creating surreal compositions in Photoshop.

If pressed further, most people will offer up some version of the Genius Theory: the idea that certain individuals are simply blessed with a force called ‘creativity’ that (as the theory goes) allows them to summon remarkable visual solutions to problems where the rest of us see only a blank canvas.

read more on >>  SMASHING MAGAZINE http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/02/21/clich-s-and-idea-generation-how-to-turn-clich-in-a-successful-visual-solution/

Putting It Into Practice

. . . . . works by Frazier, Spiegelman, Chermayeff and Bennett-Chamberlain are classic examples of what designers like to call ‘process work’ or ‘methodology’, terms that refer to a method of drawing ideas, direction and inspiration from the process of working on the design itself, rather than simply having a fixed destination from the outset. No one can write step-by-step instructions on how to do this — the entire point, after all, is to react, rather than obeying fixed directives — but there are certain steps we can take at the outset of a project that help clear the way to let this process happen:

• Start with a sketchbook, not a computer. There was a time when I once suspected that the teachers who tried to impress this point on me were just cranky technophobes… but over time, I came to appreciate the wisdom of this suggestion. The computer is a bad companion to start with because its particular toolset pushes us in certain directions (towards clearly defined shapes and hard edges) and because it tempts us to focus overly on execution (by offering up sexy drop shadows and whatnot) before our concept has really come together.

• Using your sketchbook, start by drawing every association you come up with for the subject matter. Draw it quickly, and don’t be critical. At this stage, it’s not about making pretty pictures, and it’s not about evaluating your ideas (in fact, the ability to turn the critical part of your brain on and off is one of the most helpful tricks you can develop).

• Don’t try to avoid clichés — let them happen. Trying not to think of clichés is like the old joke where someone says ‘Don’t think of a pink elephant.’ It’s best to get them down on paper and get them out of your system.

• Once you’ve jotted down every association you can think of, take a break, come back and jot down a few more. Then, take a longer break…

• Come back with fresh eyes and look at what you have in front of you. Now is the time to be critical, but also to be fair. Seeing our own work clearly for its merits, without bias and defensiveness, is one of the hardest things for graphic designers to do. George Orwell wasn’t thinking about graphic designers when he wrote, “To see clearly what is in front of one’s face requires constant struggle,” but he might as well have been.