Learning» Design

Windows Phone 8 theme colors for Photoshop

Timmy — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 07:35:06 +0000

A while ago I posted a Photoshop color swatch with the accent colors of Windows Phone 7. I’m currently working on the design of a few apps that will be released for Windows Phone 8 too. So I created a new set of colors.

You can download the set here: WindowsPhone8Accent.

Read Timmy's entire article here.

My BUILD 2012 sessions selection

pluginbaby — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:01:15 +0000

Knowing that my focus is on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps with XAML/C# and Azure, here is my recommended sessions playlist if you want to catch up with BUILD. Windows Store apps

Windows Phone 8

UX Design

Azure

Windows Azure Overview**
Developing Mobile Solutions with Windows Azure Part I ** (I don’t necessarily recommend part 2)
Windows 8 Connectathon with Windows Azure Mobile Services **

Viewing tips: #1 That’s a lot of sessions… my advice for you is to download the video locally on a PC, then use Media Player and the “Fast playback” option, still understandable and you cut half the time! #2 If your time is really limited, I marked the sessions I enjoyed the most with ** Enjoy!

Announcing Windows Phone 8 SDK—Design Great Apps with Blend

Harikrishna Menon — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 17:21:18 +0000

The Blend team is excited to announce our latest release of Blend and Visual Studio XAML design tools that support Windows Phone 8 development. In this release, our big focus was on unifying the XAML design support across Blend and Visual Studio, similar to the design experience available for other XAML platforms like Windows Store Apps, WPF, and Silverlight. Blend is included with Visual Studio 2012. This makes it easy for you to create great Windows Phone 8 applications. The free Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone 8 comes with Blend as well. For all you Visual Studio 2012 Pro, Premium, and Ultimate customers out there, installing the Windows Phone 8 SDK automatically enables Windows Phone 8 development in your installed version of Blend and Visual Studio.

Blend for Visual Studio 2012

Read the entire article here.

UX Design Principles Pluralsight course review

pluginbaby — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 03:22:22 +0000

I've just finished the "Creating User Experiences: Fundamental Design Principles" course on Pluralsight, I am glad I took it, and here is why you should. The course is held by Billy Hollis, an internationally known author and speaker focused on user experience design. It was published in May 2012, so it is quite fresh (You’ll hear some reference to XAML, even if the content is not focused on any particular technology). I think what I liked the most about this course is the fact that Billy is not just imposing design ideas and pushing them in your throat (which would be too confronting for us developers, even if he was right), he spends a fair share amount of time explaining each topics, and illustrate them with great metaphors. If you are a minimum open minded you should get great value out of this course. Billy makes you think outside the box, he encourages you to use your right side brain, and understand design principles by simply looking at what’s around us (physical objects, nature, …). During the course he refers several time to "don't make me think" a book on UX design, which is about giving confidence to users, by making it easier for them to achieve their goals when using your app. Billy thinks that every developer can participate in elaborating good design when building software, not only designers should be involved. Get away of the easy path "let's build functional stuff for now and we will hire a designer later if we have time and budget". The course is also live and interactive as the author suggests that you do some live exercises during each module. He actually makes you realize and understand by yourself the need for change. We’re in a new era of software and devices, where grids and menus aren't enough. You can’t remain satisfied by just making things possible, you need to make them easier for your users. Understanding some fundamental design principles will help. This course can definitely be followed by any developers who wants to improve user experience of software they are working on, and I definitely recommend it.