Meetup at Udacity: Android Design Patterns for the iOS designer + Apportable

We're going to briefly stray from iOS to get some insight into the Android world.

Android Design Patterns for the iOS Developer

We'll start with design expert Greg Nudelman, author of Designing Search and the new Android Design Patterns: Interaction Design Solutions for Developers (Wiley, 2013).

Greg will discuss:

1. Key differences between Android 4, Android 2.x and iOS. How to use the new Android action bar scheme and overflow menus to implement "Right Size for Every Device" (and where this fails). How to design Android buttons, actions and menus. The truth about the Drawer menu: Google Plus and Bank Simple use it – should you? How to design forms and screens to flow, without containers with rounded corners with Mobile Space Unbound design principle.

2. What's around the corner for Android 4, including a quick tour of 5 "experimental" Android patterns from Greg's book Android Design Patterns: Interaction Design Solutions for Developers (Wiley, 2013)

For those who want to go further, Greg will give away two copies of his new book Android Design Patterns: Interaction Design Solutions for Developers.

Greg Nudelman is Mobile and Tablet Experience Strategist, Fortune 500 Advisor, Author/Speaker and CEO of DesignCaffeine, Inc. For over 15 years he has helped his clients eBay, WebEx, Wells Fargo, PayPal, Safeway, Cisco, IBM, Associated Press and Groupon amass millions of satisfied customers. Internationally acclaimed design workshop leader (with sold-out workshops Adaptive Path’s UXWeek, SXSW, MobX Berlin, UX Israel, IA Summit, WebVisions, Design4Mobile, Search Engine Summit, Enterprise Search Summit, Net Squared Conference, DrawCamp, and SketchCamp), Greg authored Android Design Patterns: Interaction Design Solutions for Developers (Wiley, 2013), Designing Search: UXStrategies for eCommerce Success (Wiley, 2011), co-authored Smashing Mobile Book (2012) and contributed to half-dozen UX design books. More info: http://DesignCaffeine.com and http://androiddesignbook.com

Apportable: Write Android apps with Objective-C

San Francisco startup Apportable is building Objective-C infrastructure to allow iOS apps to be easily recompiled for Android [read this sentence twice]. Apportable lead engineer Zac Bowling will join us to present Apportable and take us through a simple cross-compilation demo.

Apportable was a sponsor of iOSDevCamp and there presented details of the Apportable SDK, which top-tier game developers are using to bring iOS games to Android. Here's a partial list of Apportable customers (http://www.apportable.com/customers).

BONUS: Udacity and the future of online education

Udacity's Jerry Morrison will introduce us to our host, Udacity (https://www.udacity.com), and tell us about Udacity's vision for the future of online education.

Pizza Sponsored by Extreme Reality

"Extreme Reality (XTR3D) is the only company to bring full-body 3D motion control experiences to any computing device and operating system via a devices native or peripheral camera. Offered as a software development kit (SDK), the companys Extreme Motion product enables developers to create applications and games that break the physical barriers of hardware and environment required by current motion control technology. With 14 patents granted worldwide, the Extreme Motion technology recognizes and analyzes the three dimensions of a users skeletal joints and the movement and interrelation of the joints. Extreme Reality was founded in 2005 and is based in Herzelia, Israel. For more information please visit http://www.xtr3d.com/ or join the conversation and like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter @ExtremeReality1."