Open hammadtq opened 4 years ago
stackatron
commented
4 years ago @hammadtq this might be a naive question, but why can't you simply put a video about your app into the app onboarding itself? Maybe this could happen right before, or right after, the user creates a Blockstack ID? Wouldn't this address the issue above?
hammadtq
commented
4 years ago @hammadtq this might be a naive question, but why can't you simply put a video about your app into the app onboarding itself? Maybe this could happen right before, or right after, the user creates a Blockstack ID? Wouldn't this address the issue above?
You can add a video to your website and have a documentation section as well but the suggestion here is really to help the reviewers download and understand the right app. Adding a 2-3 minute demo prior to or after login is not a good UX in my opinion. I have seen apps using explainer cards on the first launch of the app, that could be used.
Problem as I understand is with the app mining program and suggestion is to improve the reviewing process. Let's suppose as in my example, if a user himself is searching the app store and downloads a business app, chances are higher he understands what he is downloading. The issue that I have faced with consecutive 2 apps is that reviewers don't understand or don't want to understand what the app is for and how to test it. Apps come from a broad range of categories and enough help should be built-in to the process to help both reviewers and developers.
joshthegreatavenue
commented
4 years ago @hammadtq The way I see it is :
friedger
commented
4 years ago In a decentralized world, you should choose your video hosting platform and publish a link to your video in your app meta data (that you own!)
stackatron
commented
4 years ago @hammadtq are you utilizing the ability to select the audience you test with on TryMyUI? And if so, are you still not getting testers who understand what the app is?
hammadtq
commented
4 years ago @hammadtq are you utilizing the ability to select the audience you test with on TryMyUI? And if so, are you still not getting testers who understand what the app is?
I haven't got trymyui videos yet but my first issue this time came with NIL. The main issue was as I reported in #180, they tried checking the website that had only a sign-in button, they clicked it and said its not working while this was not the app I made or submitted, this was merely a website that was used to run the auth on iOS app. I have changed that "Sign In" button text now to "Download on iOS" to give some sense to the reviewer that he/she/they are looking at wrong thing. A demo video could help them see that the website is not what has been shown in the video - so through metadata we could give them another chance to go to the correct app.
The second issue is that I am still worried that even if NIL would download the app, they would not be able to find the sign-in button. For this I would suggest you to download Vegan Scanner - Is it Vegan? from the app-store and try it yourself! TryMyUI users will be fine I guess, as you said I have filled the form for "Vegans, United States" targeting in this case and any vegan would instantly know what a scanner is! But NIL is looking for an auth button, the apps flow is as such that "Sign In" button is not pushed to the front as its a free-to-use app, there is minimum friction between download to scan as most people download this app while standing in the aisles of the supermarkets. There is added functionality in it where a user can save her scans to Blockstack storage. So the flow is user downlaods -> scans -> results -> save -> Blockstack auth. The other flow to see the auth button is download -> tap third tab labeled "Saved" -> Blockstack auth.
As you can see for a user the auth is placed at a strategic point where she is actually trying to use a function that needs auth rather than blanketing it for all users.
Now this particular app is very small, there isn't much going on here but sign-in button still requires you to actually use the app, go in the flow or know that you have to tap the 3rd tab. I highly doubt a bored NIL reviewer is going to do all that. He/she/they will just open the app, see there is no option for auth, will report auth is not there and will move forward! A demo video, again in this case gives the option to the reviewer to not make the mistake and also saves them from the added learning curve of understanding an app. Again as in this case, the app is small but lets say it was as an app like Trello where I would allow them to make as much boards as they want but auth would only appear once they would hit "Save" button. So, now we are actually asking the same reviewer to understand an app made for Vegan and also understand an app made for Software Developers. Thus, the suggestion that show them where the auth and storage are, also show it to other reviewers like those of TryMyUI if they want to learn how to use an app properly rather than hitting the learning curve by themselves. My suggestion is to add this feature as optional, if developers or reviewers don't want to use it, its fine as well. Also, nice demo videos would add to the appeal of app.co. A lot of people are interested in app-mining but downloading any one of the apps, learning how to sign-in and use the app makes it difficult for them to know what kind of apps people are making. If there were demo videos on app.co, one could just play it to see how one works!
As an example, I made this GoBNB iOS app for another program, the project details are on this page. Please see the video and notice the impact as compared to just writing description text on a page.
What is the problem you are seeing? Please describe. A dev should be able to upload a demo video (optional) with the app submission at least. Reviewers should have access to that video. Some apps can be very simple like Twitter and some can be extremely complex like SAP business tools or Microsoft Dynamics. Creators of such apps currently on-board users on Skype calls, that is to teach them how to use the tool (that helps a lot in keeping the sign-up to churn rate low).
How is this problem misaligned with goals of app mining? Current submission and review process is made for simple consumer-facing apps while at no-point in app mining docs blockstack is discouraging enterprise-level or business kind of apps. This will either repel devs of those apps or will create frustration in them. Starting from an option of allowing demo video submission can be a good step in the right direction.
What is the explicit recommendation you’re looking to propose? Add a video upload option to the app submit form and also allow devs to upload demo videos to the app.co app detail page.
Describe your long term considerations in proposing this change. Please include the ways you can predict this recommendation could go wrong and possible ways mitigate. This could only make things simpler in long run. I understand Blockstack team can not on-board every reviewer of thousands of apps but devs can use the video upload option to try to demo their own product and show reviewers all of its features.
Additional context I added the app Timski at the start of app-mining program (november, 2018). Majority of trymyui reviewers couldn't get what it is despite being clearly saying in description that it's a "decentralized group chat" app. I got reviews like "I don't know what it is, maybe some kind of business app". I know we can ask trymyui to target the audience now but its still better to show the demo in a video format. Similarly, I submitted my second app this november with the name of Vegan Scanner, NIL was trying to test the website instead of the app, if there was a video, the reviewer had the chance to see what he/she/they are looking for.