App Icon Builder

[cooper-joe]

This discussion is about the proposal for an Icon Builder that would be available in the App Hub (and potentially elsewhere) to enable app publishers to create app icons with a consistent visual style and a baseline of design quality.

The ticket that contains the details for this proposal is here: https://jira.dhis2.org/browse/HUB-99.
Please read the proposal in full before taking part in this discussion.

Discussion points

• The most resource intensive part of implementing this proposal is designing the icon symbols. This could be reduced by using open source icon libraries, though this would sacrifice some consistency of visual language in the symbols.

• Available symbols may not provide a suitable visual metaphor for all applications, or many apps may reuse the same symbols. This could be an issue considering many applications deal with data manipulation and there are a limited number of ways to visualize this with a symbol.

• Is consistency the goal? Following this proposal, applications in the app menu will look more similar than they do currently. This will contribute to a sense of consistency, but it may also reduce the ability to distinguish icons from one another. This is a cost of consistency and should be carefully considered. This could be avoided, to an extent, by providing multiple icon shapes: rounded corners, non-rounded corners, circle. This will reduce the consistency.

[cooper-joe]

Notes from an in-person discussion with @amcgee and @varl 15/12/20

• Using an app icon from the Icon Builder should not be required. Some apps or organizations may have their own design approach or system. The Icon Builder would be presented as a useful, optional, tool.

• DHIS2 Core apps should be using a consistent design language, so there is a benefit to consistency there, but it wouldn't necessarily need to be done via the Icon Builder tool. App icons for core apps could be made by the design team.

• The consistency that the Icon Builder would create may take some time to pay off. In the short term, app icons may be more difficult to differentiate. In the longer term, users will understand the visual system and be able to differentate more easily. The consistency and baseline quality of visual design will have an initial cost.

• Many apps are submitted to the App Hub without icons, the Icon Builder would help those apps to fix this issue.

• The Icon Builder would help to avoid the issue of app icons that are using imagery that is not correctly licensed or attributed (e.g. taken from an image search).

• Core apps do not necesarilly need to be visually different from external apps. Namespacing is useful (/apps/dhis2/data-visualizer and /apps/external-org/external-app-name, for example), but a visual style/badge for core apps does not seem like a good idea.