The Windows® Phone 7 device is a brand new platform that offers a wealth of features to developers and designers. The team at Tailspin wanted to ensure that their mobile client application makes the best possible use of the platform and also plays by the rules. The application follows the recommended usability guidelines to ensure the optimal user experience and the “good citizen” best practices guidelines to ensure that the application makes efficient use of resources on the device in the context of the phone’s functionality and other installed applications. They identified three sets of goals for the design and development of the application: usability goals, non-functional goals, and development process goals.
Note: For more information about Windows Phone 7 UI design guidelines, see UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 from the Microsoft® Download Center (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=183218).
Usability Goals
The usability goals are designed to ensure that the user’s experience of the application meets her expectations for applications on a Windows Phone 7 device. The following table lists some examples.
Non-Functional Goals
The non-functional goals describe expected behaviors for the application, including some good citizen behaviors that relate to the limited resources on the device. The following table lists some examples.
Development Process Goals
Tailspin also identified a number of goals that relate to their own development processes. The following table lists some examples.