Callvenient - Windows 8 App Summary

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IMAGINE CUP 2013

WINDOWS 8 APP CHALLENGE

APP SUMMARY

• What is the goal of your project?Nowadays, anytime and anywhere can be a really distracting environment. The constant ringing and buzzing of our devices can sometimes disrupt our work, dinners, family time, and even our sleep.

Our main goal is to enable people to be more focused on their daily activities reducing the number of interruptions during their appointments.

• Name and description of your appOur solution to the scenario described is Callvenient, an app that knows the moments you don’t want to be interrupted and based on that, handles your incoming calls made by other phones or skype through Callvenient, helping people find the best ways and times to contact you.

To make it possible, you need to login with your Microsoft account, and then, Callvenient will automatically sync with your Contacts and your Calendar. This allows the app to fetch your appointment informations and keep track of your daily agenda. This way, when people try to reach you at an inconvenient moment, Callvenient will act before the call is effectively made, and if you are busy, it’ll send a notification to the caller that it isn’t a great time because you’re engaged in an important event, and also, will provide your caller with some options to contact you in a better time, or less distracting way.

It doesn’t simply coldly block your incoming calls during inconvenient moments, but the opposite, it handles them in a much more personal way offering options to the connection to happen in the most convenient time.

APP SUMMARY (CONTINUED)

• Windows 8 App design and user experienceCallvenient was designed with full attention to details, from the background to the custom icons and animations. All these little pieces were put together to create our interface and make it look not just beautiful, but also digital, fast and enjoyable.

We used different font sizes and colors in the headers, sub-headers and content to emphasize the visual hierarchy of the content and provide what the user needs, being an information or a button to execute an action, as fast as possible. This can be noticed in the menu present in the contacts page, where the user can access the main features like calling, text, schedule just with one tap.


• Windows 8 platform functionalityTo enhance the user experience and help the user achieve his objectives, we took advantage of a series of windows 8 features:

• Share contract: When you create a busy moment via the status page, you can share your appointment with your contacts. Very useful if you’re entering a meeting and want to suggest participants to be unreachable as well.

• Toast notification: You get toast notifications for when the time for a scheduled call comes, when you are entering on busy mode (if on the app settings you’ve set to be warned before going busy) and when someone among your contacts starts using Callvenient. These are some examples of situations you’ll be notified by a toast notification.

• Live Tile: Since Callvenient missed calls can carry useful informations from the calls, such as the subject the missed call intended to discuss and other details, users will want to check them frequently. For that matter, Callvenient uses a counter in the tile to display how many lost calls you have. The live tile also changes its color according to your current status right in Start Screen.

• Semantic zoom: Browse through your contacts from the Home page using semantic zoom.

• Animations: The animations are an important characteristic of Callvenient, especially in the screens that displays our most original features, like the checking screen and the contact status screen.


• Originality and InnovationHundreds of apps enhances the connection between you and the people you care about. Some of them are really smart and personal. But the way we call each other hasn’t changed much since a long time ago.

Other apps and devices just coldly block your incoming calls and offer few or no options to treat these calling attempts like a human would.

Callvenient can provide you not only a personal but efficient assistance for your connections to happen more conveniently. That’s why our app is different.

Callvenient is also innovative in the way it handles your incoming calls without the need of any call signal to be sent, reducing the distractions to zero, as your device won’t even vibrate during incoming undesirable calls.

It’s synchronization with calendar appointments is also an incredible feature that can automate completely the recognition of moments you don’t want to be interrupted.

• Presentation & PolishThe key points in our video are the moments when the app is being used. The first one, when Alice is at an important meeting with her clients shows exactly how our app works and makes clear that our main action happens before the call is made, preventing Alice’s phone from ringing and interrupting her appointment. Also, this part illustrates the actions available to the caller in that situation, when he will be able to schedule the call, text, leave her the subject for the call or call her anyway.

APP SUMMARY (CONTINUED)• Pre-existing source code

In Callvenient, we used:• Windows Phone toolkit• Mobile Service Client Library• Live Connect SDK

WINDOWS 8 STYLE DESIGNAND USER EXPERIENCE

TAILORED USER EXPERIENCE

• What are the specific user goals your app addresses?Our app is designed to address these major user goals

• Don’t be interrupted during my important appointments or personal time

• Don’t interrupt my contacts during their important appointments and personal time

• Be more focused and productive in my daily activities

• Describe the scenarios your users will experience while

using your app.With our app, you will be able to stop your interruptions anytime. For example, if you are going to do something that needs your attention using your desktop or tablet and don’t want to be interrupted by skype calls or your phone ringing, you can go to Callvenient and with a few taps, change your status. The app will automatically handle the calls made to your phone or Skype using Callvenient.

Or, if you synchronized Callvenient with your calendar, it will do all that automatically for you. If you are going to a meeting and it`s registered in your calendar, our app will predict that is going to change your status and in the right time, will do that for you.

WINDOWS 8 STYLING AND LAYOUTThe Windows 8 style can be viewed in Callvenient by our combination of typography, icons and animations to create a content focused interface.In the entire app, we organize the content in a grid and display it with the Segoe typeface using variations of size, color and weight to create the hierarchy that makes it readable and easily accessible. Also, between headers, titles and text, we applied standardized margins to increase the separation of different categories of content.

Appointments group in the tablet

The app background. Instead of using a solid color or a photo, we

created a pattern with a light effect to achieve a depth in the interface.

WINDOWS 8 STYLING AND LAYOUT

The status group, where you can see your current status and change it to busy.


The groups headers


Custom buttons Custom icons and buttons

The status screen in the Windows Store App and Phone App before and

after the set up of a busy moment. The change of the color to red shows

the user that he is currently busy.


INTERACTIONSUsing Callvenient, you will interact directly with the content, always tapping right in the information to execute the main actions. Additional actions, the ones that the user won’t need frequently, are displayed in the bottom app bar, that is related to the current view or page.

User accessing contact detail page tapping right on the contact photo.

The app bar being displayed in the contact details page after a swipe

gesture.

The app bar was used to place commands relevant to the context of the

user, and also navigational commands like the home button.

INTERACTIONS

NAVIGATIONCallvenient uses the hierarchical system to organize its content. The app’s first page is a Hub with different categories of content that maps to the sections and details pages. Especially in the Contacts group, the section page is accessed with a semantic zoom in the group of photos, and the detail page of a contact can be directly accessed with a tap in his or her photo.To ease the users navigation, we used the Header with a persistent back button and also the home button in the bottom app bar.

Tablet hub page showing different groups of content.

NAVIGATION

Contacts semantic zoom.

NAVIGATION

The header with persistent back button and, in the app bar, the

home button.

NAVIGATION

FAST & FLUIDWe used animations to make the app more organic and fluid, especially in the screens that have our most unique features.

• Checking: This animation plays while Callvenient is accessing it’s Azure database to check if the contact being called is busy or not. When Callvenient gets the answer, it plays the transition, that is also custom animated, between the checking and the contact current status screen.

• Status change: When the user configures it’s busy moment and taps the “Get busy” button, the page goes from the available to the busy mode, and this is shown with an animation of the elements and their colors, changing it from green to red.

Video displaying checking animation in the tablet.

FAST & FLUID

Video displaying checking animation in the

phone.

FAST & FLUID

Video displaying status change animation in the phone.


WINDOWS 8 PLATFORM

VIEWSCallvenient adapts itself to different screen resolutions and orientations.

Tablet in landscape mode.

VIEWS

Tablet in portrait mode.

CONTRACTSCallvenient uses the settings and share contracts. In the settings, the user can configure the options to make the app fit its own needs. And the share contract can be used to share a busy moment created in the status page.

Settings contract

Here, the user can configure Callvenient, read the privacy policy or configure his synchronized account.

TILESIn the Callvenient live tile, we display the current status of the user by the color and, by a counter, how many lost calls he has.

The live tiles from the phone and tablet when the user is available.

When the user is busy, the tile changes to red and the Callvenientlogo display an exclamation.

When somebody calls you using Callvenient but, for some reason, you didn`t answer, it`s counted like a missed call and you get this information in the tile.

NOTIFICATIONSCallvenient uses toast notifications in three situations. When the selected time for a scheduled call comes, when the user is entering on busy mode and when somebody shares an appointment with you. All of them can be tapped, the first to make the call, the second to cancel the change to busy mode, and the third to accept the appointment or not.

Notification that a user wants to share an appointment with you.

ANYTIME, ANYWHERECallvenient exists in any Windows 8 device, be it your stationary work computer, or your personal laptop, tablet, or Windows Phone. It’s there for you, anytime and anywhere.

You can switch between devices and still have a seamless experience. Schedule calls on the phone and be reminded on the tablet. Set a busy status on the PC and not be bothered on the phone, and so on!

ROAMINGCallvenient uses Azure`s Mobile Service Client Libraries to synchronize your status and scheduled calls with all your devices. When handling the calls you are going to make through Skype or phone, the app firstly checks your agenda on our Azure Mobile Service using an internet connection and the Mobile Service Client Libraries and, by the time it realizes that it isn’t a great time because of your busy appointment, it will provide the callers with some options to contact you in a better time.

And of course, if you are available, the call will be completed directly.

THANK YOU!

Callvenient - Windows 8 App Summary

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Transcript of Callvenient - Windows 8 App Summary