I seem to be in the minority, but I'm not a huge fan of the UI design in the new official Twitter app. My biggest complaints:
Pattern 3: The Dashboard
Not a huge fan of this, mainly because it feels redundant and adds to the app's inconsistency. Some features can be accessed directly from the tweet screen while others require you to navigate back to the dashboard. Where Android apps have traditionally allowed direct navigation between functions by way of the Menu button on the phone, Twitter drops that functionality pretty much entirely.
Pattern 4: The Action Bar
Not a bad idea in and of itself, but it feels poorly implemented to me. The biggest issue isn't the action bar itself, but the fact that they chose to add a second, permanent UI bar directly below it for navigation between tweets, mentions, and favorites. If you're using the phone in landscape mode, you've lost nearly a third of your vertical screen real estate to permanent UI elements. The UI should get out of my way and let me interact with content.
This also plays into my complaint about Pattern 3 and inconsistent navigation between features. This secondary bar replicates part, but not all, of the functionality of the the dashboard. You can't really be sure which navigation path is going to be open to you until you follow one.
Pattern 6: QuickActions
Again, the primary issue here is consistency. The QuickAction bar pops up above a tweet when you tap it... except when it doesn't. If a tweet is too far up the screen when you tap it, the QuickAction bar pops up below the tweet. (And because of the vertical screen real estate problem from Pattern 4, your chances of not having enough screen space for the bar in landscape mode and running into it behaving inconsistently are as good as not). Not a major, major issue, but it is slightly jarring. If there's not enough space to display the QuickAction bar in a consistent location, it seems to me that the app should scroll the timeline down so that there is.
Personally, I'd also be in favor of making that consistent location below the selected tweet -- it's much easier to tap once and then again with your thumb by moving down than it is to do the reverse since it mimics the natural motion of balling your hand. I feel like I'm having the stretch to reach the newly revealed UI elements in the official app.
I guess the thing for me is that I agree with everyone that this app is one of the prettiest on the Android platform, and I'm thrilled to see contact syncing expanding beyond Facebook; I just haven't understood the raves about the UX end of the app. It's certainly not bad, but I came away feeling like the whole thing was half-baked from a usability perspective. There's definitely a lot of potential here, but it needs some serious interface work before it becomes my daily use Twitter app.
I didn't understand what Contacts Sync would do, so I skipped it, just to be safe. Who knows, worst case it would import everybody I follow on Twitter into my address book.
I am still not sure what it does. The only thing I can imagine is comparing email addresses and adding the Twitter name to address book entries if email addresses match.
Pattern 3: The Dashboard
Not a huge fan of this, mainly because it feels redundant and adds to the app's inconsistency. Some features can be accessed directly from the tweet screen while others require you to navigate back to the dashboard. Where Android apps have traditionally allowed direct navigation between functions by way of the Menu button on the phone, Twitter drops that functionality pretty much entirely.
Pattern 4: The Action Bar
Not a bad idea in and of itself, but it feels poorly implemented to me. The biggest issue isn't the action bar itself, but the fact that they chose to add a second, permanent UI bar directly below it for navigation between tweets, mentions, and favorites. If you're using the phone in landscape mode, you've lost nearly a third of your vertical screen real estate to permanent UI elements. The UI should get out of my way and let me interact with content.
This also plays into my complaint about Pattern 3 and inconsistent navigation between features. This secondary bar replicates part, but not all, of the functionality of the the dashboard. You can't really be sure which navigation path is going to be open to you until you follow one.
Pattern 6: QuickActions
Again, the primary issue here is consistency. The QuickAction bar pops up above a tweet when you tap it... except when it doesn't. If a tweet is too far up the screen when you tap it, the QuickAction bar pops up below the tweet. (And because of the vertical screen real estate problem from Pattern 4, your chances of not having enough screen space for the bar in landscape mode and running into it behaving inconsistently are as good as not). Not a major, major issue, but it is slightly jarring. If there's not enough space to display the QuickAction bar in a consistent location, it seems to me that the app should scroll the timeline down so that there is.
Personally, I'd also be in favor of making that consistent location below the selected tweet -- it's much easier to tap once and then again with your thumb by moving down than it is to do the reverse since it mimics the natural motion of balling your hand. I feel like I'm having the stretch to reach the newly revealed UI elements in the official app.
I guess the thing for me is that I agree with everyone that this app is one of the prettiest on the Android platform, and I'm thrilled to see contact syncing expanding beyond Facebook; I just haven't understood the raves about the UX end of the app. It's certainly not bad, but I came away feeling like the whole thing was half-baked from a usability perspective. There's definitely a lot of potential here, but it needs some serious interface work before it becomes my daily use Twitter app.