Redesign: Artflow Settings Menu

April 11, 2017

ArtFlow is my favorite drawing tool on Android. It’s got a lot of useful features, but the settings menu makes them hard to discover. Let’s see if we can redesign it for better usability.

Low-hanging fruit

This menu suffers from over-explaining. Users are generally able to navigate menus based on context and past experiences, so these elements are just adding noise.

Let’s keep the copy brief—

—and reduce the number of elements to the bare essentials:

Consistent semantics

Elements that look the same should behave the same. The following 3 areas lack consistency:

1. One of these is a description, and the other shows the setting’s current value.
2. Both are blue, but the toggle is clickable while the text isn’t.
3. Both are disabled.

Punctuation

On the left, the sidebar items should be more centered within their container. In the main area, related options should be grouped into chunks, delineated by whitespace.

The Result

Before…

… and after.