F-Droid community expectations and how it affects the main app design
I've been thinking about the overall brand. I know that this isn't within the bazaar scope per say, but when thinking about the main view and what we should surface, it's important to consider how people perceive FDroid and what they expect from it. In the simplest form, a novice user should expect an app store. But, FDroid is different. It is an app store committed to free and open source apps and one that allows you to get apps from various people you trust (via nearby or repos).
To jump to the point, here is an example of wording that I think would help FDroid appeal simply both to novice and tech-savvy users.
- Get apps from people you trust. FDroid connects you with apps from various organizations and peers physically near you.
- FDroid is committed to providing free and open source apps.
- FDroid—Your community app store **Note: This exact wording would need to be tweaked. Right now, I just want to communicate the spirit of it.
How this affects the main design: When someone uses FDroid for the first time, they should understand "Hey, I can download these apps" and "Hey, I can get even more apps (if I add sources (aka repos) or connect with someone nearby)". They will likely discover the second (nearby aka swap), while at a training or from an organization's website. But, it should be easy, conceptually, for them to know this and where to tap within the app to do it.
Main Navigations Options (Accessed via a bottom bar if we decide to use this pattern) Option 1:
- Apps (Contains What's New and Categories)
- Sources or Collections (Home for repos and the nearby feature)
- Updates
- Settings (Includes a link to the About view)
Option 2:
- Apps (Contains What's New and Categories)
- Sources or Collections (Home for repos and the nearby feature)
- Updates
- Me (Includes Updates with links to Settings and About views)
In general, I think that moving from words like 'repo' to 'source' or 'collection' will add a lot of value to FDroid because it makes the app more familiar to novice users. I eager to hear feedback on this approach from the community of folks that have invested so much time and heart into the app. @pserwylo @eighthave @all
Activity
Milestone changed to %0.103 - UX Overhaul
I definitely support thinking of F-Droid ecosystem as a whole. F-Droid is more than just a sum of its projects. Freedom, privacy and federation are the features that make it outstanding.
I think it's worth adding a Website section for organizations about how they can use F-Droid client and server in their corporate environments.
As to top-level views, I'd suggest the following structure:
- Apps: contains What's New and Categories, maybe some highlights, etc. That should be the front page.
- Installed: apps that have updates and up-to-date apps (listed separately).
- Sources: repositories management (including swap).
Avoiding words like "repo" or "apk" is a good idea.
“Updates” would include the current “Installed” and “Updates” tabs, so something like “My Apps”, as I’ve seen in some app stores. I think how we represent Categories to the user is going to affect how things best break down into the main nav tabs. That part is still a question mark for me. I’m thinking now we should keep the general list view, while improving each list item and including inline install/update buttons as well as inline download/install progress bars. That is a common pattern (#705 (closed) QQ, CafeBazaar, Play search, Mi) and works very nicely with small screens and search filters. Then for categories, the app tile, horizontal scrolling categories is a common pattern (Play, CafeBazaar, Amazon, Mobigenie)
I think the word “Sources” could work for the overview. Sources could work well paired with Repos/Repositories, so the tab could be called “Sources” then the long form would be Source Repositories to make the link for the existing users who are used to the current lingo. There are millions of users of F-Droid already, so we need to consider how to smoothly introduce new lingo. I think as long as we portray it well in longer texts and the UI, then the word itself won’t matter too much. Source is better than Collection because it has an aspect of being something where you get things from. Collections feels too static, like someone’s stamp or art collection. You might be able to look at it a bit, but you can’t take from it.
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Words like Apps, Categories, Sources all seem pretty clear to me. The big question mark is what to call the grouping of rest of the stuff that is not looking for new apps, i.e. Installed/Updates, History, Settings, Uninstall, etc. Here's a random list of words that have bene used for similar things:
- Me
- My Apps
- Account
- Library
- About
Looking at the current About screen, I think we could condense that info into a header in this "general" screen, and provide a clickable link to the AppDetails view of F-Droid itself to provide the detailed info (source code link, license, etc). Then this tab could be called About.
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Here's some interesting overview of design guidelines from Xiaomi:
- Logo design from Xiaomi: http://dev.xiaomi.com/doc/?p=204
- TV apps from Xiaomi: http://dev.xiaomi.com/docs/mitv/user_guide
Edited by username-removed-24982 Mentioned in issue #709 (closed)
Another thing to think about is when we want to follow the material design guidelines. They help apps fit in to the android ecosystem, but I find that apps which that follow all of material design to the T tend to feel somewhat generic. Worth considering if/when we want to diverge from the guidelines, to reinforce the feel we want to convey.
