"Bust the Android Fragmentation Myth" by Chiu-Ki Chan (2013)

Designers and developers have been afraid of the variety of Android flavors for way too long. Android borrows a lot of concept from the web, and we can use the same techniques to cater to the different OS versions and form factors.

Be responsive. Forget about absolute coordinates. Embrace the relative, use resource folders to differentiate among screen sizes, much like CSS media queries.

Be progressive. Take advantage of the latest Android functionalities, but gracefully fall back to the basics when you are on older OS versions. Remember the days when not all browsers have javascript?

Best of all, you don’t need a huge team to do this. I run a one-person company, and I will show you how I applied these techniques to my apps Monkey Write and Heart Collage.

Chiu-Ki Chan
Square Island LLC
@chiuki

Chiu-Ki started writing mobile apps at Google, where she worked on Google Mobile Maps for Android. After a brief stint in web development at two startups, she is now back to her mobile roots with her own company for app development. Her apps include "Monkey Write" for learning Chinese writing and "Heart Collage" for snapping photos to stitch into a heart.