Make Your App Material Project / XYZ Reader App

Redesigned app to follow the Material Design guidelines and translate a set of static design mocks to a living and breathing.

Screenshots from the Latest Version of The Application

Main Screen

Details Screen

Project Overview

In this project, you will redesign an app to follow the Material Design guidelines and translate a set of static design mocks to a living and breathing app.

Why this Project?

This project gives you an opportunity to improve an app’s design, a vital skill for building apps users will love. It also replicates a common developer task of updating and changing an app's design as new standards are released.

What Will I Learn?

Through this project, you will:

• Understand the fundamentals of Android design.
• Apply Material Design guidelines to a mobile application.
• Separate an interface into surfaces.
• Effectively use transitions and motion.

How Will I Complete this Project?

You will improve an app for this project:

• XYZ Reader: A mock RSS feed reader featuring banner photos and headlines. Download the code here.

The app is currently functional, and work in most cases for most users.

Your job will be to take the user feedback in the UI Review node, and implement changes that will improve the UI and make it conform to Material Design.

Supporting Courses

You should have the skills you need to complete this app after completing:

• Developing Android Apps
• Advanced Android App Development
• Material Design for Android Developers You can also refer to the Material Design specification.

Required Tasks

• Download a zip file of the app.
• Read the UI Review in the next node.
• Spend time exploring the current state of the app, looking for ways it could be improved. The app will need multiple improvements. Be sure to look specifically at issues called out in the UI Review.
• Execute the improvements!
• Make a single GitHub repo with your code for the app and submit it through the Nanodegree portal. See the Submission and Evaluation node for detailed instructions.

For detailed information on how your project will be assessed, see the Rubric node.

Rubric

Required Behavior

• App uses the Design Support library and its provided widget types (FloatingActionButton, AppBarLayout, SnackBar, etc).
• App uses CoordinatorLayout for the main Activity.
• App theme extends from AppCompat.
• App uses an AppBar and associated Toolbars.
• App provides a Floating Action Button for the most common action(s).
• App properly specifies elevations for app bars, FABs, and other elements specified in the Material Design specification.
• App has a consistent color theme defined in styles.xml. Color theme does not impact usability of the app.
• App provides sufficient space between text and surrounding elements.
• App uses images that are high quality, specific, and full bleed.
• App uses fonts that are either the Android defaults, are complementary, and aren't otherwise distracting.
• App conforms to common standards found in the Android Nanodegree General Project Guidelines.
• App utilizes stable release versions of all libraries, Gradle, and Android Studio.