Minneapolis PhizzPop Design Challenge

Published on Jan. 19, 2009
by Kyle

Last Thursday, I presented alongside two colleagues, Barret Haroldson and Andrew Charon. We opposed five other teams from local agencies in a Microsoft design challenge. We spent half of the previous week at Microsoft receiving training in their technologies. We learned how to use Microsoft’s Expression Studio and Visual Studio software and were given a basic understanding of Silverlight and WPF (Windows Presentation Format). The work-flow is an odd one, I suppose it is the most similar to Flex Builder. It involves frequent swapping between your visual description (sets of containers and elements) written in their XML format, XAML and your code logic written in C# with Visual Studios.

At the end of our three days of training we were given a brief. Help a big box retailer (like Wal-Mart) find success in its brick-and-mortar world during our economic recession, and allow them to compete against Netflix, Amazon and iTunes through a web presence. A bit impossible for a three day project?

We built a web application focusing on the social aspects of shopping, public custom lists, shout-style commentary, localizing rss-feeds from favorite brands. This concept was then bridged with an in-store shopping experience using a Microsoft Surface table. The three of us stayed locked in the office long nights, throwing around concepts, designing, and trying to pick up a new application model quickly. My main focus became the multi-touch Surface application, which focused on remote account access and a multi-user shopping experience through the table.

The teams were MOOV w/ Sierra Bravo, Hanson, Space 150, Zeus Jones w/ Sierra Bravo and Colle+McVoy (our team). In the end Zeus Jones won with their ability to re-invent the brief, and distill it to a single sentence. Their Silverlight application was very well designed and functionality behind the application seemed solid. Their in-store presence was lacking and I think that is one area that we were very solid. In the end we are not heading to SXSW to compete nationally, but every single judge did come up to us that night and explain how difficult of a decision it was, so I feel proud of our work. You try designing and developing a web application and a multi-touch application in three days with three people!

In the end it was a great time. I met a lot of cool people, I got to present my ideas to a room filled with talent, I got free Absinthe, a great party and some Microsoft swag.

Below is a photo of the in-store application we built using the Microsoft Surface table. You can see a shopping catalog, watch theatrical trailers, and bring up your personal account information.