Not so long long ago...
Specifically... in 2011, The first android phone had come to our home. A Galaxy Fit running android 2.2 Froyo. And it was the most beautiful and expensive piece of tech I had seen in my life.
I didn't leave any stone unturned to explore the plethora of apps, but one thing stood out amongst all these apps.
They looked... Ugly-ish?
I guess, it was done to instill a sense of familiarity for folks coming from handset, but you could see how functionally advanced they were, which is why no one bothered to question the appearances.
Fast forward a few years we started seeing super-functional apps like Titanium Backup, ES Explorer, Advanced Task Manager, and that barcode scanner app for which I could barely find barcodes to scan. My point being, we reached a point where people didn't want more functionals but wanted their fav apps to look better.
The New Era ...
This is when we reached what I call "The Colorful Age of UI"
And then came Material Design, breathing life of fresh air to the android user experience. Everything was suddenly about using the perfect color palette and adding those ripple animations.
Developers were quick to adapt their apps to it, which helped soar some of them to popularity like Journal App, Shuttle Music Player, Nova Launcher. Anyone who stuck to the old ways slowly died out, to be lost amongst the thousands of apps being released every day.
What next?
So now we had great looking super functional apps, but with the increasing display sizes and reducing attention span of the users, people now wanted something more, something that would make their lives easier: Ease of experience or what we now know as User Interface.
They wanted fewer touches, more tasks to be done. Additional options were now hidden under Floating Action Buttons, or more commonly known as FAB. We also started witnessing hamburger menu, kebab menu, Candybox, Chocolate, and yes, we're still on the same topic. TO sum it up, apps became simpler yet packing the same functionalities which in itself is no easy feat, and yet developers, UI Designers and UX Developers preserved to lead us to this age of ... ting Sorry, a notification popped up asking me would I rather order a biriyani than stay lonely.
Conclusion
So what should we focus on when building pur apps you ask?
To be honest, with the amount of competetion in the app sector, you'll have to work for all of these factors, maybe individually maybe together and add in a flair of your own love cause after all, it is YOUR app. 😉