I have previously written a brief post on why I think Panorama’s are overrated. In this post, I outline the evolution of the Trivia Monkey UI, highlighting the move from the design choice of panorama to pivot.
Wave 1
I used Nokia Trailers as a model app and selected the Panorama Control as my main page layout control. UI text looks like its gasping for space and breath. Page titles takes up so much space too, essentially constituting a waste. Items don’t really flush from page to page, notice the yellow button boxes on the top of swipeable page do not align. It looked good at first but began to feel unbalanced after a couple days.
Wave 2
Still using Panoramas but with much better ideas on button sizes (equal). More importantly, the design concept of deep theming was implemented and tested out with a couple of colors. Basically, deep theming refers to a design paradigm that allows users make app-wide changes to the look and feel of a particular app (whilst maintaining fidelity to the metro style guidelines).
Wave 3
The important switch is made to using Pivots rather than Panoramas. Notice a much more organised look and feel to the interface ? There is also a more judicious use of space , and actual utilization of screen real estate in displaying content . This is also in alignment with Microsoft’s Metro design language which emphasizes
better focus on the content of applications, relying more on typography and less on graphics (“content before chrome”)
All of these (Wave 1 – 3) happened during the design / beta release process (about 4 weeks) . More changes will likely come along in first main release, but I’m quite pleased with the current iteration.
