Microsoft, Windows Phone

Senior Design Director // Microsoft Design Consultant

// User Experience, Product Development, Design, Creative, Photography, Marketing

Microsoft

// Windows Mobile Design Team

2008—2014

responsibilities

In 2008 I was a design contractor with Microsoft that had been working with Microsoft's design team to bring Windows Metro to life along with a cross device methodology that would make seamless user expectations and experience. I worked with the design team from the initial Windows Phone concepts and wireframes, all the way through the launch of Windows Phone 8.1 in 2014. To this day I still adore that project, that time, and the beautiful seamless nature of that user experience.

Challenge

In 2008 Microsoft started and initiative to combat the popularity, design style, capability, and execution of Apple's iPhone. It had been stealing market share from Windows, which, at the time was the second most used phone software platform.

In response to this, Microsoft started a tiger team to envision what the next, new, more seamless, more usable, usable and more beautiful version of a portable Windows platform would look like, engaging Microsoft's new Metro UI design language that focused on typography and simplified icons.

Solution

Together we crafted Windows Phone 7 based on Windows CE—the final versions of Windows Mobile based on CE. All future versions move to a Windows NT Based Kernel.

Windows Phone 7 employed Microsoft's Metro UI, a design language focused on typography and simplified icons, as well as “Live Tiles,” parid with a fresh, colorful, resizable tile-based home screen, with fluid transitions between screens that would seamlessly inform the user of further . It looked markedly different to its predecessors, and offered a unique alternative to Android and iOS.

Microsoft being a software focus company wanted the strategy that had brought it success with Windows to play out the same way it had with personal computers, so they laid down minimum hardware specifications for Windows 7 handsets (which mandated 5 physical buttons, for Start, back, search, camera, power, as well as CPU, GPU, screen, and connectivity requirements) and brought various manufactures on board.

sales: Windows Phone 7 Sales

In Q1 2011, Gartner reported that 1.6 million devices running Microsoft's OS were sold worldwide. This number increased to 1.7 million in Q2 2011, giving Microsoft a 1.6% share of the smartphone market. By Q3 2011, market share had decreased slightly to 1.5%, but it rose to 1.9% in Q4 2011 and remained at that level through Q1 2012. Reports from Q2, Q3, and Q4 of 2011 combined market share figures for both Windows Phone and Windows Mobile under the "Microsoft mobile OS" category without distinguishing between the two. According to Nielsen, Windows Phone held a 1.7% market share in Q1 2012, but this dropped to 1.3% in Q2 2012.

Sales: Windows Phone 8/8.1

In Q3 2013, Gartner reported that Windows Phone had a global market share of 3.6%, marking a 123% increase compared to the same period in 2012 and surpassing Android’s growth rate. Kantar's October 2013 report indicated that Windows Phone represented 10.2% of smartphone sales in Europe and 4.8% in the United States. Analysts credited this sales boost to the release of Windows Phone 8 and Nokia's effective marketing of budget-friendly models like the Lumia 520 and 620 to younger consumers. By the end of 2013, Gartner noted that Windows Phone's market share was 3.2%, down from Q3 but still showing a 46.7% improvement over 2012.

User Interface

Windows Phone features a user interface based on Microsoft's "Metro" design language, and was inspired by the user interface in the Zune HD. The home screen, called the "Start screen", is made up of "Live Tiles", which have been the inspiration for the Windows 8 live tiles. Tiles are links to applications, features, functions and individual items (such as contacts, web pages, applications or media items). Users can add, rearrange, or remove tiles. Tiles are dynamic and update in real time – for example, the tile for an email account would display the number of unread messages or a tile could display a live update of the weather. Since Windows Phone 8, live tiles can also be resized to either a small, medium, or large appearance.

Several features of Windows Phone are organized into "hubs", which combine local and online content via Windows Phone's integration with popular social networks such as Facebook, Windows Live, and Twitter. For example, the Pictures hub shows photos captured with the device's camera and the user's Facebook photo albums, and the People hub shows contacts aggregated from multiple sources including Windows Live, Facebook, and Gmail. From the hub, users can directly comment and 'like' on social network updates. The other built-in hubs are Xbox Music and Video, Xbox Live Games, Windows Phone Store, and Microsoft Office.

Windows phone 7

user experience

The home screen, called "Start screen", is made up of "Live Tiles". Tiles are links to applications, features, functions and individual items (such as contacts, web pages, applications or media items). Users can add, rearrange, or remove tiles. Tiles are dynamic and update in real time – for example, the tile for an email account would display the number of unread messages or a tile could display a live update of the weather.

Windows Phone uses multi-touch technology. The default Windows Phone user interface has a dark theme that prolongs battery life on OLED screens as fully black pixels do not emit light. The user may choose a light theme instead, and can also choose from several accent colors. User interface elements such as tiles are shown in the user's chosen accent color. Third-party applications can be automatically themed with these colors.