Android Popup & Dialog UI

Now we’re talking.

I was reminded with the release of Mailbox for Android of some screenshots of popups I’ve been collecting since January. Amongst all the many details and improvements which have been progressing across native KitKat and 3rd party Android apps, one of the things that has struck me is the popup UI improvements.

L-R: Native Android popups — Date selection in Calendar, Time selector, Repetition in Create Event, Print in Chrome

The clean and clear layouts make taking action easy and are combined with some really interesting and intuitive UX, such as the double-radius circle picker in the ‘select time’ popup.

There’s some very simple but effective design that people have been doing to incorporate their own branding too.

L-R: Mailbox, Dropbox, Runtastic Heartrate Pro, Sol Calendar

L-R: Southern Rail, AirBnB, CloudMagic, Noom

There’s some very simple but beautiful design happening that, even though it’s a temporary modal screen, is important to enhance the feeling of integration and not as though the user is ‘leaving’ the app experience with an Android Holo themed popup. Sol Calendar and Noom are two apps that do this particularly well in my opinion.

One of the trends I’ve noticed starting to creep in is bringing these popups from the base of the screen and full width. It’s a small difference but one that feels modern and clean.

L-R: Photos, Any.Do, Yplan, CamScanner

I believe we’ll start to see more apps using this slide-from-base style of overlay as Android moves forward into it’s next iterations.

UPDATE: Here’s a taster popup of a little project I’ve been working on to explore these ideas — https://www.behance.net/gallery/16571659/Android-Popup-UI