Amongst his many interactive art projects, was Composite, an app for iPad 2 that uses the device camera view as a seed for finger-painted collages. Composite aims for a visual effect inspired by the collages of Robert Rauschenberg, and invites users to ‘remix their environment to create artistic compositions.’

Having previously worked with Matchbox Mobile on a Kinect-based art installation called Cell, James, in partnership with Microsoft UK, engaged us to port Composite onto Windows Phone.

The Mango update to Windows Phone opened up the ability to work with the live camera feed, which allowed us to focus on translating the experience to Windows Phone.

Although the app already existed on iPad, we had to re-design it entirely to fit the Windows Phone paradigms and form factor. We needed to give fast access to the many image effects and painting options without impinging on the screen painting area. In order to do this we identified the most important use cases and created custom controls that mimicked the Metro look-and-feel.

The result is a lightweight, elegant and responsive app that allows full immersion in the Composite painting experience.

“It was a pleasure to work with Matchbox Mobile again,” said James Alliban, the artist and visionary behind Composite, “it was great to see Composite adapted for the Metro design language”. We look forward to seeing your creations, and you can send your work to submissions@composite-app.com to be featured in the Composite gallery on Flickr.

Yell, as part of their new strategy emphasizing greater digital experiences, and in partnership with Microsoft, wanted to bring the unique Yell customer value to Windows Phone. Seeking a development partner for this project, Yell found an experienced and reputable vendor in Matchbox Mobile, a pioneering mobile software vendor based in Brighton, UK.

Three main goals for the app were: to give users all the features they’d expect from a Yell product; to offer excellent integration with social networks; harmonizing the look-and-feel with the Windows Phone style guide. Hence, balancing features and performance were as critical as fine-tuning appearance and experience for a connected, personal and relevant app.

Yell and Matchbox used a Scrum approach for fast iterations with clear and achievable targets. Throughout the process, Yell engaged in usability testing between builds and made changes to the design accordingly. Our chosen approach meant we could work these optimizations into each new build.

The design team provided pixel-perfect layouts and font descriptions, removing any scope for ambiguity. At the same time, the use of Expression Blend to create and proof the screen layouts meant nothing was lost in translation when it came to wiring in the code.

The design, development and QA teams worked together with Yell in fast iterations to create a high-performance, good-looking app. In less than six weeks we were able to take the initial concepts through rapid development to a finished product ready for submission to the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Through close collaboration between Matchbox Mobile and Yell, along with the tool-set and guidelines provided by Microsoft, Yell for Windows Phone proved to be an outstanding example of rapid mobile application development to exacting standards. The outstanding application design earned a much-coveted Featured slot in the Windows Phone Marketplace app hub for the UK. Yell users can now enjoy a high-quality experience that highlights the beauty and utility of the Windows Phone platform.

Designed and developed by Matchbox Mobile for Windows Phone, Get Me There! is a London navigation application that uses Windows Phone location data plus Bing map-based technology in conjunction with live information from Transport for London, to notify users of any line closures or delays.

The application lets users choose a destination and then, using live timetable information, suggests an optimal London Underground route to ‘get you there’. A walking alternative is also proposed, and displayed on a live map, along with an estimated journey time. The application stores favourite journeys, such as the daily commute, and shows automatic notifications of any real-time changes on the transport network.

The Bing team asked Matchbox Mobile to create a Windows Phone  application that would put Bing’s sophisticated mapping functionalities in mobile users’ hands, allowing them to navigate end-to-end London journeys. With a timescale of just six weeks, the finished application had to look great and be simple to use while processing live route information quickly and effectively. Matchbox Mobile was ideally placed to develop the application, which connects to Windows Azure-based services, given its pioneering achievements with Windows Azure, including the Family Room social networking app for T-Mobile in the USA.

Outstanding design and ease of use were of fundamental importance to Bing, and Matchbox proposed a design that was not only simple to use, but looked incredibly stylish on the Windows Phone handsets. Throughout the design, development and QA, Matchbox and the Bing team collaborated closely, using live issue tracking and status updates to ensure that the project stayed on schedule and that everyone was kept informed of progress.

Twenty Microsoft staff volunteered to beta test the development and fed their findings direct into Matchbox’s issue tracking system to help accelerate development and ensure the finished product excelled. Now that the application is live, metrics from the TFL Windows Azure system are fed back directly to the Bing team to help continue the work of empowering Bing users to make faster, better-informed decisions.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Zune HD is a touch-screen digital media player from Microsoft that features an OLED display for crisp video, HD radio and wireless sync capabilities. As the creator of Zune’s official Facebook and Twitter applications, Matchbox Mobile was the natural choice when Microsoft decided to develop an email client for Zune HD.

“What was originally conceived primarily as a media consumption device has, in response to our customers, evolved into something far bigger,” explains Dave McLauchlan, Senior Business Development Manager, Microsoft Zune. Unlike traditional mobile device application development, creating software for Zune HD is significantly more complex. The email client, with its lists, pages and user controls, had to be built using Zune’s XNA SDK – which is designed for making games rather than standard applications.

The XNA platform differs considerably from event-based app platforms like Silverlight: XNA games are constructed as continuous loops that run 60 times a second. There are no standard controls – such as lists, buttons or text entry fields – which could be dragged onto a form designer. Instead there is a blank canvas and everything must be created from scratch. For a UI-intensive app like an email client, with its many complex lists and structured views on data, this presents an obvious challenge. Further limitations existed in the storage required for the ActiveSync Over The Air specifications needed for an email client.

Matchbox discovered that only a limited HTTP and HTTPS programming interface was available, yet the email client needed to support not only Microsoft Hotmail, but also Exchange and Gmail. At a minimum, users needed to be able to read and respond to their email on the device for all these services.

Matchbox approached the design challenge by referencing the Windows Phone 7 user interface, and mapped this back to the Zune HD version of Metro (which was itself the precursor of Windows Phone’s design language). By doing so, we were able to develop the email client in just four months, including 6 weeks of preliminary beta testing, before the application was launched in March, 2011.

The project was kept on track with weekly update reports to Microsoft, along with regular team conference calls. Matchbox’s interactive development process harnessed feedback from Microsoft and integrated this real-time into the ongoing development. Microsoft was also given access to Matchbox’s online bug tracking system, from where any required actions were triaged by the team in Matchbox’s daily scrum meetings.

“This was a unique development challenge,” said Dave McLauchlan, Senior Business Development Manager Microsoft Zune. “We knew we needed an expert team whose experience and technical abilities were world class, if we were to succeed in giving Zune HD users email functionality. Matchbox’s past development efforts for Zune HD and Windows Phone indicated that they were the right team for the job, and the resulting application proved that we made the right choice in asking them to deliver what was an extremely complex project.”

Mobisante had identified a unique solution combining Windows™ Mobile devices with medical diagnostic devices, that could deliver low cost, extremely mobile ultrasound scans, using a probe attached to a mobile phone. This potentially life-saving device – named MobiUS™ – could prove vital for improving maternal and fetal health in developing countries and rural locations. Mobisante approached Matchbox with an existing application that required a number of updates and enhancements to deliver the required functionality and performance. Turnaround time was just 10 weeks, before the application went into production and additional clinical trials.

A number of updates were required to enable Wi-Fi and e-mail connectivity, and a desktop application for the review and printing of scans by healthcare professionals. Reliability and performance were vital to the success of the project. We were poised and ready to commit to helping such a vital application.

Matchbox assembled a complete Windows Mobile solution team, comprising software architect, graphic designers, developers and software testers to realize the updates needed for the Mobisante application and desktop software.

Plugging into an existing project and code base was the first challenge for Matchbox. Features needed to be added and completed quickly, without adversely affecting the existing parts of the product. We needed to work with custom hardware that was still being prototyped. With only a handful of probes available, resources were limited and had to be shared between the development and test teams.

Our collaborative approach to working with our customers helped the Mobisante team ensure costs were controlled to meet their stringent budget, and kept them fully updated on project progress. The Matchbox developers were in daily direct contact with Mobisante’s project technical lead, while our project manager distributed weekly update reports and conducted weekly team calls.

As a result of the application’s successful development, Mobisante was able to initiate new clinical trials on time. MobiUS was recently cleared by the FDA and  has been demonstrated in business meetings and tradeshows to a very positive response. In February 2011, the GSMA awarded Mobisante the prestigious GSMA M-Health Innovation Award at Mobile World Congress.

Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Qtel presents the Best M-Health Innovation award to Andrew Farrell, Matchbox Mobile partner company representing Mobisante Inc. Image Courtesy of GSMA.

The company needed to implement the application and its server infrastructure while facing a tight deadline. T-Mobile decided to build the solution with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional and base it on Windows Phone 7 and the Windows Azure platform. By taking advantage of an integrated development environment and cloud services, the company completed the project in just six weeks. Using a cloud platform instead of maintaining physical servers has also simplified management. As a result, developers have more time available to focus on enhancing the application. Customers will benefit from a streamlined, reliable communications solution with strong security, and T-Mobile is already designing new features for users to enjoy.

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The Associated Press (AP) has long understood the importance of a mobile presence. AP has applications on all the major mobile devices, and is continually working to improve the user experience offered and to be there on the best and newest phones. The AP Windows Mobile app has been one of the most popular Windows Marketplace downloads, which made it a high-profile case for further improvement.

AP identified two things they wanted to change. First:  a better user interface, more in keeping with the family of AP Mobile products on other platforms. Second:  a better user experience, with a boost in features to match AP’s other Mobile applications; gesture support, video stories and search were three high-priority features that they wished to appear in the new version.

Our aim at Matchbox was to give AP a new Windows Mobile app that matched the state of the art in UI, features and modes of interaction, while also making sure it fit the Windows Mobile conventions and styles.

Our initial research phase involved close collaboration with AP while we examined their other mobile apps, identifying what was common to each app and what made for a consistent and rich user experience. Once we had gathered the data we began to map the intended experience and branding requirements onto a range of Windows Mobile device types. Our iterative design cycle entailed wireframes, flows, and mock-ups, adding detail as we worked in feedback from AP.

As a result of Matchbox Mobile’s involvement, AP for Windows Mobile is now a state-of-the-art application offering the advanced features and modern UI that users have come to expect.

Matchbox and Qualcomm saw the need for a high-profile social networking Web application and decided on the creation of a Twitter widget for Plaza Mobile Internet as an example of the type of compelling experience Plaza Mobile Internet could deliver. This widget would support all the core features of Twitter: following other users, sending out tweets, replying and retweeting.

Our long experience with mobile devices, as well as our specific achievements with creating the official Twitter app on Zune HD, meant we were open to the challenge: to translate the ease-of-use and power of Twitter to a variety of mobile phones using a new web-standard based widget engine.

Our two aims were to create an easy-to-use app that captured the Twitter experience, and also to highlight the benefits of Plaza Mobile Internet by making the widget an inspiration to other potential developers: it would have to deliver a consistent and positive user experience across all suitable devices.

Matchbox worked together with Qualcomm to identify the key experience required, and to focus on the tools provided with Plaza Mobile Internet for rapid application development in a mobile Internet context. As a result of our deep understanding of mobile development, we were able to design, develop, test and deploy a high-quality Plaza widget in under three months. The resulting mobile Internet widget delivers the core Twitter experience including: following Tweeters, sending and replying to Tweets and seeing Twitter user profile images. In addition, the widget acts in two modes – minimized and full-screen – that demonstrate the versatility of the Plaza Mobile Internet widget platform.

The Twitter widget for Plaza Mobile Internet, developed by Matchbox Mobile, is now available to Telcel and Claro Brasil mobile subscribers in both Spanish and Portuguese respectively.

Qualcomm is a trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated.  Plaza and Plaza Mobile Internet are trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated.  All other trademarks are the property of their corresponding owners.

Microsoft’s new Smartphone platform, Windows Phone 7 Series, was given an in-depth showing at the MIX10 conference in Las Vegas on March 15^th. Matchbox Mobile helped make this happen in record time and with excellent results.

During the day1 MIX10 keynote, Microsoft highlighted for ISVs the benefits of the new Windows Phone 7 Series architecture in a series of eye-catching software demos. As part of this demo line-up, Microsoft focused on the Pictures hub, which allows third party developers to plug in applications so that they appeared as part of the photo experience. Matchbox’s new application Colorizer was shown; the app allows the user to take any photo snapped on the phone, make it black and white and then use gestures to brush the color back into specific parts.

In February, we at Matchbox accepted the challenge of creating the Colorizer app in time for MIX10, even though the timescale was aggressive. We had four weeks from the first description of the application until the live demo that would be seen by thousands of enthusiasts world-wide.

Creating this application involved picking up a new tool-set, meeting a very tight deadline and delivering a successful experience that would greatly add to the overall Windows Phone 7 Series demo. We were able to put our Silverlight, Windows Phone and Zune development experiences to good use in hitting the right features and the right performance. Our flexible and fast working practices meant that Colorizer was delivered fully-functional, on-time and was a great success: Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore got a great pop from the MIX10 audience as he demonstrated colorizing a photo of his son using Colorizer.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The Zune HD, Microsoft’s pioneering portable media player, can be extended by third-party apps via the Zune HD Marketplace. Microsoft recognized that Zune HD users were very keen to use popular social networking applications on their Zunes, and so identified Twitter and Facebook as two high-priority apps to make available. The Twitter and Facebook apps for Zune HD would be free downloads for all Zune users, and would couple the frequent-use nature of social networking with the clean, distinctive user interface of the Zune HD.

Matchbox Mobile is the developer behind the million-plus download Facebook application for Windows Mobile, as well as many other high-profile mobile apps. Given Matchbox’s success with social networking software for mobile and our expertise in

generating compelling mobile user experiences, Microsoft chose Matchbox to develop the Twitter and Facebook apps for the Zune HD.

Our first challenge was to ensure that the streamlined and rich user experiences for Facebook and Twitter would translate to the unique Zune HD style, while retaining the distinctive brands of each social networking tool. We worked closely with the Zune team to ensure that our applications would not only fit with the device user experience, but enhance that experience overall.

After the iterative and collaborative design process, we developed our software for the XNA platform, which is more typically geared towards gaming. Despite this we were able to make use of the engine to bring out the best of the Zune platform.

The Twitter and Zune apps for Zune HD are now available as free downloads to the global community of Zune users, who are able to keep up to date on Facebook and Twitter while enjoying the music and interactivity of their Zune HD. With these apps we have demonstrated our ability to solve technical challenges elegantly, and to deliver exciting user experiences on cutting-edge devices.