Prototype Android Apps in Microsoft SketchFlow

(If you are a C# | XAML dev and prototype cross-platform apps, Xamarin anyone, these template projects can make your job very easy!)

This is third post in the series of SketchFlow template projects for prototyping apps for mobile devices. Last two posts were for Windows Phone & iPhone 6.

Pull this and various platform template SketchFlow projects from GitHub.

This post introduces Android Lollipop template project for SketchFlow. For this first Android template I chose LG G3 phone skeleton as base and added Lollipop home screen for more in-time feel in prototype. As and when I get time I will add more Android devices which can be easily swapped in the prototype in seconds.

For a quick demo of Android Lollipop prototype template project, have a look at this video:

Some screenshots of the project in action:

App Mock Up

Sharp Snippets

You are toying with an idea of creating a new app. If you are not replicating functionality of some other app, you would go through the process of visualizing your idea in the form of app UI. You don’t want to jump into code at this time but want to feel how information in the app will be placed and how it will look inside the screen boundaries. This process is a pre-cursor to UX development or full-fledged wire-frame creation. This process of visualizing the idea takes some time before you are confident about how you want to take your app forward and jump into some sort of coding. Paper+pen or whiteboard+marker are good way to work through fluid ideas and layout information. This is not the phase when you are working on UX or designing UI, but just laying out ideas in rough screens. I personally like drawing and…

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iPhone 6 Project For App Prototyping in Microsoft SketchFlow

I have updated Microsoft Blend SketchFlow project for latest iPhone 6 frame. Download projects from GitHub. As earlier the project has built in iPhone 6 frame, animated keyboard image, iPhone 6 home screen, and clickable home button.

My earlier posts have detailed information about other Sketchflow projects and video tutorial of how to use them.

SketchFlow is a powerful prototyping tool. In last post I shared Windows Phone SketchFlow template project. Here I am sharing iPhone skeleton project for SketchFlow. Both these projects are similar in functionality with different phone frames. Android projects are on their way. Read more…

App Marketing: Perspective Marketing Image Template (PSD)

Recently I created an XCF template for app marketing and wrote a post about how to use it.

Nokia Lumia 1520 is a gorgeous phone. So is your Windows Phone app’s hub in panorama. And you do know that a well developed app is just the half way. Getting the app to its audience is the second half. I created this layered GIMP image to easily sandwich a panorama hub between the layers and showcase your app with your own shining colors. You need to do following to create your app’s panorama with this template: Read more…

Some people wanted the template in PSD format. So, here you are.

Hope you find it useful.

Prototype iPhone Apps in SketchFlow

Edit: Updated for iPhone 6

Download projects from GitHub.

SketchFlow is a powerful prototyping tool. In last post I shared Windows Phone SketchFlow template project. Here I am sharing iPhone skeleton project for SketchFlow. Both these projects are similar in functionality with different phone frames. Android projects are on their way.

Download projects from GitHub.

Excerpt from earlier Post:

Those who have exposure to Visual Studio Blend, WPF/Silverlight developers, SketchFlow comes as natural extension to quickly prototype app ideas. Other prototyping tools are – Pencil, Balsamiq,Axure, SmartDraw, Visio etc. Recently, I wrote an introductory post about open source prototyping tool, Pencil, with example navigation flow screens. In my experience I found SketchFlow to be very efficient in creating high-fidelity prototypes. This project template gives, out-of-the-box, phone frame images, dummy keyboard with interactive states, back button, and home button. The phone frame images included are – Windows Phone emulator stock image, Nokia Lumia 925, Nokia Lumia 1520, and HTC One. Android phones and iPhone are in plans.

For a quick demo, have a look at this video:

Following are some screen shots of the SketchFlow player:

Prototype Windows Phone App in SketchFlow

Download the template project from GitHub.

[This post got a mention on Microsoft Channel 9 This Week]

SketchFlow is one of the best prototyping tools available. SketchFlow is part of Blend which is now an integrated tool with Visual Studio. Those who have exposure to Blend, WPF/Silverlight developers, SketchFlow comes as natural extension to quickly prototype app ideas. Other prototyping tools are – Pencil, Balsamiq,Axure, SmartDraw, Visio etc. Recently, I wrote an introductory post about open source prototyping tool, Pencil, with example navigation flow screens. In my experience I found SketchFlow to be very efficient in creating high-fidelity prototypes. SketchFlow provides free form screens to create any type of prototypes – web site, web app, SPI, desktop app, or smartphone apps. This is powerful. But, with great power comes great boilerplate work :D. I so needed some kind of Windows Phone specific template project in SketchFlow which I could use to quickly draw my pages in and let template take care of generic phone specific look and feel (interactions). I didn’t find one. So I created one. This project template gives, out-of-the-box, phone frame images, dummy keyboard with interactive states, back button, and home button. The phone frame images included are – Windows Phone emulator stock image, Nokia Lumia 925, Nokia Lumia 1520, and HTC One. Android phones and iPhone (available now) are in plans.

Watch this video for a quick go through of the project and also to know how you can swap phone frames in seconds, throughout all prototype screens in the project:

Following are some of the screen shots of the project in action:

And yes, with my other project you can create prototypes for iPhone in Microsoft SketchFlow.

Happy mocking-up! 😀

App Marketing: Perspective Marketing Image Template

[This post got a mention on Microsoft Channel 9 This Week]

Nokia Lumia 1520 is a gorgeous phone. So is your Windows Phone app’s hub in panorama. And you do know that a well developed app is just the half way. Getting the app to its audience is the second half. I created this layered GIMP image to easily sandwich a panorama hub between the layers and showcase your app with your own shining colors. You need to do following to create your app’s panorama with this template:

• Have all your panorama pages in a single image. 4 or 5 pages will work great.
• Copy aforesaid panorama image in this XCF.
• Adjust perspective, add your colors, and export!

With very little efforts you can have your app in your choice of colors.

Following is the detailed step-by-step of the process with example of Windows Phone Channel 9 app:

First, grab the GIMP XCF (PSD here). If you do not have GIMP, download here, it’s open-source and free. Prepare an image of all the panorama items of your app (a little help here).

Layers!

Open PanoramaAppShowcaseOn1520.xcf in GIMP. Look at the Layers windows. There are multiple groups and layers inside. Some layers/groups are not editable. Their names start with [DoNotEdit]. So, do not edit them. The layers you will be editing are – “YourApp.YourAppGoesHere”, “UseBucketToolAndFillAnyColorHere”, and “UseBucketToolAndFillBackgroundColor”.

Bring Your App In

1. Open “YourApp” layer group and select “YourAppGoesHere” layer.
2. Copy or Open As Layer from File menu, your app’s panorama image. If you Open As Layer, drag it down to just above YourAppGoesHere and right click and merge down. If you copy, as you see in image, a floating layer will be created.
3. Click on Anchor the floating button at the bottom. You will see now your panorama image is in the layer YourAppGoesHere

Prepare to Skew

1. Make sure YourAppGoesHere layer is selected.
2. Slide opacity to about 50.
3. Select Layer > “Autocrop Layer” menu to crop this layer. You will see yellow marching ant line around the layer
4. Choose perspective tool.

Go 3D

The layer now has a grid with 4 handles on corners.

1. Grab a corner and drag it as close as possible to the corresponding corner on white base. Don’t worry about matching corners exactly, just keep close. Repeat the process for all corners. Look at black arrows in the image.

Now your image’s layout looks something like this:

Micro Adjust and Transform

You are still in Perspective transform edit mode. Here you will zoom-in to every corner and match every corner exactly with the corner of the white base.

1. To zoom-in to the corner you want to adjust, take your mouse pointer on the corner, and ctrl+mousewheelup to zoom-in max. Match both the corners pixel perfect. Repeat for all the four corners. Zoom-in and out to make sure all the corners are matching.
2. Click on Transform button.

Your image now looks something like this:

Your Colors

These steps are to easily change phone’s color.
1. Select UseBucketToolAndFillAnyColorHere layer.
2. Click on foreground color and pick a color from color picker.
3. Select Bucket tool from Tools menu
4. Click anywhere inside the image

More Color and Done

1. If you want to edit background color select UseBucketFillBackgroundColor.
2. Click on foreground color and pick a color from color picker.
3. Click anywhere on image
4. Open File menu and select Export As… Type “filename.png” in the File Name field and save.

If everything goes well, you will have a gorgeous image like this for your app:

And this is my app in the same template:

Accelerate App Reviews

Asking for review in your app? It’s tricky. If not done with due diligence, on encountering your request to review, users might get annoyed and still worse, they could rate your app low even though they liked it. A simplistic solution of asking for review after N days from installation (or first use) and N days after user has chosen “remind me later”, is not an appropriate solution. Why? User might have installed your app, ran it, exited, came back after N days and they were presented with a review request message, whereas, they had only used the app once. This is not a nice experience. Asking for review when user is exiting the app is less effective because user already has something else in their mind when they are coming out of the app.

Though there is no one solution that fits all, but this is how I try to tackle this scenario in my app. It’s not the “number of days” but “total minutes user has used your app” is my criteria to decide the interval of popping review message. I keep a record of overall usage of the app, and after a designated number of minutes, I pop a request to user. You might have to go through some trial and error to come up with the right “number of minutes” when you want to request. Determine whether your app is highly immersive or a quick open and shut type of app. In an immersive app|game you might want your review requests at longer intervals. In a less immersive app, you would rather ask earlier and at a less frequency. Then, you might want to gradually decrease the interval between requests during session. Don’t forget to code your logic in such a way that you could easily tune request intervals and accumulative usage time and update your app as soon as you realize that a change in the times is required. Here is pseudo-code for indication purpose:

[THIS IS PSEUDO CODE FOR INDICATION ONLY]

constant int POP_REQUEST_AFTER_ACCUMULATIVE_USAGE (adjusting knob) 
constant int POP_REQUEST_INTERVAL (adjusting knob : Initial interval between requests in the session) 
constant int POP_REQUEST_INTERVAL_DECREASE_BY (adjusting knob : Decrease interval after every request) 
constant int POP_REQUEST_INTERVAL_MINIMUM (adjusting knob : interval should not go below this)

int AccumulativeAppUsage (persist this info in storage)
DateTime LastReviewRequest;
Int ReviewRequestInterval = POP_REQUEST_INTERVAL;

App.Start | App.Activate
	DateTime AppStart
	LastReviewRequest = DateTime.Now //reset

App.Stop | App.Deactivate
	AccumulativeAppUsage += DateTime.NOW – AppStart
	Save AccumulativeAppUsage

Page.[identify the event which triggers PopRequest method]
	PopRequest()

PopRequest()
	totalUsageTillNow = AccumulativeAppUsage += DateTime.NOW – AppStart
	if(totalUsageTillNow >= POP_REQUEST_AFTER_ACCUMULATIVE_USAGE)
	{
		If(DateTime.Now – LastReviewRequest >= ReviewRequestInterval)
		{
			Show review request
			LastReviewRequest = DateTime.Now
			If(ReviewRequestInterval > POP_REQUEST_INTERVAL_MINIMUM)
				ReviewRequestInterval -= POP_REQUEST_INTERVAL_DECREASE_BY
		}
	}

App Marketing: Panorama Image Template

(An improved one with perspective)

If your app has a panorama hub, an image showing all the pano items with device could be a very impressive marketing image. I have created this template which makes your life a bit easier, if you want to create such image. You can download the template XCF image file here (yes this is a GIMP template 0_0. I may create PSD edition if you insist). Currently the device image in this template is Microsoft Windows Phone stock emulator image, Nokia Lumia device images could also come in future. When you open this XCF in GIMP you get something like this:

Take snapshots of your app’s pano items from emulator and replace screen 1, 2, 3, and 4 in GIMP with respective images. Once you are satisfied with the image, export it to JPG/PNG with File > Export option. You might want to scale the image down before you send it out. Open the exported JPG in GIMP and use Image > Scale option to scale the image to desired scale.

Notes:

• This is 1080P edition (480X800 version is on its way, see below), so your emulator/device screen shots should also be 1080P.
• If your pano has BG image, disable it before you take screen shots and give it a plain #00ff00 color. After copying the screens in GIMP, select #00ff00 color in layer and replace it with alpha. Repeat for all pano items. In the end have a stitched, single background image, and copy it on the background layer in GIMP. You are doomed if you have #00ff00 color in other parts of your pano images, other than BG :-D. (Just kidding, choose some other color for BG which is unique).
• Because of parallax effect in panorama, you will get repetitive panorama title in your app’s screen shots. Initially, copy the screen as they are. Then, in GIMP, with Rectangle selection tool (R), select the title part, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V to make another layer. Do same with all the pano items. Select Move tool (M) and move pano item 2, 3, 4’s title sections to left to adjust with pano item 1.
• Watch this space for a 480X800 version. Or follow me on Twitter @sanjayAtPilcrow.