Brief
Design an App to share and stream photos, music and videos for Nokia Windows Phones (using DLNA technology).
Impact
The project team was able to focus on building the application unencumbered from the device launch timeline, this allowed for greater inter-operability testing, identification and addressing connectivity use cases and increasing compatibility with more devices.
There was an added effort for certification and acceptance into the Windows Phone marketplace.
Motivations
Nokia was the world’s largest phone manufacturer and the company was optimized to saturate the market with multiple devices with varying hardware capability at different price points but with the same base OS for all devices.
This approach de-prioritized some software from being included as OS native and as a result, Play To was made available to some Nokia Windows Phones via the Windows Phone marketplace as a free download.
About the project
Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft saw them launching the Lumia family of devices that would run the Windows Phone OS.
Play To is a media sharing and streaming application for the Windows Phone marketplace. It uses the DLNA protocol to allow consumers to connect the Nokia Windows Phone to a supported device (like a TV or speaker)and share photos, music, videos. DLNA is an interoperability standard supported by most large consumer electronics manufacturers.
Discovery & Concepts
Digital media streaming on phones was very nascent at the time, no Windows Phone OEM supported it. I studied an Android application to understand use cases.
Discovery & Concepts
The app icon lent itself for a micro-animation to show connection status.
Discovery & Concepts
Windows Phone OS used the Metro UI with a wide horizontal scroll page (panaroma) which worked well for an app with visual appeal
Discovery & Concepts
I studied the windows phone interaction design guidelines to learn about the do's and dont's of designing for Windows Phone
Design Artifacts
Here is a detailed wireframe for the First Time Launch use case. Users were transitioned to native Wi-fi settings and returned to the app. The history section in the panorama is empty if they canceled set-up (compared to a populated history mosaic).
Design Artifacts
I start out by sketching ideas to quickly contemplate IA and layout, trying out variations, this example shows an early idea before I settled on to the Panaromic layout for the landing page
Design Artifacts
I created task flows to capture each use case, this example shows the multiple possible tasks undertaken by the device and user during the First Time Launch scenario.
Interoperability
DLNA was set-up to aid in interoperability between compatible devices, the OEMs did not agree to interaction standards. As such I had to identify and address cases where users might not realize operations are in progress, here is an example of connecting to a TV where the phone updates status until the display is taken over by the phone
Interoperability
Here is an example of what happens when a user changes photos while sharing is active and when sharing is stopped
