I've been on the road for the better part of the month of November, meeting with developers and IT Pros across the country and it's been a blast.  Because I'm the guy on the MS Canada evangelism team most focused on Windows Phone, more often than not those conversations trend towards mobile.  One of the really neat things about these conversations is the fact that that one of the more popular topics that we end up talking about is Metro, the design language responsible for the look, feel and flow of Windows Phone apps.  If you've talked to me about Metro, you'll probably quickly realize that I'm very passionate about great mobile design and how it affects user experience for mobile apps and how I think Metro is the perfect way to express that experience in your Windows Phone apps.

That said, not many people are aware that there are some really great resources on how to design great metro experiences for Windows Phone and, to be honest, many of the great resources on Metro are kind of hidden.  With this in mind, I wanted to share with you some of the great Metro guidance that is out there to help you build great experiences on Windows Phone:

Presentations on Metro

The following bullet points provide you links to presentations (video and slides) that describe what Metro is and how to implement it in your Windows Phone apps.

• Application Design for Windows Phone (a presentation by Megan Donahue, Program Manager for Windows Phone, from MIX11)
• Windows Phone User Experience Design (a presentation by Bryan Agnetta, Program Manager for Windows Phone, from BUILD)

Documentation on Metro Design Guidance

Metro is bigger than just flat tiles and catchy phrases like "Fast and Fluid".  The resource links below help you understand what Metro is and how you should fit it into the software design lifecycle (SDLC) for your app.  Also included is some tutorials on how to use the developer tools (which you can download here) effectively with Metro.

• User Experience and User Interface Guidance (from the App Hub)
• The Story of Metro (a PDF outlining what Metro is at a high level and how it came to be)

If you attended TechDays, you may have also seen my presentation on mobile application design where I talk about effective mobile application user experiences in general and then about Metro specifically.  That presentation will be available online in December, 2011 and when it is live I will update this post.

Happy Designing!