After shipping the Bing Windows 8 apps with the release of Windows 8, I was given the task to port four of the apps into the Windows Phone 8 platform. The goal was to keep as much feature parity between the desktop apps and their mobile counterparts. The biggest challenge was to maintain the magazine like look and feel and the aggressive timelines (just a little over 3 months). As a Senior Design Lead, I was responsible for leading the team working on the UX framework and feature design of the mobile app suite.
News
Like its big brother desktop version, the News app had great imagery, thousands of sources, and UI which receded into the background to make the content shine. The mobile app also had more density than the desktop version which required fewer swipes and scrolls to access the news.
Weather
Immersive imagery, impactful typography and great data visualization made the Bing Weather app one of the most popular apps in the Windows Phone 8 app store.
Finance
Throughout the mobile app suite, we made small design changes to optimize for mobile scenarios. On mobile the finance app led with market graphs and stock statistics instead of a hero story. We made the change because research found that, on mobile, users preferred to access glanceable financial data over reading long stories.
Sports
The sports app used the color themes like its desktop big brother but was strongly tilted toward data and statistics over news and images. We designed for the “sports fanatic on the go”, who was interested on the latest scoreboards, standings, and play by play game highlights.