I just finished posting up a review I did for Electric Pocket's FlipSide product at BostonPocketPC.com.
This is a great little application that provides a "finger-friendly" interface to music on your Windows Mobile device. When working with this product, I started thinking about some of the tracks that 3rd party vendors are taking when it comes to enhancing the Windows Mobile UI experience.
Any longtime user of the Windows Mobile platform can tell you that the interface is a little "long in the tooth". The first efforts made by Microsoft at correcting this have come at the home screen level with Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard (non-touchscreen devices and the new "sliding panel" interface). I think this is a good first step for Microsoft, mainly because the sliding panel is not just about "eye candy"; it provides a more efficient navigation interface to the home screen. Microsoft is definitely not the only one working at the "top level" of customizing the UI, as work by HTC (with the HTC Home plug-in), Spb Softwarehouse (with Spb Mobile Shell) and VITO Technology (with their new Winterize application) are all trying to enhance both the style and substance of basic user interface navigation. However, the phrase "beauty is only skin deep" applies for the most part to this level of effort.
The next level of UI enhancement happens at the application level. While Microsoft has gotten a bit more involved in UI usability with newer applications (Live Search is a great and successful example of this), many of the standard applications (e-mail, contacts, tasks as examples) have changed very little in either their presentation or methods of interactivity for quite a while. Once again, there is some work around this from a third-party perspective. Several vendors have provided enhancements to contact viewing, and FlipSide picks up where Windows Media Player stops. However, even these applications stop at the "viewing level", often dropping to the standard application interface to create or update an existing item.
Enhancing the application level of Windows Mobile for both aesthetic and functional usability is the next great frontier for developers, be they Microsoft or third party. The real challenge here is to go to that next level in its entirety. The contact interface is a great example of an area that can be greatly improved upon by applying the lessons learned over the past few years from both a Windows Mobile and competitor perspective. Finger-friendly interaction, improved layout and greater readability can all find a place in the Contacts application. The same can be said for the other "standard" applications as well. The true challenge here is to not just look at adding graphics to "spice things up", but to look at those various input methods we've seen garner acceptance and apply them to make for a better user experience.
As a developer, I now find myself spending more time than ever asking myself the question "how can I make the user both use and like my application?" Far too often, I (and others) begrudgingly work with what we have simply because there is no alternative. The opportunity exists for all Windows Mobile developers to change that feeling. To those that have begun that change and are mentioned above - I applaud you for taking the first steps and encourage you to go further. For all the rest out there - here is your chance to push the user experience to the next level and gain greater user acceptance of your applications and the Windows Mobile platform in general.