How to win a hackathon - Penn APps 2015

Editor's Notes

1. Consider playing the video at http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Windows-Phone/Integrative-Mom-and-Windows-Phone-App-Studio on a loop as students walk in. Use this slide to: Welcome students to the course Explain what the course will cover Begin to set expectations about App Studio creating content-driven apps Make clear that the course is not only about building apps but also covers the business model Explain that there will be extension activities if you want to learn more after the session.
2. Consider asking the group to name the apps by tile for group involvement. The five types of app are: Games Entertainment Social Tools and Productivity Information and Promotion Examples of each are: Angry Birds and Temple Run Netflix and IMDb (Internet Movie Database). Facebook and Instagram ProShot and PayPal CNN and Macy’s Today you will be building an informational or promotional style app using Windows Phone App Studio. For apps like CNN and Macy’s, the app is not the business but is instead a way to promote its message or products to attract or retain customers and followers. Note: This slide is intended to begin setting the expectation of what students will build during the course. You may want to include other examples, or ask students for their suggestions. You might also want to visit a couple of app stores in your browser to give students a flavor of what’s available: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/featured-apps https://play.google.com/store/apps https://itunes.apple.com/genre/ios/id36?mt=8 http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?node=2350149011
3. Developers can be roughly subdivided into two distinct camps: 1.) developers writing apps against the existing, client/server application pattern, and 2.) developers writing apps against the emerging, device/services application pattern. The existing app pattern is line-of-business (LOB) apps, forms over data, and web implementations of this are generally static pages The new app pattern is either device-first, in which you have a multi-device, multi-screen experience, that takes a cloud service dependency, or cloud-first, in which the core asset is a cloud service which surfaces as an experience on a device (or multiple devices).
4. Use this slide to discuss some of the apps that have been created with App Studio. Jamestown Revival – provides information about the band Jamestown Revival including tour dates, photos, videos and music for Jamestown Revival. Integrative Mom – a blog that provides recommendations to moms for baby products, home remedies, and recipes that are natural and organic. Grainstorm Heritage Baking – a bakery in Toronto and food supplier to Whole Foods provides recipes, videos, pictures, and Facebook posts about heritage baking using organic grains. PL Tours & Travels – provides tour packages and travel information for Sri Lanka.
5. Introduce the process for developing an app at a high level: Sign into App Studio: Sign in using a free Microsoft account at appstudio.windows.com. If you don’t have a Microsoft account you can get one from signup.live.com. Choose template: When you create a new App Studio app you can choose to start with a blank template or select an existing template. Starting with a blank template gives the greatest flexibility but involves more work having to create all the menus, sections, and data sources. Add content: High-level app organization is achieved with sections and menus. An app may contain up to 6 sections. Each section contains a data source or a collection of menu items. A data source defines the data that the app displays. Each section contains one or more pages, with each page defining the UI that the app displays. Select theme: Selecting a theme enables you to change the colors of your text, background, foreground and application bar or select an image for your background. Select tiles: A Tile is an image that represents your app and acts as shortcut on the Start screen of your device. All apps have a default Tile to be displayed. You can also add more tiles. Enter publish information: Every app that you create in App Studio should have a title, description, and logo (PNG image, 160x160). Generate app: Before you can use the app you must ask App Studio to generate it for you. You can then install the app on your device to test it, share it with other App Studio users, publish it, and download it.