Common Controls Concerns The news just keeps getting better. Each time I learn more about Microsoft’s plans with Universal Apps, I get a little more optimistic. But it’s worth pointing out that my optimism cap is set pretty low. I’m a realist. There are a lot of people at Microsoft (and any company) that think what the company needs is more cheerleaders. People that would never dream of using a Playstation, or iPhone, or Gmail. I think this attitude is absolutely nuts. Even if every Microsoft employee refused all competition, that doesn’t really make a dent in the market. When Microsoft makes the best thing, people will use it. And dogfooding from a bubble only makes you more biased about why your product is great. It only leads to bewilderment when you see the marketplace buying other things. It makes it harder to understand why. I remember when the Surface RT came out. It was clear that it was a big idea, and that deserves credit. But it was also clear that it sucked. It just didn’t reach the levels it needed to in order to compete in the rest of the marketplace. I remember getting an anguished email from a friend, sent to other Microsoft employees, about how she loved Microsoft … but she couldn’t love her Surface. And good for her! You can’t fix what you don’t understand is a problem. So her expressing her concerns was a good thing, right? Well, her sister happens to work at Microsoft as well. On the Surface marketing team. And she was on this small thread of trusted Microsoft employees. She pretty angrily denounced all the criticisms. Claimed it was a huge hit. (nope) Said that the problems were exaggerated (they weren’t). She sounded like the Iraqi Defense Minister, the one claiming they were going to destroy America even as buildings burned behind him. That email thread made me sad. But I think that old Ballmer-esque cheerleader reflex is slowly getting removed with something more long term. For every batshit insane response from my friend’s sister, there were dozens of people who really understood. Who were aware of, and invigorated by, the challenges facing the company. And fortunately, the people most aware were the ones in the positions of power. (Ballmer, Sinofsky, and Lees excepted, good riddance) So let’s talk common controls. They’re not where they need to be. But I know several people on those teams, and they know it. My read is that they’re playing for the long haul, but it just takes a while to get there. They don’t really believe Windows Phone is going to eclipse Android, no one does. But they do think they can make something compelling that spans from 3.5 inches to screens that take up entire walls, all from a single universal app. They believe their cloud story is pretty great. They believe their app design chops (on all platforms) are world-class. And on each of these points, I agree. Wholeheartedly. They don’t have a chance to be #1 in mobile any time soon, if ever. But they do have a chance at the converged, multi-screen future. As long as they keep being pragmatic and working hard. It’s just, today … when I use the betas of Windows 10 … there’s just so much work to be done. I can’t tell if the time is right to jump in. The app story is weak in terms of quantity, everyone knows that. But much worse is the app story in terms of quality. And much of that comes down to interaction design and a strong, device-spanning common controls story. These are topics I spent a lot of time thinking about. And I want to help. But I’m not sure the system is quite mature yet. 5 years ago

Windows 10 Preview on a Phone Well! I can’t get the Windows 10 Preview on my new $79 Windows tablet yet, but I was able to install it on my phone. Excellent! Diving in now and sharing some notes. Disclaimers It should go without saying, but there are a lot of smart people working on Windows. I’m friends with many of them! And I’m just one person with a limited (and I suspect outdated) view on a lot of this stuff. Plus this is a preview so it’s hard to know what’s done and what’s not. So take everything here with a grain of salt. Let’s Talk Nav The navigation structure in Windows Phone has always struck me as troublesome. I have spent literally hundreds of hours in active discussion about everything. I could literally fill a book. But let’s skip past all that and you can assume a few things. One: I think the interaction patterns used in Windows Phone have always been poor. Two: Not everyone agrees with me. On my way out of Microsoft I did one final presentation to a bunch of stakeholders. These were people I worked really well with. It was always polite and respectful and in this deck I tried to nudge things forward a bit. Here’s a trimmed version of it: Basically I was saying “Hey, can we be real? Putting navigation into horizontal swipes has never worked, will never work, and we don’t have the marketshare to make it work. We lost. Android and iOS have agreed on nav, we are different, and we should stop fighting it. Therefore we’re going to (finally!) get a title bar. It’s going to happen. And the app bar sucks. It needs to go away. Some apps will even get a hamburger, and that’s fine too.” It did not go well. It’s not that I was speaking gibberish, or that they were bad at design, or any of that. I just said it wrong. In the long run they ended up embracing much of what I was saying here (and it was about the 1000th time I had said it) but in the short term I didn’t deliver it well. So I was pleased to see a ton of screenshots in the big Windows 10 announcement day (the day they announced HoloLens) that came into line with what I’ve been hoping to see for years. Yesssssss. The Photos App The very first thing I did is check the Settings app. Awesome. They finally made them scannable by adding icons, plus they’re using a top bar as god intended. Excellent. Then I checked email, store, camera. Some changes here and there. But then I found the Photos app. Ah ha. Check this out! In the canvas we see the standard grid of content. Great. But look up top. Standard “marching ants” status bar with progress text and the current time. Same as before. But! What have we here? A new navigation pattern! Top left: a hamburger. Top right: an overflow menu. Icon to the left of the overflow menu: a frequent action. Ladies and gentlemen, Windows has joined Android and iOS. This is a really big deal. Kudos to this team. Here’s what happens when you tap the hamburger: Now, Apple doesn’t like the hamburger and they have good rationale behind it. And sure, in a perfect world the app wouldn’t be so stuffed full of features that you’d need a drawer just to get around in the app. They put nav on the bottom, which is a standard iOS pattern, whereas Windows is aligning with Android. Nothing wrong with that! This is great news. This gets me excited about designing apps for Windows again. It’s what I was saying in these original slides. Microsoft shouldn’t dictate exact placement of everything (their ecosystem has always been too varied to really police that) but they can at least align with Android. That’s what this slide was showing - diversity but all aligned under a more sane interaction model: That’s showing Word, Powerpoint, Excel, OneNote, and other things I can’t remember right now. Notice OneNote, the purple one. Hamburger on the left, two actions on the right. And a collapsed app bar on the bottom. That’s exactly what photos did, minus the collapsed app bar. I could kiss them. Now, maybe this all makes sense. But it goes against a bunch of built-up dogma that goes back to the first Windows Phone release. So seeing this new approach is very good news indeed. It means they’re going towards the best overall design rather than clinging to the design in their first release. Alarms Alarms is also showing signs of improvement, though it’s clearly not done yet. But see what’s going on there? Nav on top. Not hidden in pivots that don’t recall your state. This is huge. Again, I do believe that the best overall design would put these items on the bottom. But hey, top is fine too. Just as long as we’re not using the same carousel pattern as the past. Also, check out that toggle switch. It probably doesn’t seem like much to you. Makes sense, right? Well, those toggles started with a very different, very clunky design. Check out this screen. Notice that it takes three lines - “Miles’ calendar,” then “Windows Live,” then “On”, with a redundant switch on the right side. Moving to a new design was obvious, it was years coming, and I’m happy to see it. Just don’t mention that this is the way iOS does it. That never goes over well on Redmond campus. Which I get! Differentiation is good. But when you differentiate yourself into a worse design, that’s probably worth consideration. And that’s what happened here. They’re not trying to be different, they’re trying to be good. Kudos. How I’m Feeling About Apps There are still a lot of things I’m wincing about. An outdated copy/paste and selection system. (it’s really hard to get right, I sympathize as someone on a lot of those threads) Accidentally tapping the back or Cortana button and not being able to easily get back to where I was. Dual back button confusion caused by trying to stick with a hardware back button. But I’m starting to see a fuzzy picture of how a universal app might work. Some of the pieces are starting to come into place. I don’t know if it’ll happen in 10 or 11 but they’re definitely moving in the right direction on a devilishly complex set of challenges. Looking forward to seeing it progress further. Second Disclaimer I know all this is hard! And my least favorite thing about working in tech is reading comments from some jackass who doesn’t have context that’s giving me poorly-considered feedback on my feature. So. I’m that guy now. Sorry. But I’m trying to be 100% honest about how likely I would be to develop Metro apps. Call out the things I like, the things I don’t, and track the evolution of the design from afar. If nothing else, it helps get my thoughts in order. And maybe it’ll help someone, somewhere along the way. 5 years ago

Back, In More Ways Than One Hello again! Here’s the summary for this post, then we’ll dive into the nuances a bit: Windows 10 is coming and I think it could represent a big opportunity. The app situation on Windows isn’t very good, and I have some background that could help. So I’m dusting this blog off to see what sort of things come up. Me My name is Jon Bell. I was a design lead on Windows Phone, then worked on the universal version of Excel, Word, Powerpoint for Windows. I’ve since left Microsoft and now I work at Twitter. My Inside Perspective There were plenty of people that were more senior than me. Plenty of people who knew more than I did. Plenty of people who can take more direct credit for stuff in Windows and Windows Phone. I was there, but that doesn’t mean I was some head honcho or anything. On the other hand, I was involved in some pretty integral stuff. Sometimes more of a lead situation, other times just poking my head in as another set of eyes. But it adds up to a pretty unique perspective. I was on the team that built a bunch of apps for Windows Phone, from IE to mail to SMS to the Rooms feature, and plenty others besides. I spent a lot of time thinking through how universal apps might look. I didn’t kick it off, but I was friends with someone who was involved and for a time I considered switching my role to working on it full time. Then, when I left the Windows Phone studio to go to Office, reconciling “Big Windows” apps with Windows Phone apps suddenly became my full time job. Not many people have tried to get one app working across major platforms, and fewer still have tried with something as massive as Office. Another big part of my job was thinking about security, corporate policies, and the business world in general. It had some sort of name that I can’t remember. All I remember was that it was extraordinarily complex and I was the only designer who had any interest in working on it. (It helped that my best friend on campus was a PM working on that area) The Windows Outsider I’m a huge outsider in the Microsoft community. Simply put, I think Microsoft has always been bad at app design. Great at business plans, bad at experience. Obviously things are improving, which is why I joined the Windows Phone team, but Microsoft has not enjoyed decades of design excellence. Which sometimes makes for uncomfortable conversation. Some take it as an article of faith that a Microsoft employee must hate Apple products. Not me! All the cheerleading and chest thumping is boring. Let’s just talk about great products. And let’s admit that Apple’s been doing a great design job for the last 15 years, proven by every metric, whereas Microsoft is playing catch up. Everything else is beside the point. Real Talk In my opinion, Windows Phone made a lot of poor decisions with regard to interaction design. I have a lot of friends still on the Windows/Windows Phone team, so I don’t like saying that. I don’t want to tell anyone their baby looks ugly, especially since I looked up to and learned a lot from these great designers. Maybe they’ll just never see this post and I can be honest. Heh. But Windows Phone, while a triumph on the differentiated UI front, had a lot of self-inflicted problems from day one. And then of course the novelty of Metro wore off, Android and iOS went with a flatter design, and the problems still persist. So Windows 8 and 8.1 was painful to watch on all form factors. But! Here comes Windows 10. And it addresses pretty much my entire list of interaction design qualms. So I now have great hope for the future. I Bought a $79 PC It turns out you can buy a full Windows machine for less than $100! I bought one and I’ve been tinkering with it. It’s been fun! Now, I still don’t like legacy Windows. At all. I might be the least forgiving Windows user who’s ever set foot on Redmond campus. Part of my deal when I was employed by Microsoft was that I refused to work in Windows. And I think Windows 8, with all the tiles, is fatally flawed. I wouldn’t say I like it less than legacy Windows, but it’s sort of beside the point. There aren’t many apps, I don’t think the app quality is very good. It’s just not interesting to me. But I’m getting really excited to install Windows 10 Preview on it. I’m not able to with this build, since it uses something called a compressed OS. But soon the build will support my device and then we’ll be off to the races. The App Situation Is Bleak If I genuinely thought I’d try to start a new company that focused on Windows, and if I genuinely thought my ex co-workers would find this site, I’d probably speak more carefully here, but… The apps on Windows are bad, and this can be traced back to a bunch of different problems, many of which I was involved with. But suffice it to say, the end result is a pretty barren app story for Windows users. Sure, there are games. But beyond that the story is always the same. Pick a category, look for an app, try it out, be disappointed. On a scale of 1-10, the apps I’ve tried have only mustered perhaps a 2. And this is where I wonder if I could help. I can think of 5 productivity apps that I know how to write, and I know I could do at a higher quality than everything I’ve tried on the store. It’s not that I’m so great, but more than the current apps are so bad. It’s a classic “buy low, sell high” situation. So I’ve been thinking about Microsoft’s viability. Would You Bet On Microsoft? Let’s say you’re starting a new software company. You have to take iOS and Android seriously, and even then you probably won’t survive. So would you add a third platform, one with little marketshare and an unproven payoff? Most people have said no. So what calculations need to shift in order to make Microsoft an appealing platform? A stable framework with a solid set of common UI controls and patterns would be good, but Microsoft’s offerings are still pretty immature compared to what Apple provides. So that’s not going to make the difference. Then there’s the fact that Microsoft would pay almost any price to get back some of their relevance. So there’s potentially money just in trying to build for their platform. That’s somewhat more compelling but not necessarily enough to make it a slam dunk. The other issue is the cloud. Most apps can’t live locally. And there’s an expectation that your Windows computer will sync with your Android phone and your iOS iPad. It’s a crazy world out there, so it’s hard to argue that building great Windows software is financially viable. But. On second thought. Microsoft Windows has a lot of users around the world. Call it a billion. Mostly that’s on PCs rather than phones, but they’ve always done well at low price points and the phone strategy is following a similar trajectory. So is there money in being the only damn app per category that people truly love? Well yeah. There’s gotta be. One billion users plus an obviously superior experience. That’s got to add up to something, right? This Is All Very Intriguing I already have a company. I teach design classes at UX Launchpad. I love to do it. It’s going to be a big year and I don’t have time to kick off side projects on a whim. Especially not with code, since I’d need to partner with a dev. And yet I still wonder. I don’t think Windows will “kill” iOS or Android this year or any year. But I do think there’s room for Windows as a third ecosystem. And not just room, but a space for a billion people. Mostly on traditional PCs. At work. Trying to be productive. And they’d be willing to pay for a great experience. So it’s interesting to think about. And for now that’s what this blog will be. Me thinking out loud. Making plans. Wondering if I should return to Windows and see if I can make their store a little bit better by designing the best damn thing they’ve ever been on there. Because (and I’m sorry to belabor the point but) the bar’s pretty low, y'all. 5 years ago

Update: Stalled, Closed, But Fun! It’s pretty clear by now that this project stalled out. It happens :)



We learned a lot, plus it was fun to design/dev while it was in active development. Thanks for following along!



6 years ago

Summer’s done, now for the cloud Jon wrote:

Hi Matthieu! How have you been? Your summer was wonderful, I hope?



I’m wondering if you’d have the time and interest to add simplenote

integration to the app you built. I think the app works very well now,

but I’m starting to think I’d like the v1 to have simplenote built in.



What do you think? Matthieu responded: Hey !



It as been great !

Yeah I will take a look at Simple Note, it could be a good idea. I don’t think it will be that difficult.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress. By the way, do you want to touch the design or you think it is good this way ?



Matthieu Jon said:

Great! Re design: I’m sure we’ll tweak later but for now it’s fine.

7 years ago

Progress, July 27th We have good news and bad news :) The good news is that the app is functional, installed on our phones, and it’s awesome. The bad news is I’ve been sitting on the app because I’ve been busy between work and a vacation in the wilds of British Columbia. Soon I’d like to post the latest version here, though it’s not fully designed, just functionally complete. Then a later version will bring better design. The next big question I’m pondering is whether simplenote integration should be in v1 or not. More soon! 8 years ago

Progress, June 10 Matthieu wrote: Hey, Thank you for your feedback. I don’t know what it is with you designers to make everything prettier with almost nothing; I am so impressed ! To estimate the time spent on the dev I’d say I worked about 8 hour, maybe a little more on the code, counting the time spent researching the algorithms and implementing them. About the search in long lists, I tried with about 100 items and the search is still fast, but the UI take a little time to refresh, nothing too inconvenient though. I am working on a workaround to enhanced a little bit more the performances. Speaking of that, should we provide the user a way to delete his notes ? Or are they in the vault forever once entered ? So, I tweaked the UI as you suggested and it look already so much better. I continue working on the storage, let me know if you need anything from me. Matthieu Jon replied:



Thanks Matthieu! Looks like it’s coming along great. Pretty soon it’d be fun to post a XAP to the blog to share with everyone :) When it comes to deleting data, my DB experience tells me we should have a “isDeleted” flag rather than dropping rows from the table, to maintain data integrity. So for now let’s go with that - and if we feel like we need a more robust way to delete, we’ll work on that later on. Thanks! Hope you’re having a good weekend, Jon 8 years ago

The App! It’s ALIVE! Matthieu wrote to say: Hey! How are you doing ? For my part, I am working on the app ( sorry didn’t have much time lately ). And I managed to create a first preview, following what you thought for the design ( tell me if I misunderstood something ). A few thing about the preview: - It is ugly as hell ( I think it is worth noting ), but I did not want to waste time in the field you exceed in. - For the search algorithm, I went for the Boyer-Moore search method, I am still working on slight improvements, but it works fine. - There is no storage yet, the app is almost functional except it is a one shot, you can enter notes, edit them and all, but close the app and you loose everything ( next step I am working on ) I am eager to hear your feedback. A très bientôt, Matthieu Jon responded: Matthieu, THIS IS SO AWESOME. Thank you for putting it together! I know you’ve been busy with other stuff - I’m curious, how many hours of development do you think this took you? I want to post in the blog - it’s been several weeks since we kicked off, but I know you haven’t been coding the whole time, and people may be curious how complex the app is. The search is super fast in my testing so far, which is great. Do you think it’ll still be fast at 100 items? I’ll put together some real visuals soon, but for now, here are some minor tweaks you could make to the design to get it closer to what I’m imagining. Could you please: * Remove both headers (the small “SNIPPETS” and the big “HOME PAGE”) * Make the text field have a black background/white text and a single pixel of white on the bottom border, like an underline. * Bump up the font size of the list text by about 50%. * On the edit page, let’s change the background color from gray to black with no border, and white text. Thanks so much! This is very exciting :) Talk to you soon, Jon Here are some screenshots taken from the emulator:



8 years ago

Why Not You? I remember how common it was in 2007 and then 2008 to write off iPhone development. Apple didn’t have any marketshare, iPhones were too expensive, their competitors were too entrenched, only Apple Sheep would bother, on and on. Somewhere along the way, a story was written about an indie developer who made real money on the App Store. Suddenly the conventional wisdom shifted from “why bother” to “why not me?” and the gold rush was on. But of course not everyone can be an App Store millionaire, so then the media backlash hit. Most people, it was rightly pointed out, don’t make enough on the store to justify their dev costs, let alone strike it rich. So then the fair-weather types probably shrugged and looked for the next big thing. Meanwhile, lots of interesting apps showed up, and some companies made quite a bit of money off them. No, not everyone was making millions, but it became clear that quality apps were able to find an audience. I think of this pattern when I think of Windows Phone development. We’re in stage one right now. But in the coming years, there will be huge success stories. The kinds where people scratch their heads and say “why wasn’t that me?” Well? Why can’t it be? Don’t wait for someone else to make the next must-have app. Now’s the time. Quality is always popular. And on Windows Phone, you have a lot less competition between your great idea and lots of publicity and loyal fans. So what’s stopping you? Why can’t you be the next success story on this new platform? 8 years ago

I Changed My Mind: A Postmortem Several weeks ago, I posted “You Will Be Wrong”. An excerpt: Your first idea may be wrong. Build that truth into your process. Embrace it. Use it to find your next idea, and your next, and pretty soon you may have something. Just don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong. Being wrong helps you see what to do next. Recently, I wrote an article called “Let’s Speak Frankly About Saving State”, where I said I was considering breaking with Windows Phone guidelines so my app can save state. I wrote: In making the decision to save state, I’m creating an experience that’s different than most Metro apps. And as I tweeted, it’s something we’d want to be very careful about. Maybe it’s just too shocking in practice, so we’d go back to the traditional model. That may happen. I’ve been thinking about this decision a lot, and I’ve changed my mind. In the process I learned a few things I’d like to share with you. Asking the Right Question

When you ask the wrong questions, the answers are beside the point. In this case, I was asking “Am I willing to break with Windows Phone guidelines in order to save state?”, which gave me two results: “Yes, break with convention and save state”, or “No, act like other apps and lose the ability to save state.” But what I really should have been asking was why I wanted to save state so badly. The answer was “So you can quickly get back to your last note”. So the next question is “Can I design a way to quickly get back to my last note without breaking Metro recommendations?” Why yes. Yes, I can. Picking the Right Precedent

Debating in the Windows Phone design studio is a lot of fun. (really!) It’s common for a design issue to come up to a four person group and trigger five different opinions. When this happens, everyone whips out their Windows Phones to start looking for precedent: “See, look - on Battery Saver, we throw a dialog when it turns on”

“Right, but it’s apples and oranges, because this feature is more like airplane mode”

“I disagree - it’s an issue of discoverability versus learnability, and I think in this case…” … and on it goes. In the middle of the debate, it’s really easy to cling to a certain screen that makes you look “right”. For example, saying, “IE does it the way I think we should do this feature. Case closed. I win.” But this is a mistake. My Poor Precedent

In this case, I was using Amazon Kindle as my precedent. When you open Kindle, it doesn’t land you at the book list for more than a second before swooping you into the last book you were reading. I believe this is the right behavior on Kindle, because over 80% of the time you’re wanting to keep reading your book between app launches. I don’t think the same is true for a notes app. Yes, sometimes you want to see your last note. But other times you want to see all your notes, probably with the most recently read notes on top. “Wait, Stop. Can You Say That Again?”

A bad debate is one where neither side wants to budge, out of some sense of honor, or ego, or some other dumb emotion that has nothing to do with delighting users. But you know a debate is in a good place when people are saying things like “What I’m hearing you say is …” and “Can you help me understand …” and “Ok, I can see that …” and my all time favorite: “Wait, stop. Can you say that again?” It means that people are really listening, and are actually able to change their minds. In my own internal debate, I had a “Wait, stop” moment when I realized this: if we list the notes in reverse chronological order, based on the last date something was read, your most recent note is always on top. Ah ha. Re-evaluating the Compromise

So let’s put everything together. We don’t save state. We sort notes in reverse chrono, based on read time. What’s the result? 1. We’re back to how Windows Phone apps normally behave (not saving state).

2. Your most recent note is always one tap away if you launch the app fresh.

3. We don’t have to hack in a “software up” button to get out of screen dead-ends. Sounds good to me :) 8 years ago

Design’s Supporting Role I’ve done both code and design, and I think designers have it pretty easy. We can mock up ideas very quickly, whether on the whiteboard or in Photoshop, and technical issues don’t have to slow us down. On the other hand, devs struggle every day with the crazy ideas some designer has foisted on them.



A lot of designers wave off the technical challenges with a “Oh, the developer will find a way”. Which is pretty similar to coding something up and saying “Oh, the designer will make this pretty”. I think both quotes point to a lack of collaboration, and a lack of respect for the other side's skillset.



Matthieu is going to be working through code in the coming days and weeks, and it’s my job as designer to involve him in my thinking, go deep in the design thinking to get ahead of possible technical problems he may come across, and be patient while he converts some of my hand waving into actual code.



Here’s an email exchange from a few days ago:



Jon said:



I’m going through my todo items for the weekend and I wanted to check in with you on our app.



Is there anything you’re waiting on me for? Anything you’d like me to do? How are things going?



Just wanted to ask so I can cross it off my list :)



Hope you’re having a great weekend!







Matthieu said:



Hey !



Sorry for not giving much news. I am now looking at the offer from Telerik. And I began to work on a really early version of something that can store notes a search dynamically among them.



If everything goes ok, I will be able to send you a first version by the end of the Week.



From your side have you fixed the hub and spoke model ? So we can start to work ok the final architecture.



Bonne fin de Week End :)

Matthieu





Jon said:



Oh, I think our model is done:



* List page is our hub

* Each note is a spoke



And I would like a software “up” key so we can return people to the note they were on and give them a way to get back to the list.



Please let me know if you need other details and I’ll be happy to provide them.



Thanks! :)

Jon

8 years ago

Are We Open-Sourcing The App? Matthieu asks: Hi Jon,



I was very interested by [the discussion about RadControls for Windows Phone]. I have however an interogation:



Wouldn’t it go against the philosophy of the project to use paid project to help build the app ? If we release the project on codeplex, users won’t be able to test the project without installing and paying for the telerik controls.



What is your opinion about that ? Jon responds: Good point. But my goal isn’t “give code to the open source community”, it’s “design an app as transparently as possible, and hopefully people will learn from it”.



So the open code repository was more of a “see? Look how open this is!” situation than any philosophical resistance to paid libraries.



My big concern is shipping as high quality a project as possible, as efficiently as possible. If you think the library will help you, let’s use it. If not, no prob! We learn (and teach) either way :)





8 years ago

Let’s Speak Frankly About Saving State Before we Speak Frankly About Saving State, I should point out that the opinions on this blog are mine alone and not necessarily those of my employer. I’m just a guy designing a Windows Phone app in his free time. Here goes :) I’m a purist regarding application state. If I close my laptop for an hour, then open it up again, the desktop should look exactly how I left it. Same window positions, same scroll position, everything. What about mobile? Well, because incoming phone calls can take over the entire screen at any time, and are not initiated by the user, it can be argued that saving state is even more important than on the desktop. If you’re composing a long email when a phone call interrupts you, you’d expect to go back to the email upon completion of the call, right? Same if you’re composing a text message. Or launching the Kindle application and expecting to go straight to the page of the book you were last reading. Or opening IE and expecting to see the last webpage you were on. Or in the case of our notetaking app, land you back on the last note you were using. Windows Phone handles this with the back button. Try this test: Go into the messaging app, start typing something to a friend, then press the start button, then press the back button. You’ll return to messaging, and your text will be waiting for you. But this doesn’t work for apps that are launched anew. Try the same test, but instead of using the back button, try tapping the Messaging icon from start. You’ll notice that your text will disappear. Because of this behavior, and because I think saving state is important, I mentioned that I am designing a way to save state between application launches. That lead to the following question on Twitter: (“Fast application switching” means using the back button) I responded and we went back and forth a bit. Read from the bottom. In making the decision to save state, I’m creating an experience that’s different than most Metro apps. And as I tweeted, it’s something we’d want to be very careful about. Maybe it’s just too shocking in practice, so we’d go back to the traditional model. That may happen. But until I can prove to myself that it’s not worth it, I continue to think that saving state in a notes app is important. Meaning we’ll need to design “software up” for our app to work correctly. Meaning we’ll be doing something different. But that’s the thing about Metro - it’s not a strict set of rules, it’s more a philosophy. One of the core goals of my app, and Metro in general, is to be fast. To get you through your task as quickly as possible. For a note taking app, that means saving state so you’re always taken to the last note you were in, without having to re-discover the note you want each time. And failing that, well, we have a plan B :) 8 years ago

Some Competitive Analysis for Our App Our app (codenamed “Snippets”) records notes. Our goal is to record and retrieve notes faster than any other product in mobile. After all, we know our main competition is the humble sticky note. But what about our other competition? I went looking for other notes apps in the Windows Phone marketplace and wanted to share my initial reactions here, as a way to explain what I think they do well, and what they could improve. OneNote

OneNote comes with the phone, has a strong cloud story, and has clients on all major platforms. We can’t compete at that level. But we can compete with an app that’s more focused, since OneNote is quite robust, and not everyone needs that kind of power. I think we can be faster than OneNote at recording and retrieving, precisely because we’re not going to attempt as many bells and whistles. EverNote

Everything I said about OneNote applies here, except EverNote is not bundled as part of Windows Phone. Light Notes

This app looks as simple as we’re aiming for, but the interaction model feels a bit cumbersome in use. Because Light Notes splits the notes into “read” and “write” pivots, I’m finding myself swiping back and forth more than I think should be necessary. This is a good example of pivots causing more trouble than they’re worth. Notes

As proven by its popularity in the Marketplace, Notes does a lot of things right. My main concern is that while it’s pretty straight-forward, it’s still trying to show too much. Showing the GPS coordinates for a note isn’t going to help anyone, although showing notes as points on a map is a nice touch. On the same vein, using technical date stamps like 6/20/2012 9:05:13 PM makes the app feel like it’s designed for robots. I’d go with relative dates (“Yesterday”) where you can, and make prettier dates (“June 20, 9:05pm”) everywhere else. It’s quick to add a note, but unfortunately there’s no search, meaning you have to remember where your notes are. Not a deal breaker, but something we should be able to improve on. HTC Notes

I can’t find this one on the store, so maybe it’s only available on HTC devices. The app has an animated background, an illustrated corkboard, the ability to collage notes however you want, and sound effects when you tap on the note to edit it. It’s an interesting demo, but it’s not following Metro principles, it’s too flashy, and I find it hard to use. Notepad Free

Notepad Freeis pretty good. The first thing I noticed is the use of the panorama control. Unfortunately, I found the panorama getting in my way during use. One screen of the control appears to just be a space to advertise the website for the developer, and other is used for settings. I do like some key features in this app, but I find that the IXD slowed me down too much. Notepad

I came across Notepad while writing this article, so I threw it on my phone at the last minute. It’s a fascinating appbecause of how my first impression of it changed so dramatically. On first load, the app dropped me on a simple screen. “Uh oh”, I thought. “This app might be as quick and well designed as I’m trying for. This might be our best competition.” I typed some text and tapped save, and then these steps happened: * I was asked to enter a filename for the note

* A modal dialog appeared telling me about other features in the app This is where my brief love affair ended. The app wanted too many details out of me. I tapped the “new” button to make a new note and was asked if I wanted a new note or folder. When I selected “folder”, it asked me to add “remarks” on it. I quit the app. Final Thoughts

If you’re developing an app on any platform, but especially on Windows Phone, put extra thought into the first run experience. You should work hard at removing extraneous questions, options, and settings. Otherwise your users may have an experience similar to mine: “I love this!” followed three seconds later by “Now I’m confused.” And that was my best experience. The other apps I didn’t love first. Put extra time into getting people to fall in love, and you’ll stand out. 8 years ago