10 good rules for bad App

Welcome to my second part of the tutorial of how building a bad app. After we’ve building a bad app in the first part, it’s the time to call our designer to fuck it a bit more:

#1: Ignore material design guidelines

Google, one of the greatest companies in the world, put lots of efforts creating material design, they probably do a long user research and gather feedback from many expert, but hey- you are the one with the bachelor of industrial design, so you probably know better.

#2: Invent your own navigation pattern

If Facebook can do it so can you, also- if your app will be so good Google might give up and adapt it.

#3: Create a mysterious app icon

App that let you send “Yo”, of course.

That’s really helpful when users need to quickly find your app from 40 apps icons grid.

#4: Use your own ideas for icons

Now I’m talking about in app icons. I understand- you don’t fully pleased with the Android default share icon, you’re also didn’t find anything suits to your needs between hundreds of material design icons so why not creating a full icon pack from your own?

Bonus points: don’t even bother to add title to your menu items, so that users will able to get a textual hint.

#5: Create intro, overlay explanations AND hints

Because users are stupid (mostly true) and they always read your explanation (no chance ever)

Bonus points: do a step-by-step tutorial with no option to skip.

#6: Don’t support integration with other apps within your app

Android has a great mechanism to interact actions between apps, but that’s not too good for your app because that means users are going to leave your app. When users leave your app, that means less cash from ads. Less cash means you MIGHT have to find a real job.

#7: Don’t support integration with other apps into your app

In addition to previous point- respect other apps and don’t still they users please.

Bonus points: If you ended up supporting your app to filter intents from other apps- ignore context and just open the main screen and not the relevant page.

#8: Put animations everywhere

A splash screen animation is nice, even Google recommend adding animation while moving between screens, and the more the merrier

Is it too much?

#9: Use gifs instead of drawing things in code or animation drawable

Yes, I know, animation drawable might saves you a couple of MB, but your time is much more important!

#10: Create resources for all resolutions

Because you just saves time, so lets waste it.

Next time we going to talk about how to make things a little bit worse by the product guys, so stay tuned!

Got some more suggestions for ways to make your look and feel worse? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Originally published at shem8.github.com on April 17, 2016.