Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Sketching out an WP7 user interface and interaction with SketchFlow

UXMagic - Sketchflow for Windows Phone 7

"Need a good reason to go download the Microsoft Expression Blend for Silverlight 5 preview version ? I have one great reason.. Sketchflow for Windows Phone 7...

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Now you can do all of your wire framing and prototyping of your Window Phone application with the power of Sketchflow today.. This makes user interface design and prototyping much easier and more productive.

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Download The following:

Download The following:

  • Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5

  • Windows Phone Developer Tools (you are developing for WP7 right ?)

  • Sketchflow project tools (Thanks to Martin Tirion over that the Microsoft User Experience Blog for these)

After you have installed Blend and Windows phone developer tools you will have to unzip the Sketchflow projects and place them in the appropriate folder (as shown below) before running.

... [GD: Click through for the download links]

Microsoft User Experience Blog - SketchFlow for Windows Phone – How to add a panorama view

"In an earlier post I published the project template for Blend to enable a way to create a SketchFlow prototype for a Windows Phone application. This post adds information on how to go from there.
This post: how to add an a panorama view.

NOTE: an update was made to the project template ZIP-file. You will need that update to follow the rest of this post. You can download it from here. For installation instructions, see the first post.
In this update the background of LayoutRoot of the PhoneUI component was set to transparent.

Once you have created a project based on the template, create a new screen or select an existing screen like App Settings Screen. In this tutorial I’ll be using the App Settings Screen. For a detailed description how to create your own screen, take a look at the first post.

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PanoPosition_187DD4A9

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AnimationCreateFrame2_5C7192F3

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SketchFlow is great because it quickly gives you, and your users, something to play with that doesn't appear TOO real (i.e. avoids the  "Wow, this working prototype looks great! So since this looks 'done' we can have the actual app tomorrow...?" prototype game). The sketch look allows you and your users to get a feel for the app, without investing allot of time in development, but also without wasting that time either.

And now we've got SketchFlow goodness for WP7... That's cool...  :)

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