Dashboard of upcoming Demo app from DevExpress available soon with their DXv2 Tools

Coming out of //build earlier this fall the entire Microsoft ecosystem was supercharged with the introduction of the Metro design language for the desktop/tablet paradigm.  An area where this new design language is sure to have an impact is in line of business applications.  One of the leaders in this space is DevExpress with their control sets for WinForms, ASP.NET WPF and Silverlight.  We were delighted to kick off a project with DevExpress to coincide with the launch of their new DXv2 set of development tools.

While much of the discussion at //build was around the future release of Windows 8 and how Metro Style apps could be built for new tablet like form factors there was an open question of how those design principles could be applied to existing applications.  Our challenge was to utilize the WinForms set of controls available to DevExpress customers and build a demo application that showcases how Metro design language could be applied to these technologies.  Our Senior UX Designer, Andrew Thompson and Software Engineers, Shaun Martin and Kristy Saunders took up the challenge in early October. We will save the full Metro design story for a future blog post but we wanted to share some of the output from that work.  This is built utilizing WinForms and is a combination of the DevExpress DXv2 control set, a new application theme and a new live tiles control for the Start screen.

We look forward to evolving this application and hopefully continuing the conversation around Metro design principles as we discover additional areas where this new language can lead to great looking and highly efficient business applications.

Be sure to check out all the new technologies DevExpress is releasing at their website www.devexpress.com.  Our work can be seen and highlighted on their DXv2 product page:  http://devexpress.com/Subscriptions/DXperience/DXv2/announce.xml

Dashboard scrolled to the right to expose additional detail

Detail view of a tracked opportunity

New live tiles start screen to launch the “CRM Dashboard” demo application