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How DVLUP helped evolving KeyRing

Freitag, November 7th, 2014

My WindowsPhone app KeyRing (http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=1d031e0b-6ee9-471b-927e-54c859e5a4b4) has a batch of built-in features inspired by DVLUP (http://www.dvlup.com). DVLUP is a developer program by Microsoft for Windows Store and Windows Phone app developers.

Most of the special features in KeyRing resulted from DVLUP challenges:

* The review reminders: KeyRing ask the user to complete a store review after the fifth app start. The code library to implement this behavior was delivered for a DVLUP challenge.

* The multi-language feature: Most DVLUP challenges require an app available in the US store. As my home market is Germany, that requires a multi-language feature. I analyzed market data and decided to support additional languages like Italian and Spanish. For the convenience of multi-lingual users I implemented a language-switching mechanism, that enables the user to select an app language independent of the phone’s UI language.

* WP UI standards support: The DVLUP challenges require support of all sizes of live tiles and other WP standard features, so implementing these is mandatory to taking part.

* For a challenge on the late Nokia Developer Wiki I implemented some NFC communication features and won a price in the NFC category.

* The (ir)regular update challenges inspired me to refresh the user’s app experience with bug fixes or new features quite often.

* Quality challenges: one very inspiring kind of challenge are the Quality challenges, requiring the app the get lots of user reviews with maximum rating. Keeping the user happy is very rewarding in DVLUP!