The new user interface design in Windows Phone 7 has had some critics who think it’s ugly or boring. We all know the new design has had a lot of thought put into it and many do find it very attractive, but how can we make it even more beautiful for the naysayers?
One of the main ideas behind the new design of the Windows Phone 7 Start screen is the ability to make it yours. You can pin all sorts of stuff to your start screen, even things that often change on their own, and that’s really where it becomes personal.
1. Get Prettier Friends
You’re probably going to want to pin some of your favorite people to the Start screen so that you can quickly and easily contact them. A person pinned to the start screen acts as a live tile that will dynamically display the person’s photo from Facebook or Windows Live, as well as show recent status updates for them. Hopefully your favorite people are people who you actually like to look at since their pictures are going to be right there on your Start screen. Unfortunately sometimes my friends don’t always use the most attractive photos as their profile pictures on Facebook, so sometimes I have to manually change their contact photos to something a little more good-looking. To do this, open the contact, tap the Edit button, then tap the contact’s current photo. You’ll be able to choose a photo from any other account the contact exists in as well as your photos library. If no attractive photos exist for your friends, hire a professional photographer to make some, or better yet… get prettier friends.
2. Take Better Pictures
The Pictures’s live tile spans across both columns in the start screen and shows a nice thumbnail of one of your photos. By default, it’s going to pick something random and change on its own ever so often. Now, if you go into the Pictures hub, it’s also going to use that image as a large background and if it’s a crappy picture, that might not look so good. Fortunately, you can choose your own. Tap and hold in a blank area of the Pictures hub background until a menu appears. Then tap “Change background”. Now you can choose your own background image for the Pictures hub which will also be used in the Pictures Live tile on your start page. I chose a photo I took of swimsuit models Julie Henderson, Irina Shayk, and Jessica White from earlier this year.
3. Listen to Prettier Music
The Music & Videos live tile nicely displays some graphic images of whatever artist you may have been listening to recently. Of course this gorgeous artists’ imagery is also used as the background for the Music & Videos hub as well as the music player screen. You can’t manually change what imagery is associated with which artists, but you probably wouldn’t want to anyway. The easiest way to get this Music & Videos Live tile to show some more attractive artwork is to start listening to music from more attractive artists. You can also “pin” albums or artists to your start screen. Go to your music library, find an attractive artist, tap & hold on the artist’s name and choose “Pin to Start”. When you pin an Artist, they show up as a double wide tile, where as if you pin an album, it shows as a single square tile.
4. Change your Lock Screen Wallpaper
Every time you take your phone out and turn it on, you’re going to see that lock screen image. If you go to Settings > Lock & Wallpaper > Change Wallpaper, it’s very easy to select a different image. I tend to switch mine up fairly often, but today we’ve got a close up crop of a photo I took of Lisalla Montenegro during Fashion Week in New York City one night. Since the lock screen is always going to have some information at the bottom and flush-left, you’re going to want to choose a picture that accommodates the layout of the text and maintains readability. It’s also possible to design your own lock screen wallpaper with transparency if you want to get a little glimpse of what’s running under the lock screen there.
Of course, we’re just joking about suggesting changing your taste in music, finding better looking friends, and taking better pictures in order to make your phone look better, but hopefully you found a few tips that were useful. The point is that Windows Phone 7’s interface and design is very dependent on your content. It’s all about the things you like and tries to make it easy for you to make those things the star of the show.
What does your Start screen look like? Post it here if you’d like to share.
Originally published on Pocketnow on December 20, 2010.