Today was the first day of my self-imposed ‘immersion therapy’ on Windows platforms — starting with Windows Phone. I’m embarking on this journey as a UX Designer who has lived a very Apple, and specifically iOS-centered, digital life over the last 5 years. It’s good and healthy to challenge one’s assumptions and prejudices as time goes on, and that is exactly what I’m doing now.

My chosen Windows Phone is a bright yellow Nokia Lumia 1020. As I began to familiarize myself with the phone and the OS, I noted things that stood out, for good or bad, as the day went on.

10:08 AM
Wow — the Lumia 1020 is a gorgeous piece of hardware. Nokia’s industrial design pedigree is apparent. They rival only Apple in the mobile device domain.

10:52 AM
Trial periods for app downloads are a breath of fresh air. iOS needs this.

11:41 AM
Woah. Not used to this much motion in the UI.

12:20 PM
Missing the “swipe-from-edge-to-go-back” gesture from iOS 7. Keep reminding myself to use the persistent back button. We’ll see if this is just a muscle memory thing or a real preference over time.

2:44 PM
I like being able to group tiles at a range of sizes on my home screen. It’s a unique alternative to the folder pattern. One major complaint, though — I wish there was a more robust choice of ‘accent’ colors in the OS. That single accent color is used in a lot of contexts and is often insufficient for the task. Maybe accent color could be allowed as an app-specific setting?

3:12 PM
I love the ability to pin people to the home screen. It’s a huge paradigm shift from iOS, which is extremely app-centric. Scott Hanselman wrote a great article about this a couple weeks ago:

The “story” around People Centric is that you don’t think “go to twitter and tweet my friend” or “go to Skype and call my friend,” instead you click a picture of your friend and then contact them in any possible way using any enlisted app from there.

4:48 PM
This isn’t a surprise, but the general quality of apps on the Windows Phone app store really is abysmal. If Windows Phone continues to gain modest traction, though, I wonder if and when intrepid indie app developers and designers will take note.