What Windows Phone needs right now? More passionate Designers and Developers.
About the similarities of Windows Phone and the early days of iOS.
The Windows Phone Store seems to finally pick up steam and big services like foursquare, twitter and path as well as small (indie) developers are submitting more and more apps to the store. But when comparing the Microsoft’s and Apple’s offerings, the former can’t really keep up with Apple in terms of quantity and quality. Developer on iOS seem to be pushing each other to make the best possible user experience. You’ll find much more creative user interfaces and there’s a lot more eye candy on iOS. On the other side, Windows Phone apps don’t feel polished and mostly lack great UI/UX ideas.
I think the situation is easily comparable with the early days of the iPhone App Store. Back then, there was only “the one” default app theme. I’m talking about the blue-grey pinstriped layout, which Apple still uses in some apps on iOS 6. In addition to the visual style of the apps, most developers used a layout with the navigation bar on the top and a tab bar on the bottom. There wasn’t as much creativity as every developer tried to get out their app as fast as possible.
Image: Apple
Developers quickly noticed that the only way to be successful on Apple’s platform was to be different than all the other apps. Apps had to provide a better user interface to be noticed by users. Therefore, developers tried new things, experimented with different interface elements and invented new gestures.
There was one “battlefield“, which I remember pretty good: Twitter clients. Long before Twitter went berserk about their platform policies, these apps all had nearly the same feature set. They differed only in terms of user interface and ease of use. Those were the times, when such awesome things as “pull to refresh” were born because the developers knew they will only succeed if they are able to provide a significantly better experience than their competitors. They tried very hard to achieve this goal and some of them succeeded. “Pull to refresh” has since been adopted by Apple and even included in the official SDK as of iOS 6. Another prime example is the “Slide from side” gesture to reveal an additional side menu-panel. As far as I can remember, this was introduced by Facebook in one of their app updates. Nowadays it is used in many apps because it is easy to use and understand.
Nowadays, no Class-A developer would release an app that uses the original blue-gray iOS style. Designer and Developers understand that user interface and experience is a key point to success. And they try everything to be as inventive and explorative as possible. It’s due to these guys, that iOS has been feeling nice, fresh and polished that long. They have reinvented “the face” of iOS a few times with Apple contributing very little to it. The iPhone (and the iPad) have clearly benefitted from innovative developers and designers alike.
Windows Phone as a platform is now at exactly that point where iOS was all these years ago. There are definitely coming enough apps to the store each week, but they are nearly all lacking the final polishing and innovative user interfaces. While some of the “big” apps like Foursquare, Twitter and Path as well as small apps like 6tag are an noteworthy exception, too much apps are using the standard set of UI elements which Microsoft is providing as part of the SDK.
Path, Facebook
These apps mentioned above are trying exactly what has worked back then in the iOS world. Standing out from the crowd and exploring different (non standard) ways to interact with the users. I think it’s totally ok not to be exactly compliant with Microsofts platform and style guidelines if you’re having the fundamental ideas and principles in mind. The default user interface elements of the official SDK are useful and convenient for developing an app as fast as possible, but I don’t think it will be the way to go on Windows Phone in the future. Microsoft’s typographic intensive Modern UI is feeling very fresh and intuitive at the beginning, but it’s simplicity is also it’s weakness. People will get bored over time. As with iOS it will be the developers duty to keep the system interesting for it’s users. At least until Microsoft decides to give Windows Phone a complete visual Makeover.
Recent changes in the official Facebook app (which is still developed by Microsoft) show that Microsoft also recognizes these problems. The Facebook beta app was launched as a complete revamp - not using the pivot layout anymore and trying to be visually different than the rest of Windows Phone. The layout seems to be inspired by iOS and Android counterparts but with a Modern UI twist. Also Foursquare, Twitter and 6tag aren’t using the original Windows Phone app layouts and are betting on their own user interface ideas.
This shows the huge similarity between the early days of iOS and the current development of first-class Windows Phone apps. It think we will be seeing many more custom designed apps in the near future. All adopted for a distinct Windows Phone user experience. This will benefit the whole platform. It seems to be inline with a famous quote of Steve Jobs regarding hiring of developers, which could also be true for mobile os platforms:
A-players hire A-players, B-players hire C-players
In an ecosystem, where quality work is appreciated and thanked by users downloading the apps, developers and designers try very hard to be the best and most inventive. In further consequence this will attract more and more first-class developers and will push and encourage each other. I think we will see some interesting design work happening on Windows Phone in the near future
What do you think? Have you something to add? Send me a tweet.
(This story was also published in german on fabianpimminger.com)
