[Design] Create an update notification for users to let them know they are out of date

[setch-l]

Overview - Less than 1/2 our Testflight users update to the latest version when we do a new release. In addition, many have concerns about crashes etc. (some of which are legit). For those who haven't updated, we want to encourage them to update to the latest build when we detect they are not up to date.

User outcomes

• Users receive an iOS alert when we detect the app is not up to date (alert only appears upon app foreground / open.
• Users can click on the alert to open Testflight to update
• Users can dismiss the alert

Design AC

• iOS dialogue with info letting the user know an update is available
• options to update and dismiss the alert

[mplorentz]

Where are you sourcing the data that less than half of our users update to the latest version? It's hard to get good data for users who haven't opened the app, but whenever I check our recently active users almost all of them are using the latest build. https://us.posthog.com/project/56924/insights/KSXEmfTd

[setch-l]

@mplorentz - Oh I thought I dropped a screenshot in from Apple Developer account:

[mplorentz]

@setch-l those numbers look really good to me. We released 0.1.26 less than 48 hours ago and 847/1153 (73%) have already updated to it. Another way to look at this data is the release graph on Sentry which is showing 85% adoption of the latest build. The previous build was sitting at 96% adoption for several days. In my experience these numbers are above-average.

I think a nagging notification would get some percentage of the remaining 4% to update. We are talking about getting like 2 more users per day on the latest build. If that's important to you don't let me stop you but just wanted you to have good data on this.

[setch-l]

@mplorentz - Which set of numbers should we trust / rely upon? Apple is showing 500+ crashes in the previous build vs. Sentry only showing 45 for the previous build for a 30 day period. The former seems to align better with what I'm hearing from users in the field.

I think having the design on hand is fine. We don't have to implement it right away if we find we don't need it. But at the moment I'm not sure which set of data I should trust or rely on.

[setch-l]

@mplorentz - I'm also looking at the total number of invites to get to half. But now that I'm looking further back in time that number never changes. So we actually have no idea what % of people in the Apple Dev store update to the latest build. It seems to be increasing, but at what % of the overall installs from all time??

[Chardot]

I created two alternative flows for this: updating from a banner, and updating from a popup.

Banner

This design has a more branded and custom look & feel, and it's not obtrusive. Users can keep browsing the feed and using the app without having to respond to the update right away. The downside is that this design may take longer to implement.

Popup

This design has a system native look and feel. The advantage is that it's the easiest to implement. The downside is that the popup will block the user from interacting with the app, forcing them to choose between updating or dismissing.

Persisting Menu link

In both cases I'm proposing that after the user dismisses either the banner or the popup, we add an orange dot to the menu icon and at the bottom of the menu, we add a link to Update to the latest version. This way, if the user dismisses the notification by mistake or just forgets about it, they can still find the option to update from within the app.

Here's a link to these designs on Figma.