4. Graphic design

Polish, polish, polish.

Android is the canvas, you are the artist. Whilst you don't have to be the digital equivalent of Michaelangelo just ask yourself when was the last time you saw a best selling app which was butt ugly? Being on at least "crop to size" terms with a decent graphics package will stop you being relegated to the "works but lousy UI" department, and unfortunately that is the reality of the game we are in now. If you don't have the composition skills, you might want to seriously consider investing time getting some, or find someone who has and get them to do them for you. If you have the luxury of working in a team with dedicated graphic designers, well whoopie doo for you ;-) The emphasis in Android is on PNG files as they have terrific support for layers and transparency, so you can choose from the multitude of open source or commercial offerings as long as they handle this format well.

Popular choices:

• Fireworks
• Photoshop
• CorelDraw / PaintShop Pro / PhotoPaint
• Gimp

Once upon a time, a young programmer was struggling to make a certain feature work. As his famous boss realised it wasn't going to make it, he came out with the line "if you can't make it work, at least make it look good". This dubious advice did contain a germ of sense - UI hits the users first on such a basic level that it almost becomes more important than the app itself. Put it another way: you will almost certainly be facing some kind of competition, if not when you launch then afterwards when the other guys realise you have something they can copy. Assuming these apps do pretty much the same things, what's left to differentiate them if not the UI?