Log in to like this post! User Experience and Windows Embedded Compact 7 Tobias Komischke / Thursday, March 10, 2011 Microsoft launched the successor of Windows CE 6 last week with events in New York City, Minneapolis, MN and Mountain View, CA. Compact 7 has many cool features. From a user experience perspective the most relevant are that it runs Silverlight for Embedded and supports multi-touch. So designing UIs in Expression Blend brings the world of rich interactivity onto devices. If you wonder about performance, Compact 7 supports symmetric multiprocessing (so you can dedicate a core just to the UI). Having rich interaction design capabilities for devices doesn’t automatically translate into creating rich applications that look and feel the same as on the desktop or the web. There are important differences. That was my angle when I participated in the launch events as a speaker and gave presentations on UI design considerations for small form factors. Topics included: Differences between PCs and Devices Differences between “standard” UI Design best practices and best practices for devices Implications of limited screen real estate on information architecture and navigation Drawbacks of touchscreen technology for the user experience Recommendations on element sizes and spacing, etc. Overview of gestures for multi-touch Options to use auditory signals as part of the UI I’m planning a webcast on MSDN to cover all of these bullets, so look out for the announcement.