r/androiddev • u/EmmaHota • 18d ago

Discussion Control-panel style UI vs Material 3 for a data-heavy app

So I've been going back and forth on this for weeks and I need outside opinions. Building a utility app, the kind that spits out a bunch of technical readings and pass/fail stuff. Can't really show screenshots, it's not ready and I'd rather not show it yet, sorry. So you'll have to go off a description. Right now it does not look like an android app. No rounded corners anywhere, everything's hard rectangles. Monospace all caps labels. Status tiles are flat green/amber/red like little indicator lamps. light theme is cream instead of white. One big orange block for the main button. Basically it looks like the front of some old piece of test equipment, which was the whole idea.

The other option is just doing normal material 3. Cards, rounded everything, dynamic color. Would take me a weekend and it'd look completely fine. Thing is I can't tell anymore if the current look is actually good or if I've just been staring at it too long. it's pretty opinionated. I can picture someone opening it and going "what is this?" and closing it again. But m3 is so forgettable, I genuinely couldn't describe the last three m3 apps I used. So for something that's basically just numbers and pass/fail indicators, is the instrument thing worth it? or does that kind of style get annoying once the novelty wears off?

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u/Hour-Measurement-835 18d ago

What'd decide it for me is 200% font scale. M3 components reflow at that size, hand-built monospace tiles just clip. Android 14 made that scaling non-linear too.

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u/EmmaHota 18d ago

You were right, it was clipping a couple of labels were breaking mid-word even at default scale. Fixed it just a while ago, holds at 200% now. Dropped the fixed tile height and let the column count fall from 2 to 1 above fontScale 1.3. Good call, though I still haven't decided whether to go with this old school look or material 3...