(For an overview of this series, please read this post.)

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465427

The first thing you need to do when planning your app is figure out what your app is all about. Answer the question, “What does your app do?” This might seem obvious, but one things I’ve learned through years of consulting, presenting, and life in general is to assume nothing about a project, an audience, or home plumbing. Once you have a good idea of what your app is all about you can start focusing on the experience you want to create.

To get started, come up with a broad concept and list all of the things that you want to help users do with your app.

• For example, suppose you want to build an app that helps people plan their trips. Here are some ideas you might sketch out on the back of a napkin:
• Get maps of all of the places on an itinerary, and take them with you on the trip.
• Find out about special events happening while you’re in a city.
• Let travel buddies create separate but shareable lists of must-do activities and must-see attractions.
• Let travel buddies compile all of their photos to share with friends and family.
• Get recommended destinations based on flight prices.
• Find a consolidated list of deals for restaurants, shops, and activities around your destination.

Once you do this, you can move on to the next step, figuring out what your app is great at, which, coincidentally, is the next post in this series.

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465427

(For an overview of this series, please read this post.)

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465427

In this post we shift from focusing on the traits common to great Metro applications to looking at the process of planning Metro style apps. Many times when we plan and implement applications we have a tendency to focus on individual features which can cause us to lose the big picture of overall user experience. Since Metro style apps are all about experience its important to focus on experience instead of specific features.The following steps can help you do this:

1. Decide what your app is great at
2. Decide what user activities to support
3. Decide what features to include
4. Decide how to monetize your app
5. Design the UI for your app
6. Make a good first impression
7. Prototype and validate your design

Focusing on experience does not mean that we simply ignore features. As step three calls out, we need to decide what features to include in the app. We just need to keep in mind that features are only one component of the entire application experience.

In the next set of posts we’ll look at each of the steps for planning your Metro style app in depth.

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465427

(For an overview of this series, please read this post.)

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

Today’s post is the last post focused on the eight traits of Metro style applications.

To create great and immersive Metro style applications, you should focus on embracing the following principles:

Show pride in craftsmanship

• Devote time and energy to small things that are seen often by many.
• Engineer the experience to be complete and polished at every stage.

Do more with less

• Solve for distractions, not discoverability. Let people be immersed in what they love and they will explore the rest.
• Create a clean and purposeful experience by leaving only the most relevant elements on screen so people can be immersed in the content.

Be fast and fluid

• Let people interact directly with content, and respond to actions quickly with matching energy.
• Bring life to the experience, create a sense of continuity and tell a story through meaningful use of motion.

Be authentically digital

• Take full advantage of the digital medium. Remove physical boundaries to create experiences that are more efficient and effortless than reality.
• Embrace the fact that we are pixels on a screen. Design with bold, vibrant and crisp colors and images that go beyond the limits of real world material.

Win as one

• Leverage the ecosystem and work together with other apps, devices and the system to complete scenarios for people.
• Fit into the UI model to reduce redundancy. Take advantage of what people already know to provide a sense of familiarity, control, and confidence.

This wraps up the set of posts on the traits of great Metro style apps. Next up, plan your Metro style app.

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

(For an overview of this series, please read this post.)

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

If you know me and my passion for cloud computing, you knew this post was coming. Let’s face it, most of us don’t have one device. You probably have a minimum of two (phone and laptop). At the time of this writing I have five devices on my desk (two Windows Phones, a laptop, an iPad, and a tablet running Windows 8). For me, the best apps are the ones that stay in sync across all of my devices (regardless of platform). The ones that come immediately to my mind are OneNote and Kindle. I use them all the time and it’s nice to know I can make a change on one device and that change will propagate to all devices via the cloud. Make sure your apps do the same.

Create a continuous experience across devices by roaming data that lets people pick up a task right where they left off.

Leverage Microsoft accounts and the per-user cloud storage to store and roam settings, state, and a small amount of user content.

Examples of app settings that are good to roam:

• Cities
• Celsius-versus-Fahrenheit preferences in a weather app
• RSS feeds that users subscribed to in a news app
• Favorite teams in a sports app

Examples of app states that are good to roam:

• The furthest position read in a reading app
• The last checkpoint or move completed in a game
• The last track played in a music app

While the settings and states may not apply to the apps you have in mind, odds are that if you really think about your app has some settings and states that should roam with your user as they move from device to device.

Next up, give Metro a hug.

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

(For an overview of this series, please read this post.)

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

I’m a huge music fan and, for the most part, I think music is better experience live rather than in the confines of your home, car, or ear buds. The same is true for Metro apps. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “What?!” Think about it, the apps you have on your Windows Phone/iPhone/iPad/Android/whatever are constantly giving you updates, making them feel alive:

• You have 37 new emails
• 5 people liked your post
• Someone mentioned your tweet

Make sure your Metro apps are alive as well.

Provide fresh content through live tiles and notifications to let people feel connected to your app. Both live tiles and notifications use the same infrastructure, and can be updated at any time using the Windows Push Notification Service, locally while the app is running, or at a pre-scheduled time.
 
Live tiles

Draw people in continually with dynamic, relevant, personalized content on your app tile. Fresh tile content gives people a reason to place the tile in a prominent position on the Start screen, and to launch the app time and again.

• A live tile can cycle through up to 5 updates. For example, a news app’s live tile can cycle through multiple stories each day.
• Content shown in live updates should be accessible from the home page of your app. Remove outdated notifications if they are no longer relevant or accessible from the home page
• Use badges to show simple numeric or glyph information.

Notifications

Apps can use notifications to briefly show people time-sensitive messages that need to be interruptive from anywhere in Windows. See the Guidelines for toast notifications.

• Most apps should be silent—people should opt-in to enable notifications in an app.
• People have control over app’s notification capability, so raise notifications only if they are truly time sensitive and relevant. Show missed notifications, if they are critical, on the app’s tile.
• Combine notifications if there are multiple updates occurring within a short period of time.
• Do not use notifications to show errors or warnings. Errors should appear inline or in flyouts and message dialogs instead.

Next up, to the cloud!

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

(For an overview of this series, please read this post.)

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

Today’s Metro Pass is rather short (as compared to other posts). I considered combining it with another post, but I believe that the importance of having a really good, active tile for your application lets this post stand on its own.

If the eyes are the windows to your soul, then a tile is the window to your application. Sitting on the Start screen, it is an extension of the app and can provide much more personal and engaging information than a traditional icon. Invest in designing a great tile to draw people into your app.

• Tailor the content displayed on the tile to the users, and keep it fresh by updating it as app content changes. There is a wide variety of pre-designed tile templates available—select the design that best suits your content type.
• Reference content that lives on your app’s home page, so that users can find it easily after launching the app.
• Use secondary tiles to let people promote interesting, frequently updated sub-sections of content in your app on their Start screen.

I know you might be tempted to just create a brightly colored square and rectangle for your application’s tile, but I encourage you to do a bit, no a LOT, more. Think about how you can display information on your tile to engage the user from the Start screen so they’ll want to open your app to see more.

Net up, it’s always better live!

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

(For an overview of this series, please read this post.)

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920

Contracts and extensions are the glue that binds Metro style apps together and to the system UI as well as Windows itself. A contract is like an agreement between one or more apps. Contracts define the requirements that apps must meet to participate in these unique Windows interactions. An extension on the other hand is like an agreement between an app and Windows. Extensions lets app developers extend or customize standard Windows features primarily for use in their apps and potentially for use in other apps.

Two apps that have implemented the same contract can work together to complete a broad or complex scenario.

• For some of the most common contracts such as search, share, and file pickers, start with the corresponding Visual Studio item templates.
• Rely on charms for a consistent invocation model that users can confidently rely on. Avoid creating alternative UI on the app canvas to invoke the contracts; that could confuse users.

The three contracts you will more than likely use are the Share, Search, and File Picker contracts.

Share

The share contracts let people share data from one app with another app. A source app is one which provides something to share, and a target app receives the shared content, using a set of common data formats.

• Every app should be a sharing source and implement the broadest set of formats possible.
• Apps that publish, store, or transform the shared data are good candidates to be a sharing target. Examples include communication, social networking, and device-connected apps.

Search 

The search contracts let people search an app’s content from anywhere in Windows. Results are provided by the app, and displayed within the app’s own UI. See Guidelines and checklist for search.

• Use the search charm in place of a custom in-app search, especially when the scope is across the app’s full content set (like searching for a product in a shopping app). Do not use search as an in-place “Find” feature, when the scope is limited to the current view (like locating a word within a document).
• Provide search suggestions to help people find something quickly.
• Provide a way to navigate between the result page and the app’s main UI.

File Pickers 

The file picker contracts let people access an app’s content from another app. When the file picker is invoked, users can browse and select files from either the local storage or another app that supports the file picker contract.

• Leverage this contract if your app accesses or stores files that would be useful to users from another context.
• Leverage the ListView control to get the built-in fluid layout and selection behavior.

Of course these aren’t the only contracts and extensions in Windows 8. The complete list of contracts and extensions is

• Account picture provider (extension)
• App to App Picking (contract)
• AutoPlay (extension)
• Background tasks (extension)
• Cached file updater (contract)
• Camera settings (extension)
• Contact picker (extension)
• File activation (extension)
• Game Explorer (extension)
• Play To (contract)
• Print task settings (extension)
• Protocol activation (extension)
• Search (contract)
• Settings (contract)
• Share (contract)
• SSL/certificates (extension)

Next up, you need a great tile.

MSDN Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464920