Things Twitter had to take care of when designing Twitter for Windows 10

Hammad Saleem

Things Twitter had to take care of when designing their Windows 10 app

Windows 10 is now available for users across the globe, and this means popular app developers have to make sure they update their apps with the new design language and guidelines from the software giant. Twitter released their updated app for Windows 10 and made sure to provide an intuitive user experience and design that goes on with Windows 10. 

Yesterday, the folks at Twitter also mentioned what they had to go through while designing the new app, and factors they had to care from a user’s perspective. Whenever a company works on an update, the first and foremost is the bug fixes and problems they’re trying to solve, and in this case, it was to offer users with a fresh look and feel.

Next up is the login screen. It’s the first thing that shows up whenever you open any app. If it’s not up to the mark, there’s a possibility that the user may not get a good first impression. The company also worked hard to incorporate accent colors within the app as an added customization option, but it was a little “overpowering”. The design offers accent colors for the left pane to match that of Windows 10, as well as for links and for the title bar across the top.

One of the most prominent features for Windows and Windows Phone are the Live Tiles. Live Tiles don’t only offer shortcut for the app, but also display interesting information from within the app. In this instance, it shows the most relevant content in the Live Tile. 

Last but not the least is the Universal Apps framework introduced by the software giant in Windows 10, which basically makes sure the app displays correctly on different screen sizes, ranging from phones to tablets to big screens. The company had to find a way to make sure it displays properly on different devices. The company said in a blog post,

“We set out to make these concepts work with Twitter’s timeline and had a few options. We could scale the timeline to the entire width of the window, meaning giant and often blurry scaled up images on big screens. Another option we explored was using multi-column layout, similar to what we do with TweetDeck. A third approach explored a more web-oriented approach that places the timeline in the middle with white space on the sides.”

Nonetheless, Twitter for Windows 10 offers a simple yet catchy design which looks great in my opinion.