Title: Google I/O 2011 - Initial Thoughts Date: 2011-05-12 22:51 Author: Michael Category: Android Tags: Google, Google I/O, Java Slug: google-io-2011-initial-thoughts Status: published
This was my first year attending Google I/O and I hope to attend many more. Overall, the experience was simply mind bending. Every session I attended was packed [from an information & body count perspective] and meticulously presented. I received a Google I/O review form and laid down some initial thoughts… I’ll probably add another review in a week or so after full digestion.
Session Review:
First, I’d like to thank Google for the extremely professional, high-quality and INSPIRING developer conference. I appreciate the opportunity to participate.
I’d like to see some of the sessions last a bit longer in the future. I’m sure scheduling is not trivial, nor is it possible to please everyone. That said, I attended several sessions that were extremely compressed, but most were just right.
A good example of just right; The Android Protips session with Reto was awesome and easily digestible for the intended audience (experienced developers). The Protips session presented information that was new to a lot of developers, yet manageable from a cognitive point of view.
In other words, it was just right in my humble opinion. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t appreciate a longer session with Reto. Code and advanced developer topics are easier to consume for people who spend a lot of time coding.
A good example of a compressed session; The Designing and Implementing of UI’s for phones and tablets. Developers naturally spend most of their time coding, I think we can all agree on that. UI / UX design are topics where most developers will readily admit some level deficiency, myself included.
So if we know developers have ranging issues with UI / UX. I would think it makes sense to spend a bit more time on the topic. Furthermore, a fair amount of criticism for apps related to Android is a lack of polish, fit and feel. “Haters gonna hate”, but there is a kernel of truth in those arguments. It may be selfish to ask for this, but I would really like to see more UI / UX topics.
I guess it boils down to how many developers “do it all” for their apps where the economics of hiring a designer is not possible or they simply don’t know their UI’s / UX’s need help. In any case, I don’t think spending more time on UI’s / UX’s would be time poorly spent or poorly received by the Android / Chrome developer community as a whole.