Android & Design at Etsy

A few weeks ago my colleague Paul Lau and I gave a talk at the NYC Android Meetup. We wanted to share our Android teams product development process at Etsy. How we collaborate as designers and developers to be effective at product development while experimenting and pushing our app UX as much as we can.

Our teams process is broken down into three parts each of which involve multiple iterations:

• Ideas - Here we’re creating designs and soliciting feedback from as many stakeholders as possible. Each screen is designed for 5 inch phones plus 7 and 10 inch tablets. Designers explore variations of each screen.

• Implementation- Build it quick and iterate. Get your designers eyes on it as soon as possible. Developers make the UI code flexible as it will likely change.

• Shipping- Freeze feature changes. Designers run through visual quality assurance (VQA). Iterate and make it great!

We included a few recent examples of screens we put together in the Etsy app and the some challenges we faced. Plus we added some implementation tips and tricks that help us stay flexible when building our UI layer.