What's the best approach for creating visually appealing windows applications?

Question

I am currently working on my final year project. I'm trying to implement a system which takes sound as a input from microphone and, according to that sound, the UI displays different images. For example, if I input the sound of a dog, an image of a dog should display. Similarly, if I input the sound of a cat, an image of a cat should appear.

I want to create a Windows application with very attractive UI. I'd like to be able to add some pictures that change according to input sound.

With that, how do I create very interactive, dynamic, UI using C#? Are there any graphical tools, libraries or plug-ins that are compatible with Windows applications in C#.

As an aside, I'm also looking into the games created by XNA Game Studio. Can those games be added to my Windows application, if so how can that be done?

Any useful links or source code is highly appreciated.

Thank you. GayanS

Answer 1

one word, 3 letters: WPF

To create a good looking GUI....

The rest needs to be programmed....

(This will not solve the XNA needs...)

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Old Book from the GURU

Answer 2

A good place to start would be the Windows XNA Developer Centre. XNA contains support for DirectSound.

Also check out XNA Development Tutorials.