Here in Minneapolis I recently started a new meetup called UX Design Discussion. The point of the meetup is for folks in the area to share each other’s work and through the act of sharing learn more about their own designs. We just had our inaugural meetup at SmartThings HQ a few weeks ago, and we…
Hurray! Windows 8.1 is here! It’s amazing how many improvements were added in such a short amount of time! I helped make it, so of course I love it. But I’ve been using it on my tablet for many months now and there are a few things that I’m particularly excited about! Start the way…
Something that I miss from working on the User Experience on Windows 8 is looking at a specific design and talking through it. So I decided to start a meet up here in Minneapolis with that specific purpose. If you’re in Minneapolis and you’re interested sign up on the meetup: http://www.meetup.com/UX-Design-Discussion/ Based on interest I’ll choose a venue and…
Last weekend I had the amazing opportunity to work with 20 incredible women on building some apps for a good cause. Grace Hopper Open Source Day has over 200 people working on different projects. From high school girls working on games, to professionals making updates to Firefox, to humanitarian efforts, Open Source day is all…
One of the most common and desired touch interactions in modern apps is pull to refresh a list of items. We see it phone and tablet apps as the preferred, touch-first way to implement refresh for list. Rather than tapping an awkward button, just keep scrolling. Bam. I’ve seen good and bad implementations of the…
In iOS7, Mail abandons the “swipe” gesture trick from iOS6 with a bona fide slide manipulation that reveals some commands. In this post we look at how to think about building custom touch interactions into your app. Touch on modern app platforms is one of the key reasons why we love our new devices. They feel…
In this post, we’ll continue where we left off in planning the Slide Deck app and think about some of the basic features of the app. This post is part of a series, specifically about building the Slide Deck app end-to-end. Stay tuned for future posts in the series. Start with your goals After we…
I had a great time at the Nerdery talking to Ryan Carlson about many, many things! The vibe is super cool there, reminds me of work at the mothership in Redmond. My favorite themed conference room was the bridge of the enterprise. During the interview we talk about plenty of things, from thoughts on Windows, to…
I’m heading to my first Heartland Developer Conference in Omaha, Nebraska! I’m super excited to meet a whole new crowed of developers, and see what folks are up to! I’m humbled to have the opportunity to keynote the first day. I’ll be talking about my favorite topic: Windows, and doing some cool demos. I’ll also…
For me, a sign of a good vacation is that I’m unplugged and decompressed enough to catch up on some reading. While spending a few days fishing in British Columbia, I finally got around to reading Microinteractions. The book is a quick read, written like a manual for designing complete experiences through the lens of…
In this post we’ll explore a process for framing the high level goals an app and how I applied it to plan the Slide Deck app. This post is part of a series, specifically about building the Slide Deck app end-to-end. Stay tuned for future posts in the series. Where do I start? It can…
These “Who is David” posts cover some relevant topics about my history and life outside my day job as a Technical Evangelist. It’s worth posting because a lot of what I am doing now ties back to where I came from. Before I moved to Minneapolis and switched to be a Technical Evangelist, I was…
Slide Deck, a simple presentation app that I wrote for Windows 8, was just released on the Windows Store. It’s meant for building and presenting lightweight slide decks from a Windows 8 tablet. You should download it and try it out! In a series of blog posts, I plan on deconstructing some of the interesting…
Hi. Welcome to dwcares. I’ve spent the past nine years as an engineer building user experiences at Microsoft and now I’m starting something new. I’m on a one-way flight from Seattle to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Instead of building large-scale products, I’ll be working with the community of mobile app developers as a Technical Evangelist. Along with my…