mdta design » london travel

City Travel London – An Update

mdta — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:32:25 +0000

Now I know it has been quite a while since I last wrote a new blog entry, but with working on the City Travel London app (Formerly London Travel London), some time in hospital back in November, and a recent trip to Tokyo after the terrible tsunami and earthquakes which devastated that wonderful country – I have been a little busy.

We have made great progress since our initial launch of the free Windows Phone 7 app. Then in February with the launch of our paid app, with many more features and setup for future updates. But along with progress, there have been road bumps and problems along the way, so I would like to detail a few of them so users and those who are just interested in the apps, have some idea why things may seem like they are taking longer to release, and give an insight at what is to come.

What is coming next

I promised we would be releasing an update a week or so ago, which would bring station status, information, and train times for the platforms. Free time has been at a premium recently, with unexpected events cropping up so it will be a few days more before that update will be ready for testing, as well as problems with the Transport for London data services which have proven to be less than reliable.

However the lack of free time for our developers has not been a totally bad thing, because it has given me time to go over every facet of the app’s design and features, and I am able to announce, a totally revamped design will be coming, along side integrated Journey Planning.

Whilst we know there are a few apps out there for Windows Phone which have some of these features, but we believe our application has the best design, and the best future ahead of it with all the features we have planned!

London Travel – Now Available

mdta — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:57:17 +0000

Now that Windows Phone 7 has launched in the UK and Europe, and on Nov 8th in the US, it’s time to update you all on our London Travel project, what’s available right now, and what’s to come in the future.

*Open this link with Internet Explorer or Search “London Travel” with your Zune Software

A few months back, as launch details started being released for the new Windows Phones, Me, Michael and Levente began to realise our app idea was a bit too ambitious to have ready for launch, so we had to give some thought to what we should do. None of us wanted to compromise the original idea, so we decided to develop two apps instead of the one. This would enable us to have an app ready for launch, and to have a presence on the Windows Phone App Marketplace, allowing us the time we need to complete development on our fully featured app.

It was for this reason we made the decision to offer the simplifyed version for free, and to focus development efforts on having this free app ready. An added benefit with this, is the ability to recieve feedback on some of the UI elements, and more technical aspects of our app, which we could use to help improve the other app. One of the issues we came up against, is the unreliable nature of the Transport for London’s data services, which resulted in us having to completely re-write our web service which handles the transfer and formatting of the data from TfL, to our app. We also took the opportunity to implement Push Notifications in both the free and pro apps, for services chosen by the user.

So we now move on to our main project… London Travel Pro

With our first app now available to download, we move our focus onto our original project. We have been working with people from Microsoft UK, who gave me the opportunity in early October, to test both our apps on a developer handset, and to discuss some of the more technical aspects of the development and submission process, so thank you to Mike Ormond and Paul Foster for giving me that opportunity. I was lucky enough to also meet some of the guys who have been developing the pretty cool Graphic.ly app, and one of the guys responsible for Windows Phone marketing in the UK

I also have been talking to some people at TfL to ensure our app complies with all the requirements set out by their interlectual property team, and as such we have made a number of tweaks which I believe has greatly improved the look and functionality of the app, as well as ensured that we will have no problems in the future with complience – a problem many other apps for other platforms may find themselves experiencing, once TfL begin taking legal action.

So there we have it… Work continues, and if you can’t wait, we have a free app for you to use until we can deliver our pride and joy. We will be tweeting progress as we complete various parts of it, and if you have any feedback, problems, criticism or praise, please tweet us @londontravelapp.

London Travel App – Pre Beta Update

mdta — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 18:27:59 +0000

This is just a quick updated to show how things have progressed.

Here is the Panorama main UI of my app looks so far. Things are not completely final, but they are settling in nicely.

I have two great and enthusiastic people on board helping me realise this app, as well as help from a great guy at Microsoft UK.

Michael Josiah is working on building a web service which aggregates the various data feeds and API’s from Transport for London and then processes them into a powerful data pool which the app will make use of, with data optimised to run well on the phone, and provide small and compact downloads, so it should never slow you down!

Levente Mihaly is someone with experience of data driven Silverlight apps, and will be taking the UI code I am building, and making it function with the live data our app will be using. We will be making use of the MVVM (Modal, View, View Modal) practice in building applications which he is a proponant of.

Hopefully some time soon, we will have a beta version which I will detail online and on YouTube, before testing on real phone devices in September, for a launch of Version 1.0 in October. Apart from this initial front end UI, a lot has been done for the more detailed areas of the app, and the presentation of data in a clear and clean manner, as well as significant work on the back end.

Windows Phone 7 App – London Travel

mdta — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:04:06 +0000

How could I be so forgetful, as to not make a quick update about the latest project I am working on. As a designer I have had to call upon the help of professional programmers to get this idea of the ground. Anyway, here is my idea for a Windows Phone 7 App, London Travel.

Taking advantage of the Panoramic UI, and the fact that the Windows Phone design is based on transport signage and information design, what is better than a Transport Service and Information app to really get the most out of the UI.

So far, I have taken those mock ups and have really polished them, and slowly I am getting to grips with the development tools and platform, to create (and sometimes code up) the various pieces that will be needed for the app. I have a volunteer on board who is coding up the data and web components that are at the heart of this app, but am still looking for people with Silverlight and C# experience who could help me ensure the various controls and code I am working on will work well, and make sure I don’t screw everything up.

If anyone is out there, willing to help us out, please do get in touch via email or twitter and if the app is a success, you will be listed on the credits/about page, with a link to your twitter or website, and if we are done before october, we may even be a launch day release!

Here are some sites where I have been talking about my app: