Hasta La Ideas

Core77 is pleased to partner with Windows Phone to bring you a series of photo diaries this summer. Based on the theme of Reinvention, we’re looking to capture the fleeting moments and highlight the often-overlooked facets of the world around us through the lens of the Nokia Lumia 928, especially in the low-light settings in which its camera excels. (All photos were taken with the Nokia Lumia 928 smartphone and are published without postproduction unless otherwise noted.)

Reporting by Ray Hu

New York City’s new-ish High Line is nothing if not photogenic, offering sylvan respite from the concrete jungle, a thoroughly considered green space that is at once removed from and embedded in the thick of Lower Manhattan. Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Field Operations’ seminal public park is a sui generis locale, and although both the architectural features (benches, water fountains, criss-crossing paths) and impeccable landscaping allude to overgrown railroad tracks, the High Line is a remarkable urban space regardless of its history.

If it’s rather difficult to take in the various art installations and commissions peppered throughout the park once the sun goes down, the tasteful lighting and ambient cityscape happen to emphasize that the High Line more of an attraction in itself. Leafy silhouettes obscure skyscrapers in the distance; cross streets afford unusual urban vistas; highrises in the immediate vicinity offer an incongruous—and at times voyeuristic—backdrop to the greenery.

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The Walkmen

Core77 is pleased to partner with Windows Phone to bring you a series of photo diaries this summer. Based on the theme of Reinvention, we’re looking to capture the fleeting moments and highlight the often-overlooked facets of the world around us through the lens of the Nokia Lumia 928, especially in the low-light settings in which its camera excels. (All photos were taken with the Nokia Lumia 928 smartphone and are published without postproduction unless otherwise noted.)

Reporting & photos by Ray Hu

It seems that there is an art/music/food and/or etc. festival every weekend here in New York City: this past weekend alone saw the Renegade Craft Fair, Make Music New York and the Mermaid Parade, among dozens of other events.

The Northside Festival, a celebration of music and multimedia, was the highlight of last weekend. The weather held up for the two-day lineup of outdoor concerts at the multi-purpose recreational area adjacent to McCarren Park, the nexus of the festival (satellite events took place throughout Williamsburg). About a dozen food and drink vendors extended along one corner of the concrete expanse while the stage occupied another corner; the Walkmen and Solange headlined Saturday and Sunday, respectively. The sets ended at 8pm sharp, due to local sound ordinances or other vagaries of public space usage, but the waning sunlight proved to be quite flattering for the performers.

Looking toward the Red Bull Creation tent from the concert area

However, the large tent opposite the comestibles proved to be the most interesting attraction. As with Garrison Architects’ modular structures at Rockaway Beach, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon the Red Bull Creation innovation competition—not just as a sight to behold but also because I had the Nokia Lumia 928 on hand to document the projects.

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Congratulations to our App to the Future Design Challenge finalists and winners!! We asked designers to change the future by designing an app for Windows Phone that would help us create, connect or simply impress our future selves. You answered the call with hundreds of amazing and inspiring submissions from scrapbooks and font managers, trip trackers or convoy road managers, to diaries that don’t broadcast your every thought or will even seal them up for the future. After hours of review and deliberation by our fantastic jurors Chris Caldwell (GSkinner.com), Jennifer Bove (Kicker Studio), Corrina Black (Microsoft), Pratik Kothari (Techark Solutions), and Eric Ludlum (Core77), we are proud to announce our 50 finalists and five winners!

All winners and finalists will receive a 1-year subscription to the Windows Phone Dev Center development community and any finalists who launch their apps in the Windows Phone store will become our notable finalists, scoring a Windows Phone. Winners not only receive a subscription to Dev Center, Windows Phone and Microsoft Surface with Touch Cover, but they also get an app design consultation with a Windows Phone design team member and their app featured on Microsoft’s Channel 9. Keep checking back over the next few months as we start Phase 2 of the competition: watching the winners and finalists turn their ideas into reality. And now, the Apps to the Future…

WINNERS

4weather—a weather app that lets you zero in what the weather will be like when and where you actually plan to be outside by utilizing a new adaptive forecast feed at its root, an extended and more informative set of “climacons” and finally the choice of the best forecast data vendor for your region.

“Of all the weather apps I’ve seen this is the only one that actually does something useful for you as well as telling you the weather.” —Chris Caldwell

“Lots of thought into the data/algorithm, smart use of sensors, phone in idle mode, seems like content/utility delivery is simple. Prototyping with users would show whether passive information presentation is contextually relevant / useful and if the user input is too laborious.” —Jennifer Bove

“This could be boiled down to a simple AI + GPS that would quickly learn what weather conditions you like or dislike in which locations.” —Eric Ludlum

“Very unique idea. The description of the app concept provides a very good explanation behind why there is a need for such an app. Instead of providing a general weather forecast, this app exemplifies the Windows Phone’s You paradigm by personalizing weather based on you and your information.” —Pratik Kothari

App Designer:
Alexander Uhlig
Leipzig, Germany

Alexander is currently a Master of Physics student and expects to graduate by the end of 2013. Right now he is working on his Masters project, which is related to an econometric subject.

At the age of 16 he gained his first insight into human-computer interaction as a tutor and not long afterwards took over the soft- and hardware- support of a small pharmaceutical company.

Getting to know different cultures, and new people with other traditions fascinates him. Right after finishing school he went to Australia on a work & travel visa. He completed the first part of his Master studies in Leeds, UK as an exchange student.

Alexander’s strength is blending creative and problem solving abilities. He is passionate about solving versatile tasks and looks forward to the challenges the development of 4weather will bring along.

fitCHAMP—a social fitness app that combines the powerful APIs of the personal fitness trackers that you and your friends use onto a single, beautifully designed dashboard where you can track and compete with your friends through certain metrics like distance moved, steps taken, and calories burned.

“Could be fantastic if the platform API’s work well together and you can map data onto similar and comparable points.” —Chris Caldwell

“Great socialization/gamification of the dataset and activity.” —Eric Ludlum

“Similar apps exist but the design of this app provides a fresh look. Social component is certainly a motivating factor to challenge someone.” —Pratik Kothari

App Designers:
Christian Valencia & Shelby Blair
Seattle, US
christianvalenciadesign.com

Christian Valencia and Shelby Blair are User Experience Designers who work at Ratio Interactive, a small digital agency in Seattle, WA. They design experiences for: Web, iOS, Android, Windows 8 and now Windows Phone.

Christian recently graduated from Seattle Central Creative Academy where he mainly focused on Interaction Design. He loves designing simple, yet engaging interfaces for any of the platforms listed above.

Shelby graduated from the University of North Texas and got into UX design just over a year ago. She is an explorer at heart, and will always love illustration and print design.

HappyAppy—a smile is contagious and what better way to spread a smile than by sharing a dance? HappyAppy is an interactive mobile application that allows friends to connect by dancing for one another when words are not enough. This allows people to virtually connect in a physical and emotional way that is not currently possible.

“I started smiling instantly 🙂 You made my day! Besides being unfathomably simple, this is an experience that you’ll have fun creating as well as receiving.” —Chris Caldwell

“Simple, delightful, great use of physical gesture. Adorable characters, smart constraints around time limits, movements, etc.” —Jennifer Bove

“It is cute and there is opportunity for a broader spectrum of sentiment (angsty appy? morose appy? estatic appy?).” —Eric Ludlum

“Uses various Windows Phone accelerometer features to create a customized greeting. This is certainly designed to connect and delight.” —Pratik Kothari

“What a creative and fun way to connect with your friends and family and make them smile! This app makes me smile :D” —Corrina Black

App Designers:
Yian Ling Cheong & Sarah Sykes
Singapore & Wisconsin
yianlingyianling.com
sarahsykes.us

Yian Ling and Sarah met while attending graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University. Although they come from opposite ends of the world, their backgrounds are surprisingly similar. Both Yian Ling and Sarah have a bachelors degree in industrial design and work experience in design research. When they are not designing, both of them enjoy traveling the world, collecting fresh inspiration and getting their hands on new projects.

Tide&a Surfing forecast app that creates a more gestural way of exploring the waves through time whilst allowing fast access to the data that most is important to surfers.

“This makes me want to buy a surfboard, abandon my landlocked city, and drive thousands of miles to the nearest ocean and start surfing!” —Chris Caldwell

“Simple, quick access to info on the go. Fluid use of gesture, application interface doesn’t get in the way. Easy to share.” —Jennifer Bove

“Awesome and beautiful. The sine wave display feels like the pure essence of the phenomenon and is at home in the Windows UI.” —Eric Ludlum

“Overall very good design and a useful app.” —Pratik Kothari

App Designer:
Martin Spurway
Warwick, United Kingdom
martinspurwaydesign.co.uk

Martin is a young Industrial Designer currently working for DCA Design in Warwick, United Kingdom. Having graduated from Loughborough Design School in 2011 his work focuses on creating connected products, brands and experiences. When these are designed at the same time, really new and interesting experiences emerge. This is not currently being implemented by most companies.

It is an exciting time for design, where different fields such as UI/ UX, Web Design, Packaging and traditional Industrial Design are coming together and the boundaries are becoming more and more blurred.

TripUs—connect all your social activities about a trip through one app. Organize all your pictures, Facebook updates, check-ins and tweets into a Trip timeline with invited friends and share information and photos with those friends in your network.

“Where were you on my last road trip? What a great way to spread the travel bug!” —Chris Caldwell

“An easy way to organize personal media into a narrative—trips are a natural for this.” —Eric Ludlum

“Good design and layout.” —Pratik Kothari

“Fun way of connecting with friends to capture shared events in a visually compelling, immersive, and memorable manner.” —Corrina Black

App Designer:
Sittitsak Jiampotjaman
Bangkok, Thailand
stainfilm.com

Sittisak is a Web/UI Designer living in Bangkok.

We can’t reveal too much about these apps before they’re launched, but here are the finalists we’ll also be keeping an eye on:

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Alright app designers—you’ve got one week left to review, finish up and submit your App to the Future designs! The FINAL Lightning Design Review before submissions close is next Thursday, February 7th at 2pm ET. Registration for that review session closes Tuesday, February 5th at 2pm ET, but space is limited so you’ll want to submit your designs for review as soon as possible. You can also sign up to watch the session live, or view previous sessions.

Don’t forget to also watch the Windows Phone Design Bootcamp videos to get the most out of Windows Phone design principles. The series is broken up into five 101 and three 201 videos so you can pick how far and deep you want to dive.

Submit your App to the Future Windows Phone designs by midnight Sunday, February 10th. The future’s getting closer every second!

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The best design meets our needs before we can even articulate them. With the App to the Future design challenge, Windows Phone and Core77 intend to foster the circumstances for intelligent, practical and beautiful design. The ingredients to get designers started are all here on the contest site: a smartly conceived UI, clear and helpful developer tips, and an evolved Windows Phone 8.

We held our first call for Windows Phone app designs last year and had incredibly conceived winning entries. This year, contestants will be designing for the next generation device. Windows Phone 8’s changes include a new OS, faster processing, additional user features and general bug-stomping after careful review of Windows 7.5 feedback. The results have delighted developers and users alike. Many updates built upon well-received, existing elements like Live Tiles and grew them—literally. Live Tiles can now be resized with the added option to personalize content hierarchy based on user preference.

The 120k+ apps in the Windows Phone Store (formerly Marketplace) are a strong beginning for a phone that initially received the mixed praise of being a superior choice to Android but a latecomer to the game. Microsoft is aware that its well-built platform requires the buy-in from app developers and community in order to flourish. Developers new to Windows Phone could be understandably reluctant to invest their resources in building for a smaller market, but Microsoft has greatly expanded global access to the Windows Phone Store in just a year and continues to promote Windows Phone apps through various channels and provide regional Windows Phone Champs tasked to help developers locally. And this chicken/egg cycle yielded its own positive side effect: a remarkably clear design, development and submission process to the Windows Phone Store. After creating the platform and outlining hardware standards, Microsoft understood that removing barriers to creation and encouraging innovation are key in both catching up with iOS and Android app offerings and building their own app process.

Windows Phone’s particular design principles mean that apps run nearly identically across different hardware. That reassurance of similarity is one less headache for users and developers alike. For example, Kid’s Corner—a terrific feature that gathers all the games, apps, music and videos for your child into one place while securing the rest of the phone from prying fingers—will be precisely the same experience on Nokia, Samsung and HTC models.

Adding to the list of features developers can play with and users can enjoy, the technical overhaul includes support for HD screens and multicore processors. Business users can happily edit a Word document or create an Excel spreadsheet. And linked email means you can view all messages from different accounts in one inbox (something iOS users are accustomed to), then save your documents, photos and chats to Microsoft’s cloud, SkyDrive.

For this challenge in particular, we suggest going through the Boot Camps on Windows Phone Design Language. After considering the app you’d like to design and mocking it up, have a Windows Phone interface designer take a look by signing up for a Lighting Design Review. Afterwards, you’ll be able to integrate their feedback and further refine your app. Then, there’s the business of actually getting ‘er done. If you’re not a seasoned developer, you still might want to give app dev a try via the Windows Phone Dev Center (their 2-day Jump Start has been widely lauded as great watch-and-do training). We had three winning teams last year develop their own apps (with one team being total—but gifted—noobs at developing) and submit them to the store. And developers that are looking for new design ideas to implement and grow (or simply would like a chance to win a Windows Phone 8) can offer their dev muscles.

So, onwards, potential Windows Phone 8 designers and developers! You probably have an incredible idea brewing in your noggin. The resources to make that concept a reality are at your fingertips…and now you’ve got a little fire under your tush with this contest. Good luck and happy designing your App to the Future!

[Editor’s Note: For some great tips on designing for Windows Phone, check out 8 insights from Senior Interactive Designer Lincoln Anderson, who hosts the lightning design reviews!]

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