Multimediatreff 30 in Cologne Technologies and concepts for app development

Next Generation Media: Visions at the start

Opening lectures tend to cover a broader spectrum, and the Multimediatreff had a real visionary at the start with Sascha Wolter. As “next generation media”, he explained how computers are penetrating deeper and deeper into all areas of life. The consequence: dealing with them is becoming a central design challenge. What learned behaviors are there – and should we perhaps even break with some of them because there are better ones?

He had a practical tip for developers and conceptual designers based on the Lego principle: When children build with Lego, they start with very simple shapes that they later expand. Developers should proceed in a similar way: Initially, they should only work with prototypes until the specific usability has been perfected – only then should they start with the detailed implementation of the design.

Phone Gap: The once-develop-promise

Mihai Corlan and Felix Rieseberg presented a brief introduction to development with Phone Gap. The idea behind it: developing applications in HTML5 and accessing the native functions of the platforms via JavaScript interfaces, which are provided by Phone Gap. The main advantage here: saving development effort without having to do without too many features.

One very important point was raised during the discussion: cross-platform development is no excuse for poor apps. Apps have to take into account the user interfaces of the respective systems – this is possible, for example, by using different CSS files for the individual platforms.

iOS: Basics, Basics, Basics

Reiner Hoppe from the agency denkwerk gave a brief introduction to iOS development. He mentioned prices, development tools, and the process of testing and publishing. A separate server is necessary for push notifications and dynamic content – this is particularly important so that you do not have to go through the App Store every time the content changes. Both users and Apple do not like pure web view applications that simply load the content of a website into an app.

Overall, his talk was a bit too general for my taste. He did not have any code examples ready either – a shame, because he seems to know his stuff. I did find his summary of native versus cross-platform development interesting.

Pros of native apps:

• better performance
• higher user acceptance
• flexible further development
• support for all platform features

Pros of cross-platform apps:

• faster development
• significantly lower price

Android: a tour de force through architecture

Of course, the Android could not be left out; Till Klocke took on the mini-introduction. It was gratifying to get down to business technically. First, however, he talked about the fragmentation of the Android market and Google’s efforts to provide strategies to deal with it (for example, via the Fragments API). After some introductory words about the structure of Android apps, he shared some conceptual tips. Apps should focus on their superpower – the one feature they are good at; the rest can be left to other apps. For developing UX concepts, he recommended Android UI Utils. It was also important to always create resources in two styles – for the SDK version from 13 and for below.

UX Concepts: Good tips for the conception

My personal highlight was the lecture of Johannes Fahrenkrug on mobile UX concepts. His credo: Usability is the central quality criterion for apps. His ten rules of thumb are so valuable that I would like to highlight them – details can be found in the presentation, and also have a look at the tips for testing usability (with a focus on websites) I once wrote for t3n.

1. a clear concept for the app – which also means that it might not be an app after all
2. a clear focus on an audience or activity
3. familiarity with the medium (including the platform!)
4. make the goal quickly accessible
5. intuitive operation instead of explanations
6. no unnecessary interruptions by alerts
7. high speed
8. take decisions from users where possible
9. Consider mobile context
10. Avoid unpleasant surprises

Windows Phone 7: a focus with surprises

The workshops focused on Windows Phone 7 (WP 7) – after all, Microsoft and Nokia were the main sponsors. The system had a few surprises in store – I had not really thought about it in detail beforehand.

Design: With Metro to third place?

Felix Riesenberg’s lecture on the WP7 design concept was interesting. Microsoft no longer wants to be pigeonholed in the design metaphors where analog things stand for digital processes: leather covers in the address book, torn pages in the calendar, pseudo-leaf effects. Instead, we should no longer be ashamed of being digital. The following principles are fundamental to the WP7 Design, which goes by the beautiful name of “Metro”:

• clean, light, open, fast: focus on the main task
• alive in motion: clear navigation via animations
• celebrate typography: a return to typographic principles – typography is a learned information management
• content, not chrome: focus on the content
• authentically digital: no imitation of analog elements

I find this design concept – and I can already reveal this much – extremely exciting and refreshingly different. However, it will be a big challenge to convince the developers (and especially the designers) and to find a sensible balance between adopting the Microsoft design principles and their own app branding. This can be clearly seen in the Wunderlist app, for example, where wooden backgrounds still prevail – because it represents the company’s corporate identity.

Windows Phone 7: A look under the hood

But of course, the technology was also discussed in detail. Tom Wendel and Felix Riesenberg played off each other’s comments – and despite being Microsoft evangelists, they knew how to play with their employer’s image. Two tools are in principle available to develop for Windows Phone 7:

• Expression Blend: This tool, based on Microsoft’s Silverlight, allows simple apps and is aimed at designers. It is very reminiscent of Adobe’s Flash: you draw objects and assign properties, including extensive ready-made libraries. The presentations were quite impressive – for example, a small Angry Birds clone in 20 minutes. However, advanced programming is not possible with Blend – but you can open the Blend code in Visual Studio.
• Visual Studio: While Blend’s main focus is on design, Visual Studio’s strength clearly lies in the code. Especially in the high-performance area, Visual Studio is the development environment of choice. For example, it can be used to develop advanced games via Microsoft’s xna, as Tom Wendel showed with a 3D Pong game.

The system APIs were also a key topic. Windows Phone 7 offers methods for accessing key hardware features with just a few lines of code: interacting with the camera, posting status updates on Facebook and Twitter, and turn-by-turn navigation. The Live Tiles are also exciting – small tiles that users can place on the start screen, which can then show important information on both sides without the app having to be opened. There was also a session on accessing networking, which I can no longer get together from my notes – I will refer you to the videos as soon as they are available.

Oh yes, there was also a short marketing talk by Jens Dissmann about the situation at Nokia. It was entertaining and amusing, but not very productive in terms of content.

tl;dr: For skim readers

I can recommend the Multimediatreff all around. The 30th edition was about the development of mobile apps. Phone Gap offers an interesting platform for the development of simple apps – but when it comes down to it, native apps are better. iOS was represented with very basic information, Android was more technical. Windows Phone 7 was a main focus and surprised with a well thought-out design concept and useful features for developers. Johannes Fahrenkrug gave a great talk on UX concepts with ten conceptual tips. Oh yes, and the pizza fight was less martial than feared.

Now it is your turn: Do you think Microsoft and Nokia have a chance of getting their piece of the mobile pie? How do apps have to be designed for them to work for you?