Android UI Design Hub

5 min readApr 3, 2024

Let’s explore the changing landscape of Android UI design together. We have come a long way, and now we can collaborate on innovative solutions together using tools like the Android UI Kit on Figma.

Key Definitions:

Android Design Hub is a resource with expert advice to help Android developers create visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces for Android apps. Using Figma starter kits, UI samples, and galleries.
Material Design: Material is an open-source design system that promotes user interface design ideals and facilitates collaboration between developers and designers.
Figma is a collaborative design interface that enables both web and mobile developers to build UI designs end-to-end, and these designs can easily be exported as code, e.g to Android Studio.

Setup your Android UI Kit

This open-source page provided by Google exists in the Figma community, and all you need to do to access the free templates available is to create an account in Figma.

Why Material Design?

Material design has become a more important aspect of Android app development, providing developers with a set of guidelines and tools to create visually appealing and consistent user experiences.

A brief history of where it started and where we are now:

Material Design 1.0 (2014):
Characterized by bold colors, flat design elements with realistic shadows, and responsive animations. To create a unified and consistent look across different devices and platforms.
Material Design 2.0 (2018)
This upgrade included Material Theming, which allowed for more extensive customization, enabling designers and developers to create branded and unique interfaces while still adhering to the Material Design principles.
Material Design 3 — Material You (2021)
The introduction of the Material Components Library marked a move towards a more modular and adaptable system for designing interfaces. This version focuses on personalization, allowing users to customize the system’s color palette based on their preferences. Developers can integrate these dynamic usability capabilities into their applications for a more personalized user experience.

There are various components in Material Design, but in this article, we will focus on what Material Design offers as guidelines for understanding and handling navigation. For navigation, taking into account different screen sizes, we are provided with the following navigation components:

Navigation bar: Think of it as the control hub at the bottom of your phone’s screen. It’s provided by the system and includes buttons like back, home, and recent apps. Users use it to navigate between different apps and screens on their devices.
Navigation drawer This is like a hidden menu that slides out from the side of your app’s screen, usually the left edge. It’s handy for organizing lots of options or sections within your app. Users can open it to find different areas of your app or settings without cluttering up the main screen.
Navigation rail Imagine a slim bar running down the edge of your app’s screen, often on the left or right side. It’s a compact way to show users the main sections or features of your app. They can quickly jump to different parts of your app using this rail.

The recommended guidelines for navigation using Material Design can be shown best when comparing mobile vs large screens. We commonly use the navigation bars on mobile devices, but this doesn’t work well on large screens. Material Design then provides us with the navigation rail that improves navigation on mid-sized screens, for example, phones in landscape mode, foldables, and navigation drawers on larger devices like tablets.

Compact devices use a navigation bar, medium devices can use a navigation rail, and expanded devices can take advantage of a navigation drawer (https://material.io/blog/material-you-large-screens)

In the end, we want to achieve a responsive layout like in the image below. We use a bottom navigation bar on a small-screen mobile device, followed by a navigation rail and navigation drawer for larger screen sizes. This allows for great user experience and makes great use of space across all screen sizes

Why Figma?

Earlier, we introduced Figma as a collaborative design interface that enables both web and mobile developers to build UI designs end-to-end, and these designs can easily be exported as code, e.g., to Android Studio. If we take an example of a mobile user interface designed on Figma, it would look something like this:

Now we can make use of the plugins provided on the interface by downloading them or integrating them through Android Studio. A good example is the Upspeed plugin, which allows you to import files and layouts from Figma to Android Studio directly, as in the image below.

This reduces the time a developer would spend writing lines of code to achieve the same results.

In summary

The introduction of the Android UI Design Hub for developers will enhance:

Consistency Across Applications—Material Design patterns contribute to a seamless user experience and make it easier for users to navigate and understand the interface.
Tools and Resources: This includes design templates, icon sets, and other assets that align with the recommended material design principles.
Responsive Design and Accessibility—emphasizing responsive design and accessibility, ensuring that applications are user-friendly across different devices and accessible to users with diverse needs.
Efficient Development Process: Developers can benefit from efficient development processes when they follow established design guidelines. This includes the use of pre-built components, code snippets, and design patterns that are recommended by the Android UI design hub.

Helpful resources

S/O — I couldn’t have put this together so well without the help of Annunziata Kinta Thank you so much!