Nikki Barton: My Windows Phone 8 Start screen

Nikki Barton is VP Smart Devices User Experience Design. In other words, a lot of what people love about using their Nokia Lumias is Nikki’s responsibility.

Needless to say, her Start screen shows a lot of attention to detail. Here’s how she has it arranged, in her own words:

I’m using a Nokia Lumia 920, which has a big, beautiful high-resolution screen.

I use it to plan my work AND home life, and you can see that in the apps I’ve prioritised and put at the top of the screen. I’ve got 19 there without scrolling, and the way I’ve organised them and the colour coding makes it easy to recognise them instantly.

First of all I’ve chosen the lovely steel theme, which combined with the white gloss of the industrial design gives a sophistication to the whole experience. I often see people looking at it over my shoulder on the Tube.

The Phone tile is at the top of the screen and it’s large as I use it often every day. I can quickly use the history tab within it to recall numbers I use regularly and also the search tab, which gives me quick access to all my contacts and also the company telephone directory.

Next I have a set of smaller tiles representing my text messages, home and work emails, then browser and store.

I’ve been using Cinemagraph for taking rather magical moving photos of my daughter: it really brings the pictures alive.

The other app I use on an almost daily basis (when I’m not cycling) is Transport. This gives me up-to-the-minute travel and route information that lets me get across London quickly without me having to think too much.

My calendar, which is a bigger tile, combines my work and my home calendars together. It really has made a difference to my home life, as my partner and I have managed to get our calendars syncing using family room across multiple devices and platforms for the first time!

Next to that is a large Photos tile, with family and friends photographs making my day more pleasant by displaying a selection of them throughout the day.

Then at the bottom of the screen I have two small rows of tiles that include; Onenote (which I’m using now to write this), Nokia Music (I use Mix Radio most days in the evening), the Guardian newspaper,LinkedIn and Facebook (which I also access information from through the Me tile above), Radio 4 streaming (I listen to this station in the morning), Ocado (grocery delivery) and LOVEFiLM (where I line up films to watch and rent).

If I scroll down the screen I have a lot more, including pinned groups of my work teams – so I can see the faces of people in my teams – useful when you’ve got a large network spread across the world!