I'm Diego

My last project on the Bing design team was Bing for iPad. It was one of the first iOS apps shipped by Microsoft. The goal was to improve the existing web offering by making it more app like and touch friendly. As a Designer II, I was responsible for the framework and interaction design, feature design, and collaborated on the visual design. Bing for iPad was very successful, and it became the #1 free iPad app in the Apple App Store in less than 24 hours. It achieved PC Mag Editors’ Choice rating and won a Design & Engineering Showcase Award at CES 2012.

Homepage

We wanted to maintain the iconic Bing homepage look and feel, so Bing for iPad also utilized the large beautiful image of the day as the center piece of the homepage. In addition, we incorporated aspects of DeskBar and BingBar by adding the app tiles to the bottom of the screen. The app tiles were later also introduced on the Bing homepage on the web.

The search results page (SERP) is the bread and butter of the bing.com experience. On Bing for iPad, we wanted to keep the same rich results but make them more touch friendly. The touch optimized SERP introduced larger type and clear action buttons. In addition, unlike the website, the user could use voice search to perform a query.

Weather

The weather search results took the user to a rich page showcasing beautiful imagery and rich forecast data from multiple sources. In addition, the user had the ability to add locations as favorites for easy access.

Movies

Another of the Bing verticals with rich content was movies. When a movie search was performed, we redirected the user to a rich gallery with information about the movie, trailers, cast and theater information. Bing for iPad used a swipe-able page architecture where pages overlaid each other. Users could swipe these pages left or right to navigate back and forward.

News

Bing for iPad also provided the user with a rich news experience. The touch friendly interface allowed the user to swipe through carrousels to access dozens of stories aggregated from multiple sources.

Finance

The Finance vertical in Bing aggregated the best from the web in one single view. The user was able to consume financial data trends with beautiful graphs, read the latest market news, and read the latest Tweets from influential sources.

Galleries

Richness of content was one of the core goals of Bing for iPad, so throughout the experience we showcased results with image rich galleries. The above examples are: events, attractions, malls, and collections.

Maps

Before Bing for iPad, Bing maps was not optimized for touch devices. Interaction with the maps on the website was clumsy and not very precise. With Bing for iPad the touch controls were significantly improved.

Images

Image search also benefited from the touch capabilities of Bing for iPad. Search galleries allowed the user to open images and use multi-touch to zoom-in and pan beautiful images.

Trends

A new feature that was introduced with Bing for iPad was the top searches or trending page. Within this page, editors curated the top trending searches which were displayed using rich imagery from bing.com.

Bing's iPad app goes far beyond its bigger search competitor's. The Trends page lets you glean the week's top stories, and the app adds voice search, map directions, and more, all in a nifty swipe-driven interface. Michael Muchmore - April 11, 2011

Design contributors: Paul Ray, Rodney Edwards, Manuel Lima, Darwin Yamamoto, Christina Koehn, Eitan Nguyen

OTHER PROJECTS

To view my older projects (2005-2009) visit my old site.