This post is a small breakdown of the process I went through to build the Golden Goose app now available on the Windows App Marketplace for release to the world. The idea for the app was rather simple to come up with – it is a simple tool that would be useful to me – and hopefully useful to others. Beanstalk provides a hosted SVN service that I use for development – having an app available that can monitor commits to the repos by my team while I’m out of the office is something that I thought would be handy. It doesn’t need to be heavily featured with the ability to make mobile commits, edit my account level, or add/delete repos – it just needs to be able to view what’s gone on with any of my repos and make simple user editing available (ie, add a new user).
With that said I’m not going to step you through the app-specific coding process I took on but rather I’ll introduce some of the components that are part of my workflow. These tools made developing an app for the Windows Phone easier and let me build, prototype, and release an app all within a very short timeframe.
Balsamiq Mockups
Golden Goose for Windows Phone may appear quite simple in size (it has less than 10 screens in total) but it is still useful to plan each screen’s content and ensure that the app has a useable workflow. The choice of a panorama control for the app simplifies much of the in-app navigation but there are still a number of parts not covered by a left or right swipe such as info/about pages, the initial Beanstalk API Settings page, and the drill-down pages for viewing a repository’s details.
Balsamiq Mockups is a great tool for getting some of those flow / user experience issues planned out. Perhaps one of the best things about Balsamiq actually is the fact that it *doesn’t* look too real. It is very obviously used to place content and deal with usability issues. Balsamiq is a great tool to use while you’re still wrapping your head around the functionality so that you don’t become too distracted by the design that your final app will take on.
Additional Information: Balsamiq (http://www.balsamiq.com)