A Million Times Pattrn

Pattrn is an unique wallpaper app for Android that gives you access to the huge collection of patterns created by the COLOURlovers community. It has been featured by Google on multiple occasions: on Google's Android Design in Action show, and on Google Play's Staff Picks, Pure Android, and Beautiful Design collections. In just over a year, it has been downloaded more than a million times with an active install base of ~300k users. In this talk, you'll learn a bit about the story behind Pattrn as well as some useful Android design and development tips that might help your app stand out.

Transcript

1. Pattrn A million times
2. Hello! I'm Lucas Rocha. @lucasratmundo · http://gplus.to/lucasr
3. Craft I build user interfaces. http://thelayout.cc
4. Gigs Nokia, litl, Mozilla
5. Open source GNOME, Maemo, Firefox
6. The App
7. Side project Spare time experiment.
8. Premeditated More than you think ;-)
9. Hypothesis Good design wins. Duh.
10. Niche Personalisation is big. Google I/O 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxU8N21wfrM
11. Wallpapers Popular apps were #%*&!
12. “BeeGee”
13. “WallMag”
15. Pattrn Wallpapers
16. Features Browse latest & popular Auto-wallpapers Search Favourites Saved searches Android Beam
17. Goal Take over 'pattern' Achieved after 7 months!
18. Installs 2 Sep 2012 30 Dec 2012 28 Apr 2013 300,000 600,000 900,000 1,200,000 6 May 2012
19. Spotlight Google Play Staff Picks Pure Android Beautiful Design 2013 Android Design in Action Responsive Design Backwards Compatibility Beautiful Design Blogs and News Beautiful Pixels, TIME, Android Central, etc.
20. Practicalities
21. Fragments From day one. Be ready for responsiveness.
22. Release often Learn and iterate fast. Use the Beta testing bits from Google Play.
23. Comply But not too much. Aim for awesomeness, not pure correctness.
24. Open source it Share your reusable code. http://github.com/lucasr/smoothie
25. Feedback Make it simple and listen. Feedback menu item.
26. Landing page Your branding, your way. http://github.com/lucasr/pattrn-landing-page
27. Blogging A post per release. http://lucasr.org/tag/pattrn
28. Community Reach out for feedback. The #androiddev community is on Google+.
29. Get featured Best way to get noticed. Be ready when it happens.
30. Design
31. Unique Quirky, nichey, cool. Pattern wallpapers are not for everyone.
32. Responsive All shapes and sizes. Pattrn is available on all form-factors.
33. Behavioural Beyond the launcher. A new wallpaper every morning.
34. Simple Do one thing, do it well. Simple navigation, small feature set.
35. Visceral Be a bubble wrap. There's always something new to find.
36. VISCERAL UNIQUE NICHEY QUIRKY BEHAVIOURAL SIMPLE RESPONSIVE
37. Find a gap And take it over.
38. Questions?