Designing an app

[Summer_Moon]

If you could design a new battery app for Windows 10 Mobile. What would it look like? What capabilities would you want it to have? And what kind of information would you want it to provide?

I'm especially curious about the UI aspect. All ideas and opinions are welcome.

 

[white_Shadoww]

Hi, I recently started learning programming. I'm pretty new to it, but have one app in the store.

Strawberry Weather

It was featured here in '5 apps you should try' article, and I'm getting very good reviews. My experience is, just make the app for yourself! This brings the best out of you! I'll be looking forward to your app!

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Hi, I recently started learning programming. I'm pretty new to it, but have one app in the store.

Strawberry Weather

It was featured here in '5 apps you should try' article, and I'm getting very good reviews. My experience is, just make the app for yourself! This brings the best out of you! I'll be looking forward to your app!

your advice is good but end users are also important - what they need and want has to be taken into consideration. Your own views matter just as much as the users views

 

[white_Shadoww]

your advice is good but end users are also important - what they need and want has to be taken into consideration. Your own views matter just as much as the users views

Yes, that's very true! But the base of the app should be the result of your own thought process. End users love to be amazed by seeing something different. After the core of the app is established, make all the additions the users want! That's my view though! When you develop for yourself, there's a very different passion. You look through very small details and refine it over the time. Just amaze yourself, others will be amazed too then! And be open to feature requests!

I guess I mean the same as you! Just I'm elaborating a bit!

All the best to the dev. Excited to see what he comes up with!

 

[Summer_Moon]

Hi, I recently started learning programming. I'm pretty new to it, but have one app in the store.

Strawberry Weather

It was featured here in '5 apps you should try' article, and I'm getting very good reviews. My experience is, just make the app for yourself! This brings the best out of you! I'll be looking forward to your app!

Thanks for your replies Took a look at your app and will definitely be installing it to check it out. While I understand where you are coming from I was more interested in the way users would want to use it. I know that I have very different idea of what is usable compared to others and definitely not sure what kind of features users are looking for.

Also, never said I was designing the app was really just curious to get input from others on how they view things and what they would want in a battery app.

 

[Summer_Moon]

your advice is good but end users are also important - what they need and want has to be taken into consideration. Your own views matter just as much as the users views

Yes, this is more what I was inclined to see. What is it that users think is good. Really crowd-sourcing ideas to the best UI.

 

[PGrey]

Thanks for your replies Took a look at your app and will definitely be installing it to check it out. While I understand where you are coming from I was more interested in the way users would want to use it. I know that I have very different idea of what is usable compared to others and definitely not sure what kind of features users are looking for.

Also, never said I was designing the app was really just curious to get input from others on how they view things and what they would want in a battery app.

I've designed to all sort of models. Sometimes you build "personas", and try to view the requirements for each, and choose the key features for each of them.
Other times, if it's a really specific/targeted app, the "what would I want this to do" works well, particularly if it's an area where you see a "gap" currently.

For me, in a battery app, I want to be able to view it on the lock screen and home screen, and have it be current to a given time-slice (i.e. 30 seconds, 1,5,10,15,60.... minutes, or whatever). Clearly, frequent polling would be a battery problem in general.
Currently, I don't know of any battery apps that function well on W10m. I finally un-installed the two I had used for several years, as they weren't really much more accurate than a random-number, with about a 25% variance of the actual battery.
Simply having one that was accurate and viewable would be my primary feature.
From there, being able to track and isolate/graph high-drain issues would be interesting, again, if it were "accurate".

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Windows mobiles have a limitation where battery stats can only be requested every 30minutes

 

[PGrey]

Windows mobiles have a limitation where battery stats can only be requested every 30minutes

That's new for W10m, correct?

Even so, I would basically see my old, trustworthy battery apps sit on one battery value, for an entire day. I'm guessing they needed to be rebuilt, at the least for W10m, but if you read reviews, it's hard to find one that actually appears to work on W10m.

Every 30 minutes is plenty for my use, but having a "non-changing tile" isn't so handy. I've almost adapted to the "swipe down" now, something I'm pretty sure they never thought about with the 950XL, unless you've got some seriously large hands ;-]

 

[Chintan Gohel]

That's new for W10m, correct?

Even so, I would basically see my old, trustworthy battery apps sit on one battery value, for an entire day. I'm guessing they needed to be rebuilt, at the least for W10m, but if you read reviews, it's hard to find one that actually appears to work on W10m.

Every 30 minutes is plenty for my use, but having a "non-changing tile" isn't so handy. I've almost adapted to the "swipe down" now, something I'm pretty sure they never thought about with the 950XL, unless you've got some seriously large hands ;-]

I think it's always been there

 

[PGrey]

I think it's always been there

Could be. I'm not truly "obsessive" about my battery, a 30 minute slice would be more than sufficient. In W7m, W8.xm, apps all updated on the desktop just fine, and lockscreen if you put them there.
On W10m, I've seen the tile "park" on the number all day long, on an app that calls out W10m compatibility. The only way to get updates to the app seems to be to actually open it, each time, which updates both the app value and the tile. My guess is there's an OS bug, and it's low-pri...

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Could be. I'm not truly "obsessive" about my battery, a 30 minute slice would be more than sufficient. In W7m, W8.xm, apps all updated on the desktop just fine, and lockscreen if you put them there.
On W10m, I've seen the tile "park" on the number all day long, on an app that calls out W10m compatibility. The only way to get updates to the app seems to be to actually open it, each time, which updates both the app value and the tile. My guess is there's an OS bug, and it's low-pri...

you were using battery app by Arthur Semenov, right?

 

[Summer_Moon]

Windows mobiles have a limitation where battery stats can only be requested every 30minutes

I believe this is true of any live tile using the auto-refresh updates (30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, etc). But I thought there were ways around it?

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I believe this is true of any live tile using the auto-refresh updates (30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, etc). But I thought there were ways around it?

if there were, i think developers would have exploited it by now

 

[white_Shadoww]

I believe this is true of any live tile using the auto-refresh updates (30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, etc). But I thought there were ways around it?

For live tiles, or any sort of background task, in Windows 10 mobile, the timer limit is 15 minutes at the minimum and infinity (I guess) at the maximum. It is pretty easy to implement this and give user the setting to change the background update frequency. I'm very very new developer and have this implemented in Strawberry Weather where I show a toast notification to the user if there is a change in the weather condition.

 

[white_Shadoww]

I've designed to all sort of models. Sometimes you build "personas", and try to view the requirements for each, and choose the key features for each of them.
Other times, if it's a really specific/targeted app, the "what would I want this to do" works well, particularly if it's an area where you see a "gap" currently.

For me, in a battery app, I want to be able to view it on the lock screen and home screen, and have it be current to a given time-slice (i.e. 30 seconds, 1,5,10,15,60.... minutes, or whatever). Clearly, frequent polling would be a battery problem in general.
Currently, I don't know of any battery apps that function well on W10m. I finally un-installed the two I had used for several years, as they weren't really much more accurate than a random-number, with about a 25% variance of the actual battery.
Simply having one that was accurate and viewable would be my primary feature.
From there, being able to track and isolate/graph high-drain issues would be interesting, again, if it were "accurate".

The OP said he never said he was designing the app. Does that mean he is not going to develop one? If that's so, I can develop such an app you want. If op is not going to develop it, I might try my luck!

 

[sinime]

There is a trick where you can set up tile notifications every minute (used on clock apps), however, there are 2 issues with that...

1) You have to know ahead of time what to put on the tile (so while this wouldn't work for a battery level app, it works for a clock)
2) Windows 10 changed something (compared to WP8) where the tile notification doesn't post till the start screen is viewed... what happens is, when you go to the start screen, the default tile is shown for a few seconds until the tile notification pops up properly. The clock app I wrote, UnClocked, suffers from this on W10M but didn't on WP8.1. I have been looking for a fix, but I don't think one is available as every clock tile app I've downloaded suffers the same issue.

 

[white_Shadoww]

Could be. I'm not truly "obsessive" about my battery, a 30 minute slice would be more than sufficient. In W7m, W8.xm, apps all updated on the desktop just fine, and lockscreen if you put them there.
On W10m, I've seen the tile "park" on the number all day long, on an app that calls out W10m compatibility. The only way to get updates to the app seems to be to actually open it, each time, which updates both the app value and the tile. My guess is there's an OS bug, and it's low-pri...

I don't think there is any bug in the OS. My app Strawberry Weather updates the tile and gives the notification as well updates the info on the lock screen periodically without a single miss provided there's a data connection! Getting battery results should be so much easier than getting weather and forecast data, updating the tile, comparing conditions and showing a toast notification!

 

[white_Shadoww]

There is a trick where you can set up tile notifications every minute (used on clock apps), however, there are 2 issues with that...

1) You have to know ahead of time what to put on the tile (so while this wouldn't work for a battery level app, it works for a clock)
2) Windows 10 changed something (compared to WP8) where the tile notification doesn't post till the start screen is viewed... what happens is, when you go to the start screen, the default tile is shown for a few seconds until the tile notification pops up properly. The clock app I wrote, UnClocked, suffers from this on W10M but didn't on WP8.1. I have been looking for a fix, but I don't think one is available as every clock tile app I've downloaded suffers the same issue.

Well the tile does not update but lock screen updates! Right now it's night where I live so I will capture a screenshot of my lockscreen on which my app Strawberry Weather is set to show detailed notification. I will check tomorrow when I wake up if the lock screen has updated or not! I'm pretty sure lock screen updates.

About the live tile, you are correct. When you unlock the phone and dismiss the lock screen. On the tile you see the older notification for a brief amount of time and the tile then updates to the latest notification in front of your eyes. I always thought it was due to my phone being Lumia 520, and the unsupported Windows 10 Mobile OS. But seems issue is with WM10 then.

 

[sinime]

Yeah, its a W10 thing (does it on desktop too)...
Here are a couple of screens of my app, one from first unlocking it, and after the tile was updated (while first screenshot is being saved) The app is the top center tile...