Windows Phone 7 – Mobile Usability

Remember the end of the 90s? Microsoft was the all-conquering yet stuttering goliath. Apple was constantly in its shadow despite Microsoft borrowing a lot from Apple’s user interface designs. Fast-forward to more than a decade later it is Apple that has become the goliath and Microsoft living in its shadow (perhaps not in the software field, but certainly in the hardware section). This is none more so striking than in the mobile devices space. Microsoft’s tablets never took off despite Bill Gate’s proclamations and Windows Mobile’s smartphone market share shrunk to a dismal 5% well behind Symbian, BlackBerry, Android and, of course, the iPhone. And Vista, well let’s just not go there!

Windows Phone 7 sees the Redmond incumbent attempt to try to wrest more control of the highly prized smartphone market. The user interface design is refreshingly original. While a lot of the interface designs of other smartphone OSs seem to be playing the ‘me-too’ with Apple’s iOS in essence replicating its UI design. Windows Phone 7’s interface design features the ‘Tiles’ and ‘hubs’ system. Tiles and hubs link to a group of applications. The people hub for example integrates and reconciles your phone’s contacts together with those on Facebook, Gmail etc. It even suggests contact matches and acts as a log for calls, text messages, emails and status updates all within one hub of the interface design.

The Music and video hub has all the content in one place meaning users do not have to switch from one app to another. The same goes with the Office hub and documents or the Games hub. This makes for a slick navigation experience unlike any other. Users also have the option to add individual apps as tiles on the phone’s user interface design. But this then means that you have to scroll down for longer. The tiles themselves are used by first-party apps to display information. For example, an app for an alarm clock will display when the alarm is supposed to go off etc. It will be interesting to see how developers combine this functionality with their apps to the phone’s interface design.