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“Number 1 app in UK, France and Germany…”. Those who regularly browse the Apple AppStore hunting for applications (apps) will undoubtedly be familiar with this type of catch phrase.  It’s generally what users first read when they land on app description pages (as if they were all number one!). Developers and designers use this type of technique to lure candid users to download the app by making them believe it’s the best of its kind on the market. This also illustrates how the success of an app is often assumed: the higher in the ranking, the more successful it is. But as you may probably know already, this approach is entirely flawed.

First of all, one can wonder how these rankings are built. As it is rarely clearly stated, we can only suppose that the number of downloads of an app governs its position in the table. But again, over what period of time? Number of downloads in the last month, quarter, year? This brings in the process a lot of vagueness and can surely not be used as a success measurement tool. Moreover, as Jakob Nielsen suggests in his column about iPhone App (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-apps-initial-use.html), users download more app than they actually need and use, which corroborates the idea that the number of downloads is not representative of the usage and can be resorted to as success criterion.

Then comes the question of the popularity of an app. App owners can write comments on the app description pages of the AppStore and rate them on a scale from 1 (negative) to 5 (positive). As a user experience professional, I strive to get the voice of the customer heard by my clients but I don’t consider it to be a viable success measurement method. Personal opinions are very subjective and tend to be only expressed when something goes wrong or incredibly well. Moreover, most of the app ratings derive from the ‘rating prompt’ that pops up on the iPhone when a user decides to delete an app. This biases the results in a negative way.

So how should the success of your app be measured? From a business perspective, the response is simple: the success of an app should be measured just like the success of a website, i.e. by defining and tracking KPI. Most of the apps provide a web-based service, which implies a digital connection between phones and web servers, just like there is a connection between PC and web servers. This allows data to be captured, such as number of information requests, conversion rates, app usage duration, app usage frequency, etc. In terms of web analytics tools, the capture of mobile phone applications usage is only at an embryonic stage but the trend is on the up and some of the current tools on the market are already capable of monitoring app usage.

Boasting about an app being the most used rather than the most downloaded would surely be more credible to end users!

As a User Experience Consultant I spend a lot of my time designing websites and understanding the value and impact that the Internet has on people’s lives; how they interact with brands and services, shop online, communicate online, and bank online. A personal experience recently has reminded me of participants in my various forms of research over the years; why they and now realising why I, are traditionalists at heart. Read more about: It’s official, I’m a traditionalist

Gordon Brown’s recent leetspeek (mp3 podcast) leading up to the Global Investment Conference (GIC) has sparked renewed calls for tax breaks for the UK computer gaming industry. The PM stated that the UK games industry was “the most important in Europe”, and that UK developers are “by far the biggest producers of computer games in Europe”, going on to promise that there would be “new commitments of investment off the back of [the GIC] conference”. Interesting words, encouraging perhaps for some, but is it just more talk? Considering The Digital Britain report was full of high praise for the industry but so far has yielded few tangible initiatives, and a previous request from the industry for tax breaks failed to get a mention in the Chancellor’s December 2009 pre-Budget report, one could be forgiven for (quite skeptically) thinking “the cake is a lie”. Read more about: Power Up! Tax Breaks for UK Computer Gaming Industry

The buzz around the office on Wednesday at Foviance was electric as journalists from the UK and Europe gathered to hear about our latest research into Electroencephalography (EEG). The research, commissioned by CA, tasked Foviance with proving or disproving the existence of  ‘web stress’ – a term coined by them to describe the meaning the stress or displeasure a user experiences when faced with slow or poorly performing websites – and it produced some interesting findings and a wake up to call businesses that trade online. Read more about: Electric experiences, minus the shock!

We’ve previously mentioned the browser wars and the Microsoft anti-trust browser case, and this week sees the initial limited roll-out of Microsoft’s “web browser choice screen” for European users. In a nutshell, the European Commission ruled that bundling Internet Explorer (IE) with the Windows operating system was a big no-no and forced Microsoft to give users the choice of which browser they wanted to use. Read more about: The Browser War Continues: Choose Your Weapon!

I have recently completed some user testing and one of the devices used was an iPhone. This device is often venerated as being the epitome of style, user-friendliness and cutting-edge technology. Indeed, I often find that when handing an iPhone to a participant in the labs, a very soft “Wow” escapes their lips! (I am not sure though whether it is the phone that elicits this reaction or the reputation of it.)

I agree that the iPhone is an excellent piece of kit in many ways and those who own and use one often promote its usage (sometimes tediously!) However, my testing highlighted a couple of areas that were not acceptable to the participants and in fact, gave a negative user experience. These were: Read more about: Improving on the iPhone

Daniele Fiandaca’s opinion piece (NMA 04 Feb) raised the question of whether digital agencies were focussed on aesthetics at the expense of user experience.  I am delighted to see this issue being discussed because over recent years user experience (UX) has become “un-sexy” and the column inches that were dedicated to the subject back in the early 2000’s when it was new and exciting are all but forgotten. Read more about: Seriously, get some user experience

Facebook turned six recently and celebrated the milestone by giving its homepage yet another makeover, this time to “improve navigation to and discovery of commonly used features”. Six years is a long time on the interweb but, even still, Facebook has made impressive and significant gains in that time. It currently sits at number four on the list of biggest names on the web (behind Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, respectively) and with over 350 million users (and growing fast) it is poised to very soon become number three. It’s become the “face”, as it were, of the social media space, if not the brain. Read more about: Happy Birthday, Facebook! Have another Facelift…