How you design your app is one of the essential ways you can make your app stand out from the crowd. The way users experience your app will delight them and keep them coming back… or not!
Resources to help you learn and be inspired
Mastering visual design, user experience, and information architecture skills is very different than mastering C#, MVVM, data binding, or other essential skills in the programming domain. In fact, it’s very rare to find people who are talented across this broad scope of skills that go into making a great app.
With this in mind, we worked with Core77 on the recent App to the Future Design challenge in a two-step process. We wanted to inspire designers to express their ideas – to first come up with a great concept (showcased here), and then help them find developers to make their idea for an app a reality.
To help developers and designers learn more about design in Windows Phone, we’ve created resources to get you started:
- Guidance from the Windows Phone design team: whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned app developer, this site has the basic principles and concepts you need to design great Windows Phone apps.
- 8 Tips for Designing Windows Phone Apps: we’ve compiled recurring patterns and common issues observed during actual design review.
- Finally, we recommend that you watch the popular Windows Phone Design Bootcamp video series.
When designers meet developers, cool apps happen!
In phase 2 of the App to the Future Design challenge, we invited finalists from the design portion of the challenge, selected by a panel of industry experts, to connect with developers to take their design ideas to the next level—full-featured apps! Sixteen design-and-develop teams met the challenge deadline and won Windows Phones, in addition to creating some really cool apps they can be proud of. Core77 has a complete gallery of all the published apps. See app details below.
Most of the teams worked in pairs (designer+developer), combining skills to make the idea come to life, thanks to the matchmaking facilitated by Core77.
Congratulations to all who participated in the event.
Sharpen your skills and find a partner
We encourage all developers and designers to sharpen their skills beyond their comfort zone, but you might get the results you reallywant if you team up with someone whose skills complement your own.
So get social, go to Windows Phone app developer meetups or attend startup events. You might find a great partner for your next big app idea!
JC Cimetiere
@jccim