Few week ago, I had gone through a Windows Phone 7 workshop conducted by Microsoft Malaysia for students. I was required to develop an application in order to try out the Windows Phone marketplace submission process. Lot of ideas flowing through my mind, but none of those great ideas can be completed within 2 days time limit. So I decided to create a simple application. Just a simple application doesn’t make thing interesting, so I did some research before I start coding (something I learn in Imagine Cup ya).

I decided to create a simple tally counter application. Then I do a simple search on Windows Phone marketplace for similar applications. As I expected, there are quite a number of similar applications out there, but I also found out that there are still room for improvement in this simple application through the reviews and comments from user posted on the other applications. Done with the research then I direct jump into development.

What user want in a simple tally counter app:

• A big button to tap and increase the count
• Undo button just in case they did some mistake
• Previous count number

None of existing tally counter app can answer all 3 requirement of user, so the TallyCounter app I came out with:

•  A simple and clean design of tally counter app.
• Can count up to 9999.
• Can tap at almost anyway on the screen to increase the count.
• Move all unnecessary button like reset button to the top because I understand user always use their thumb to tap on the screen.
• Undo button with extra bonus that the app can tell you up to  5 history records which you had just pressed for the last 1 seconds.
• Previous count number as requested by a lot of user in the marketplace.

Without any problem, my app went smoothly through the certification of Windows Phone marketplace and it now up on the marketplace. You can check it out here. Yes, it is free and without any advertisement as I don’t have any reason to price a simple app like this.

In my opinion, Windows Phone marketplace is still very new. There are still a lot of improvement you can make on existing application which many had ignored like in my case which is a simple tally counter app. Next, I’m going to create an application for Magic the Gathering as I found out the features in most of the app out there in Windows Phone marketplace are far behind than other platform like Adroind or iOS.

by Ooi Keng Siang (Microsoft Student Partners) via Ooiks’s Blog