UI overhaul, overall Look And Feel product management

sonora commented 5 years ago

I think it is about tine we unify our look and feel a bit across the app. The way we have it now we e.g. use different mechanisms to leave screens: Sometimes you just have to tap the device's back button to leave a screen and changes will be remembered (e.g. Configure screen and Configure map). On others we use a Dismiss button, e.g. under Map mode. Yet on others you have to explicitly Apply or Cancel a configuration , e.g. under Map style. Under Configure maps/GPX files we use explicit Cancel or Ok. On yet other screens we have 'Leave' arrows top left, or a confirmation check mark top right.

Also, on the latter screen we use tick boxes to make tracks visible, while we mostly use sliding switches for similar functionality elsewhere.

Our screen My places / Tracks uses sliders for already visible tracks, but no visibility selection mechanism at all for not yet selected tracks. Instead you have to either tap on a track's name then chose actions on the subsequent screen, or select a track's 3 dots menu, which in turn offers all sorts of actions but is missing the very one that gets you to the screen you would reach when tapping the track name.

All this grew historically in recent years, via different designers and developers. I suggest here we now apply some overall product managment and governance to put OsmAnd in the league of a managed product with a distinct, uniformly applied, ergonomic look and feel, and not just a collection of dozens of functionality and options screens all working slightly or even notably different.

pietervdvn commented 5 years ago

I'm gonna chime in here to encourage you guys. This is very much needed, but as someone who is using the nightlies as daily driver, I have to say that I am very impressed with the work you guys are doing right now. I see the UI growing and getting better every time I update. The automatic, big 'download current area' for example is a great addition.

So, go for it!

vshcherb commented 5 years ago

Well it will take a lot of effort to consolidate, it looks like it is easy but it is not easy at all. There are so many screens and functionality that even checking all fonts / sizes took us 2 weeks. Changing user interaction and consolidating is even more complex task.

What I can say for sure, that My Places and especially My tracks going to be refactored by another reason. We're going to enable plugins that can add new functionality to tracks etc, so we need redesign how we: 1) select items 2) search items 3) perform single action over item 4) perform batch action over items 5) provide generic statistics over group of items

I really hope to address it in 2019. Though it has at least 6 group of items: Favorites, Markers, Tracks, AV Notes, OSM Edits, Avoid roads (?)

sonora commented 5 years ago

I guess we could slice the elephant before eating it ... :)

The basis would be to define a sort of standard style or style guide, it would suffice to pick one selection screen and/or one settings screen as our model. Then all developers could successively work on evolving other screens accordingly as they see fit, have time, or touch them by working on related funcionality anyway. In this fashion it does not need to be a huge dedicated activity?

macintoshee commented 5 years ago

As a UI-UX designer I find OSMAND navigation specifically painful, confusing and inconsistent. Lots of part behave, look and feel like designed by engineers. Design systems are popping up everywhere and OSMAND would benefit from one considerably. You don't have to refactor whole system at once but it could be done step-by-step over longer period of time following a UI.UX roadmap.

seniorm0ment commented 4 years ago

+1 to this, would like to see this

scaidermern commented 4 years ago

As a UI-UX designer [...]

Since you are a UI-UX designer maybe you can provide some specific suggestions for UI improvements? This would be really helpful.