I was trying to figure out what text size to use on the Windows Phone to make it readable. After using the 24” monitor where I get a “big ass” phone, also know as a … pad :),  I realized that it’s not going to work.

So I started out a little quest to find some data around the phone and what dimensions you could expect. However, there are no single specification around from Microsoft, so the actual size of the screen may vary. Searching around web brought very little technical specifications, but you know a few facts: It’s going to be 480x800 pixels, and 16:9 form factor on the screen. So I did a couple of educated guesses and assumed a 3.8” screen. Interesting enough, this told me that it actually is going to have a whopping 240dpi resolution, that's close to a an old laser printer, and in full color – amazing.

So on to the mockup, as soon as I got the dimensions right I started to print out a few pages, checking fonts and sizes (and got a surprise by how small the texts and icons got in the actual size). I used the skin from the emulator as base. Next, I wanted to get a feeling of it in the hand as well, so I started adding some depth. A few minutes later I found myself creating a cut-out paper prototype you see to the right here.

If you like you can cut out some slits  and do a left/right and a top/bottom sliding version. That way you can even use it to user test panoramic and pivot applications as well as that big sliding home screen.

So here it is the Windows Phone 7 series paper prototype, enjoy.

// Håkan Reis

I was trying to make a mockup in Balsamiq for a windows phone 7 series application and thought i needed a few items to get things right. So I started creating the parts needed. The basic phone, with a see through-screen so it's easy to create panoramas to lay behind. The keyboard variants (there are quite a few, default, text, email, web, search and a couple of dialer keyboards) and then a few of the buttons and checkboxes that’s needed. Most buttons are easiest mimicked by using the geometric shape in Balsamiq.

It’s quite heavy with all the details in the keyboards so pick and choose only the controls you need.

So there you are, just download and start using it.

Also cross-posted on my company blog

After three days of the Microsoft Mix10 event the brain tend to overflow. So I sit down at a Starbucks and try to summarize my thoughts before my mind explodes.

It’s easy to get caught up in positive buzz during events like this but I really think Microsoft is doing a lot of things right here with Windows Phone 7 series, the next level of .NET and Silverlight and Internet Explorer 9, among other things. Some of it, I believe, accounts to all the focus on User Experience and the influence that Bill Buxton have on this.

Also if you want to catch any of the sessions most of them are up at the mix10 site already.

Silverlight release pace

This was a big surprise to me; Silverlight 4 is going to be released as early as next month end the release candidate (RC) is out now. I was more in the lines of a beta and the an RC in the summer and a release late 2010. But it seems they try to align and do a big release with .NET 4, VS2010 and Silverlight 4. As a bonus the Pivot control will be in the controls toolkit so that’s going to be fun to play with.

Silverlight 4 Tools RC | .NET 4 RC | VS2010 RC

About the Windows Phone 7 series

The development platform for Windows Phone 7 series was, of course, one of the biggest news on the starting keynote and lot of sessions around it followed. I think they are on the right track with the platform. A few surprises surfaced, like the inclusion of DirectX to utilize HW backed video decoding and the Windows Phone development tools being released for free.

But a few questions and problems surfaced as well, as you can se all over the web it seems they are not including cut & paste and market place being the only application deployment channel. Other things I thought about was:

• How is the user interface is going to perform in right to left markets.
• What the possibilities are to hook in other services, like for example Pandora, to provide music streams for the native Zune player.
• And I still have a few issues with lag in the interface as well as accidental clicks, lets just hope the will get this issues out the door before they release it.

The user experience work that has been put into the new OS is really cool, the decision to remove all chrome and go for a real clean and consistent look is really fresh. And the decision to let the back button work on all levels across the phone, in-applications as well as between was a stroke of genius.

Windows Phone Dev tools | UI Design guidelines

What about HTML 5 and IE 9

It was pretty obvious that they should release some news around Internet Explorer 9 and its take on HTML 5. It is just an early technology preview but I have to say I’m impressed by the results. They did tone down the JavaScript speed issues but quite frankly they were on par with the other browsers and at those speeds it really is less of an issue. What still is an issue is standards, and anything but a 100/100 score on Acid3 is a failure in my eyes.

What they did show was the brilliant work they have done on the GPU acceleration part. This really was amazing 720p HD video streaming on a netbook was blazing fast, they even manage to pump two 720p streams without a glitch, impressive. And rendering HMTL5, CSS3 and SVG with hardware acceleration really looks promising.

If anything it shows that the Internet Explorer team is still in the game and might really get a decent browser out the door.

IE9 platform preview

Expression Blend 4

The things I saw done with blend was quite cool, this tool has come a long way from the first release and is now a potent tool. The tight integration with Adobe was finally in place, just point to the assets and start editing it in Illustrator or Photoshop. What’s more impressive, if I got it right, was that you were able to bind to a text object from the imported Illustrator assets directly to the object in your ViewModel! This really puts design control back into the hands of the designer.

Expression Blend 4 beta

Get real

So what’s left for me now is to find the time to play with all these new toys and and experience for myself what they are capable of before it’s time to Get Real and start creating.

Have fun // Håkan Reis

Just backing up the last stuff on my computer before shutting down. Checking the flight plan once more and packing the last items. Tomorrow I’ll get up early to catch a plane to Las Vegas and Mix10. This is really going to be fun. Especially I look forward to the HaaHa show, the key note, and of course the stuff on Windows Phone 7 Series (still a really bad name).

Of course its not that bad that its in Las Vegas, but well that’s just a bonus. You could of course expect some kind of report here from my visit when I had some time to digest the impressions.

See you // Håkan Reis

We are deep in the planning of the next Øredev and boy is it going to be good. The full program will be shown shortly but I thought I should give you a few teasers. There will be a full day of UX tracks, among the the session you find titles like Tap is the new click and GUIDe for Saving Face: Developing Killer GUIs with Agile Methods. We are very proud to have all of the speakers with us but a couple names will be revealed shortly.

But the full day of sessions is not all we will have a fun filled day with UX workshops as well. Covering both rich internet application design and gestural and multi touch design with two really great workshop speakers.

More to be announced really soon, be sure to watch the Øredev site for the full program.

// Håkan Reis

The other day I was un-installing a software package from Telerik and the process was quite long. So I was reading along a few blog posts when I suddenly got a modal dialog in my face, actually it was a monolog as I was not able to act on it. It was just a message to me that the uninstall process felt that It really had to force me to read. So it kicked up the following message on top of everything:

No matter what i did, the windows 7 show desktop (right bottom corner), WIN-D or whatever. The application really felt that this message was so important it had to sit on top of everything for a couple of minutes.

Its almost like the old: Are you sure you want to exit? question. And actually I thought we got rid of that a couple of years ago. But whaddayaknow, it’s still out there in the various shapes and as you can see it has moved to the web… And I got one just the other day but I have already erased and forgotten that application.

Anyways, it really is simple, as the process of installing and uninstalling is something that takes a little time, just make sure it will be executed in the background. I have better things to do than look at a message that  is completely rubbish. Actually it’s not just this little dialog, when installing the toolkit, it places a full screen window on top of everything. This windows have all the controls for maximize, minimize and close but it will not react to them… At least I was able to minimize with the WIN-D keys…

//Håkan Reis

Do you think that wasting $150 000 000 of your clients money is ok or have you heard of any companies that does that and get away with it (that are not lawyers)?

Chances are that you are doing business with one of them. But lets start from the beginning here and I’ll get to the $150 million in a while.

This year we got a new time report system at work, and as usual it’s a mess. There is a user experience here but only of confusion and annoyance.  A couple of hideous  problems I spotted in just a few minutes of use were:

• In this system we are forced to use an arcane time code for each report period. The crypto looks like 208522. If you decipher it you get 2008, 52 and the last is 1 or 2 depending on if it it's the first or second month in that week (when the month is shifting). This is just ridicules, we have been using the roman calendar for a couple of thousands years. The porting period calendar code is not logical for any user (not even the developer).
• For each cell we have to use codes, and to find out what codes to use a modal JavaScript dialog is presented where you can do a search that lists a few projects and their code. Each time it takes 3-4 clicks to enter the correct codes. But in this system you have project codes, activities codes, customers codes, account codes, etc.

So how about the numbers then? Well, just the two problems on top here will keep on eating up a couple of minutes each day. Our company size is around 150 people so this mean about 600 hours lost each year. I have no idea how many users the system has, but they claim that 2 600 companies are using their system. Taking our company as an average company is at least a start so lets use that figure. This adds up to 1.5 million hours. With an hourly rate around $100 you get $150 000 000 every single year down the drain.

So what gives them the right to cost their client so much? Is it that they have especially lazy developers or did they really think they could come up with a better calendar. Actually, the truth is that there are many more time report systems out there and I haven’t came across a single one that’s much better and a few that are even worse. This micros study of mine revealed a few common facts on time reports:

• All the reporting systems spring from the economic context. In that context we are often thrown back to entering long rows of numerical data. Codes may make sense in this context as they speed up the entry on a numeric key-pad.
• The next problem is that they try to solve time reporting for everyone. The average user will not need to list 300 clients to find the right one even if the company might have all those clients. You don’t have a gigantic hierarchy of projects, tasks and activities. Actually, if you have demand that fine grained control of every hour you are probably wasting your clients and employees time and money.
• The users of the system do not share the context of time reporting. A small group of users are using as one of their main tool, they might want codes and shortcuts as it can speed up their work. But the biggest user group are probably the ones that report into the system. They might use it one time a day on that occasion they don’t want to waste time on searching for codes.

Actually the solution to some of these issues are quite simple but that doesn’t mean it’s simple to implement. But to start with they could at least get to know their users, and by users I don’t mean customers.

The system will have to be created with a dual view, of course it has to support the the ones that are using the reported time for calculation, planning and business. But there is not a contradiction in supporting the other bigger user group here, the ones that has to enter data. If the overhead for entering my time were just a minute or two a day instead of 10-15, I might not be that annoyed. I could use their system instead of the simple app in my iPhone that keeps track of my projects and how much time I spend on each.

And for the two problems found in our current system there are two super simple solutions that I give away for free.

• Let me use the calendar i know and use (you know the one that starts with January and ends with December)
• Provide me with incrementally searchable dropdowns with real projects and activities names – not the damn codes.

Ah well, I should probably report that time from last week instead of writing up this rant. And I really hope my company will not just lose money on the system, but save a dime or two on the reports and invoices that it produces.

// Håkan Reis