UI/UX Preferences

[PennRobotics]

First, unless this app gets the nod of approval from someone at Shure Inc., I would stay away from anything that might lead users to believe this is an official app. That includes use of official logos, ignition green or the older Shure logo blue, non-system fonts, etc.

If there are general suggestions for improving the current design, share them here. My preference is to avoid typical Material You styling (giant elements, rounded edges everywhere, pastels) but that is evidently not shared by the community as the majority of modern apps have fully embraced the design advice of a large company having sixty or eighty different Android apps each having a same-four-colors vague geometric shape for an icon.

Low hanging fruit:

• different color scheme
• support dark mode
• fix XYZ
  • the width of whatever element e.g. number entry
  • the gap in the horizontal rules used in the grid layout
  • padding of whatever element
• use a standard seekbar instead of the orange fader knobs
• replace seekbars with a different entry method
• use a discrete seekbar for the multi-option stuff (compressor, HPF, auto mode options)
• improve the monitor mix widget
• pressing the text/anywhere near a gridlayout checkbox should still toggle the checkbox
• use something other than a ViewSwitcher
• disable elements whenever lock is active and clearly indicate (background highlight, maybe?) that the adapter is locked
• menu, title bar, status bar, hint text, etc.
• auto-connect to USB without requiring device selection
• small popup when an error packet is received
• show the current microphone input volume

I want to stay away from blindly copying the Motiv UI/UX to stay safe of trademark violations. There are some exceptional examples of widgets in the wild (Spotify EQ, input level indicators of various recorder apps) that I would merge if someone knows how to design them.

Some of the bulletpoints might be more difficult than I anticipate, or I might not know the best practice for Android design. If anyone with Android experience wants to take the lead on adding features or redesigning the UI/UX, I am certainly open to ideas and could even move my preferred style into a branch and promote a more professional or cleaner (code-wise and/or visual aesthetics) version of the app to the main branch.