Hi everybody, I’m a UI/UX designer and I wanna contribute to the community here with my expertise. Here is a quick prototype for a Android Lemmy app with Material You Design, it’s a simple and customizable app. With this app, I also want to improve the experience when exploring different servers.

Obviously, this is just a concept, so if any developer interest, I’m very willing to collaborate with 🫡 . Vice versa, if anyone stucks with designing his/her own Lemmy client, just reach out to me and I will give you a hand.

Here is a quick demo of some basic features: https://vimeo.com/843481714?share=copy

And here is the figma file if you wanna take a look: https://www.figma.com/file/ZBR30l0ZcKuyKMPjeDmvdF/Lemmy-Android-app?type=design&node-id=53526-31054&mode=dev

  • pathief@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Personally prefer to read the title before the image. It’s one of the reasons I don’t use the Connect app

    • a_m@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Noted. I was also considering where should I put the title as well. This is just a quick prototype to find out whether any dev is interested in collaboration, so just take it with a grain of salt 😉

      • Nioxic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        top would be preferable.

        often the title is needed in order to understand the picture - or the picture is the “punchline” to a joke set up by the text.

    • Hawkman@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m using Connect and your can meme the title be before the image in the settings, that’s what I did

    • kratoz29@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is something that has been disturbing me with Thunder app, Connect in their latest versions added a switch for this!

      • fuck reddit@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I switched to Liftoff. I was on Jerboa for the last few weeks as I figured things out, but liftoff is much smoother and has yet to give me an error code

    • a_m@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      lol, my bad, I used to be a content writer so it kinda runs in my blood =))) anw, updated for more accurate title

  • zachatrocity@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This looks really great! If you’re interested in contributing to an app you should check out Liftoff!

    We’re totally open source and community contribution driven and we’re moving fast! But we’re lacking designer contributions!

    If you’re interested check out our open GitHub issues/enhancements:

    https://github.com/liftoff-app/liftoff/issues

    • a_m@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Got that, I’m checking Matrix so we could have a chat

    • ItWasntMe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I just discovered liftoff last night on the Playstore. Finally really getting into Lemmy now that I have a good app to use.

  • Andonome@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The apps are certainly in need of all the help they can get. I have Lemur and Jerboa, and they’re both janky as all heck.

      • citrusface@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Liftoff is pretty great. Devs keep making improvement every day.

        I am still waiting for Sync for Lemmy to come out, but Liftoff might convert me.

        • Sam@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I think it looks fine on android, but it probably doesn’t integrate with iOS nicely. I also think light themes are bad by default so I can’t judge your photo accurately lol.

          • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Here is iOS dark / compact

            IMHO, the shadows, padding around cards, corner radiuses, drop down stylings, etc. are all pretty rough. It doesn’t feel as refined as Material You or iOS’s design system.

            After driving in Memmy, Mlem, and Wefwef (now Voyager), Liftoff feels kind of janky to me.

            Just my 2¢

            • no banana@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              If you go into settings and turn off card shadows and rounded corners it gets a bit better IMO

              • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Oh god, that’s way better. That stuff should be off by default. That said, I still feel like they need a UI person to contribute, and OP should hit them up.

                As someone who does UI for a living, it feels rough to me. I wish I had the time to help out, but I’ve already got a couple other nasty side projects on my plate.

            • Sam@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Just popping in to mention the UI got a pretty big update recently. You might want to take another look, I think its a lot better now.

          • mykl@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I don’t use compact so I’ve not seen those before, but I’m sure that’s not what anyone intended!

            I’d be interested to see what’s in the video. I think we’re at a good point to spend some time understanding what works on both main target platforms and making the changes to get us there.

      • Nerdulous@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Liftoff is better but compared to the greats that existed in the reddit ecosystem these are very crude. The platform just needs time for devs to catch up to the 10+ years they had invested in Reddit development. The dev behind sync for Reddit has been hard at work on an client for Lemmy with as much feature parity as possible.

      • MajinBlayze@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Using thunder now. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best experience for me that I’ve found so far.

    • a_m@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I’m currently using connect for lemmy. It works fine, but I still have to use the web version to jumping between servers, which is why I come up with this idea.

        • a_m@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          yeah, I’m just too lazy to create account for every servers I find interesting, especially when the different between them are minor

          • jrbaconcheese@vlemmy.net
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            1 year ago

            Why would you create an account on every server? You can access any community on any server that your server is federated with.

    • Lurker@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      I’m really enjoying wefwef. It’s smooth and works well. No weirdness or issues on my end.

    • a_m@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      lol, I use basic components from material library so it should be familiar :)))

  • theneverfox@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m putting the final touches on an app using material design. I’ve broken away from cards and haven’t even considered a light mode yet, but I’ve been pretty unhappy with the search/explorer

    This just got me unstuck on it, so thanks

    • souperk@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know why, but this exchange felt of fucking romantic. Keep up the good work you amazing people!

    • a_m@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Awesome, glad I can help. I also have some design outside of the cards, you can check it out in the Figma link for more inspiration

    • BlazingFlames6073@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same. One of the reasons I don’t use it. I think a reason they don’t priotise is because it supports both android and iOS. Not all users would see it.

      • kratoz29@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I get it, although Thunder is available for both platforms as well, and Material You looks awesome.

  • Quinnel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m a fullstack dev building my own app for Lemmy. I’d be interested in opening a dialogue if you’re interested. UI/UX is my weak point :P

    • Valen@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Wefwef works great on Android. Supposedly it looks like Apollo, but so what?

      • WildlyCanadian@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        It very much looks like an iphone app. All the text and the ui elements fit apples theming and looks out of place in android.

        Not to say it doesn’t work well or isnt a good app, because it is, but a lot of us are looking for a unified experience.

        I’m using thunder, which fits in nicely. Uses Material You theming as well

  • Landor Dragen@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Looking very good. I’m on iOS, but I would definitely use an app that look as good as that, as long as it performed good as well.

    Congratulations and keep up the good work.

  • wavymoney@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is beautiful, and a perfect example post you used there. I know it’s not a release but it makes me wish I had an Android phone to test it anyway lol

  • xan1242@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Keeping a native OS UI design language for an app is very nice. Apollo was a great example of this!

    I’d love to see Android’s version of the same thing.

  • restingboredface@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I like the look. One thing I would like to see is integration of the community search tool to make discoverability easier. Something that shows what server each community is on but also will allow you to search across servers in case you don’t know where things are, and a way to view the list of all communities if you want.