We had a snafu on our web mail form. If you thought you were being ignored, please try again: http://thinkpixellab.com
We use a little design love and a little dev kung fu to build great experiences that run on the web, the desktop or on mobile devices like Windows Phone 7.
Recent Work
Lab results.
Seesmic
When Seesmic decided to move their popular twitter client to Silverlight, they wanted expert help with the new platform. Pixel Lab fit the bill and we had the pleasure to help launch the new version of their client. We were responsible for the new design as well as implementation of much of the UI. You can watch Loic talk about Seesmic on stage at MIX 2010 or read a bit about the design process on Robby’s blog .
Books.Show
Books.Show combined three of our favorite past times (writing apps, reading and free stuff!) to become one of our favorite projects: a book reading application for the Project Gutenberg book collection. In the “.Show” tradition, this application was designed to be not just a great app, but a helpful developer sample as well. Microsoft chose us because of our commitment to quality in every aspect of the design and development process.
Picture Puzzle
When Microsoft shipped the first version of the Windows Phone 7 SDK at MIX 2010 they wanted to make sure that the samples had the right degree of polish. Microsoft asked us to spruce up one of the final labs, this simple puzzle game. We did the design and front end coding to produce this version of the game, making sure to keep the code clean, easy to understand and compatible with the intent of the lab.
Hush Hush
Designed by Jackson Fish Market and engineered by Pixel Lab, Hush Hush was one of the first Silverlight applications written for Windows Phone. Hush Hush leverages Pixel Lab’s substantial experience in Microsoft user experience technologies.
KEXP Playlist Visualization
This was a concept project that we did for Microsoft and KEXP. We were looking at interesting ways for listeners to interact with music from KEXP’s forthcoming Silverlight streaming music player. The images are rendered in grayscale as a reminder that we were still in the concept phase of the project. Our deliverable here was only design, but with an eye toward feasibility given the constraints of Silverlight v3.0 (the current release at the time of the project).
New York Times Reader
The New York Times reader not only extended the way you read news, but the way you find news. The reader exposed a number of novel methods to sort and browse the news developed by the folks at Pixel Lab. The category browser and the tree map search features were often highlighted as benefits of building rich experiences for print and web publications.
What a Lovely Name
Another Jackson Fish design implemented by Pixel Lab. While the back-end represents a straight-forward Ruby on Rails application, the browser experience relies heavily on Javascript, AJAX, and CSS. What a Lovely Name has been mentioned a number of times as an example of a beautiful pure-web experience.
Services
We deliver.
Creative Smarty Pants
If there's one thing that gets us out of bed in the morning, that thing is, well, everything! We've got curious minds and big imaginations. We're completely fascinated with the world around us and we're pretty sure that this is the secret ingredient for great design. At least that's how we do it. (Could also be cilantro.)
Technical Powerhouse
Our handcrafted pixels are made fresh daily from the best code in all kinds of flavors: Silverlight, C#, XAML, Flash, Flex, jQuery and even Ruby. We're geeks who dream in code and sometimes in English. Oh, and we're committed to doing it right. "Best practices" is our middle name (our parents were very forward thinking).
XAML Rockstars
We've been speaking XAML so long that we practically invented it. Come to think of it, we sort of did invent it...at least we helped. Some of us were on the WPF team where XAML started. That was a while ago and now our combined experience with XAML is approaching two decades! So whether it's WPF, Silverlight or any other XAML technology, we feel right at home.
Serious Attention to Detail
Don't let our friendly disposition fool you. When it comes to getting it right, we're a little bit relentless. We figured out early on that awesomeness is mostly made out of hard work. But don't worry. We do the hard work so that you don't have to.
People
There is no "I" in "we make cool stuff."
Robby Ingebretsen
Robby Ingebretsen is a designer and developer with a singular purpose: making great ideas real. He's a well known advocate for pushing the boundaries of interactive technologies through the marriage of design and engineering. Before Pixel Lab, he worked at Microsoft where he helped to create cutting edge UI technologies like Silverlight and WPF. Presently he's a Silverlight MVP, an established blogger and speaker. He actively maintains the site nerdplusart.com.
Kevin Moore
Kevin is a geek’s geek. He started writing software (in GW-BASIC) when he was nine. By 15 he was developing database driven web sites. He spent 5 years at Microsoft, working mostly to deliver the first two releases of WPF, with a focus on controls and data binding. Since 2008, Kevin's been doing independent software development including CSS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, Flash, WPF, and Silverlight.
Adam Kinney
Adam Kinney is a creative developer with a strong focus on UI technologies including HTML, CSS, Flash, WPF and Silverlight. He enjoys working in the space between design and development, enabling the best results from both sides. Having spent the last five years as an Evangelist for Microsoft, Adam also enjoys sharing his knowledge and helping others learn new UI technologies and tools. He actively maintains his personal site adamkinney.com
The Lab
Stuff we do for fun (and karma).
Kaxaml
Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content (kind of like XamlPad but without the gigabyte of SDK). It supports plugins and ships with a bunch including a handy snippet manager and "XAML scrubber" to clean up messy markup. and comes with
Bag of Tricks
It started in December 2005 as a way for Kevin to keep track of all of his WPF samples. It grew and morphed into an important resource for those learning WPF and those pushing the capabilities of WPF. Pixel Lab is re-launching the Bag o’ Tricks after two years without upgrades. The new release includes subset libraries that target Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7.
Simple Styles
Simple Styles are a set of control styles and templates for Silverlight and WPF that are designed to be a starting point for creating your own custom templates. The idea is to include all of the essential elements of the template and no extras. It’s a stripped down version of the control template, presented in full color (well, two colors) for your tweaking pleasure.
Hire Us
We're here to help.
Let your passion be ours for a while! Big or small, we'd love to help with any project and knock it out of the park!
Get In Touch
Project work begins and ends with a relationship and the best way to kick that off is to say hello. Feel free to share what you can about your project and where you think we can help. We're friendly and easy going and, frankly, we won't take a project that isn't going to be a big success.
On Time, On Budget
Here's the secret: before we were designers and coders, we were project managers. That means things like scheduling, tracking and the fine tuning that makes a project run well is in our DNA. You can jump in with confidence. We'll make sure it's a great experience for all of us.
