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What would your list look like with apps you owned removed? 8. FartApp 10. Flashlight or 8. FartApp 9. Flashlight In the first, with 9. A

What would your list look like with apps you owned removed? 8. FartApp 10. Flashlight or 8. FartApp 9. Flashlight In the first, with 9. Angry Birds removed, it looks like the data hasn't loaded properly. In the second, Flashlight has been promoted from number 10 to number 9, falsely inflating its ranking. You could solve this by leaving a gap or indicator where 9. Angry Birds should have been but then the user's wondering "what isn't it showing me in that gap?". So maybe you should just call the Top 10, "Your Personalized Top 10". But then it's not personalized really, all they've done is remove apps you already own. The user thinks, "Why are Apple showing me fart apps? Don't they think I have taste? Can't they see I only download Twitter clients and podcast apps?". For the marginal benefit of not showing apps you already own, which are indicated as such, you are opening a whole can of UI worms.

phloxicon 12y ago
It could just show the ten best selling apps that don't include the one you already have installed. So instead of 1, 3, 4, it would push 3 up to 2 and 4 up to 3. I'd also like if the store didn't keep showing things it's shown me a dozen times before. If I haven't downloaded them after seeing them advertised this many times, I'm never going to download them.
- minikomi 12y ago
  I've often thought I'd like a "hide until next version" or "hide indefinitely" for the app store. There's just so much I'm not interested in - especially in the Japanese app store which is dominated by casual games / social games .. http://www.rainbowapps.com/ http://www.rainbowapps.com/
snowwrestler 12y ago
> In the second, Flashlight has been promoted from number 10 to number 9, falsely inflating its ranking. This is a concern that goes away in a user-centered design process. The "ranking" does not matter to anyone but app developers or journalists keeping score. The only reason a user looks at those lists is to find new apps to download. Consider Google SERPs, which are now highly customized. Who obsesses over whether an item is at #7 or #9? No one but the people who own those links. Everyone else just wants an answer to their question.
- bruceboughton 12y ago
  The App Store has search results pages too. Top Charts are not search results pages--they are rankings of apps. Top Charts is a popularity-based browse mechanism. Search is an answer to "what can i play podcasts on?". You could argue Top Charts should be removed from the store or demoted. But you need some kind of browse functionality because people are often not aware that a certain type of app exists to search for.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    My point was not that the lists are the exact same thing as search results, my point is that users don't care about the tiny details of whether a particular app is #7 or #8. If you conducted a survey of App Store users and asked them to give you the numerical rank of a given app ("was it 8 or 9?"), I would surprised if many could remember, and shocked if any cared. Why do users view those lists? As you point out, to browse for new apps. The precise numerical ranking does not help them very much to do that; therefore a user-centered design process should not care very much about how precisely accurate the displayed rankings are. Edit to add: Users have no way to independently verify rankings anyway, so the concept of a "false" shift from 9 to 8 has no meaning to them. They don't know what's false, only what's useful.

phloxicon 12y ago

It could just show the ten best selling apps that don't include the one you already have installed. So instead of 1, 3, 4, it would push 3 up to 2 and 4 up to 3. I'd also like if the store didn't keep showing things it's shown me a dozen times before. If I haven't downloaded them after seeing them advertised this many times, I'm never going to download them.

minikomi 12y ago
I've often thought I'd like a "hide until next version" or "hide indefinitely" for the app store. There's just so much I'm not interested in - especially in the Japanese app store which is dominated by casual games / social games .. http://www.rainbowapps.com/ http://www.rainbowapps.com/

snowwrestler 12y ago

> In the second, Flashlight has been promoted from number 10 to number 9, falsely inflating its ranking. This is a concern that goes away in a user-centered design process. The "ranking" does not matter to anyone but app developers or journalists keeping score. The only reason a user looks at those lists is to find new apps to download. Consider Google SERPs, which are now highly customized. Who obsesses over whether an item is at #7 or #9? No one but the people who own those links. Everyone else just wants an answer to their question.

bruceboughton 12y ago
The App Store has search results pages too. Top Charts are not search results pages--they are rankings of apps. Top Charts is a popularity-based browse mechanism. Search is an answer to "what can i play podcasts on?". You could argue Top Charts should be removed from the store or demoted. But you need some kind of browse functionality because people are often not aware that a certain type of app exists to search for.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  My point was not that the lists are the exact same thing as search results, my point is that users don't care about the tiny details of whether a particular app is #7 or #8. If you conducted a survey of App Store users and asked them to give you the numerical rank of a given app ("was it 8 or 9?"), I would surprised if many could remember, and shocked if any cared. Why do users view those lists? As you point out, to browse for new apps. The precise numerical ranking does not help them very much to do that; therefore a user-centered design process should not care very much about how precisely accurate the displayed rankings are. Edit to add: Users have no way to independently verify rankings anyway, so the concept of a "false" shift from 9 to 8 has no meaning to them. They don't know what's false, only what's useful.