Comments on: Usability presentation for iPhone apps and store http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/11/10/usability-presentation-for-iphone-apps-and-store/ Essays on viral marketing, freemium, and social gaming Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:07:14 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: createwithcontext http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/11/10/usability-presentation-for-iphone-apps-and-store/comment-page-1/#comment-2315 createwithcontext Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:21:04 +0000 http://andrewchenblog.com/?p=756#comment-2315 Andrew, thanks for posting our research - great to see it getting around. "Self-reporting" is definitely an issue that researchers have to be careful with; we use a technique where we have participants perform a series of activities, and then extract the findings from what they do rather than what they say, which we find works quite well. What I found interesting was that reactions to ratings and reviews mirrored what we saw a while back when we did a study for Yahoo! looking at the impact of social media and search on major purchases (that presentation is at <a href="http://createwithcontext.com/media/yahoo-summit-series.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://createwithcontext.com/media/yahoo-summit...</a>). Andrew, thanks for posting our research – great to see it getting around. “Self-reporting” is definitely an issue that researchers have to be careful with; we use a technique where we have participants perform a series of activities, and then extract the findings from what they do rather than what they say, which we find works quite well. What I found interesting was that reactions to ratings and reviews mirrored what we saw a while back when we did a study for Yahoo! looking at the impact of social media and search on major purchases (that presentation is at http://createwithcontext.com/media/yahoo-summit...).

]]> By: createwithcontext http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/11/10/usability-presentation-for-iphone-apps-and-store/comment-page-1/#comment-1163 createwithcontext Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:21:04 +0000 http://andrewchenblog.com/?p=756#comment-1163 Andrew, thanks for posting our research - great to see it getting around. "Self-reporting" is definitely an issue that researchers have to be careful with; we use a technique where we have participants perform a series of activities, and then extract the findings from what they do rather than what they say, which we find works quite well. What I found interesting was that reactions to ratings and reviews mirrored what we saw a while back when we did a study for Yahoo! looking at the impact of social media and search on major purchases (that presentation is at <a href="http://createwithcontext.com/media/yahoo-summit-series.pdf">http://createwithcontext.com/media/yahoo-summit...</a>). Andrew, thanks for posting our research – great to see it getting around. “Self-reporting” is definitely an issue that researchers have to be careful with; we use a technique where we have participants perform a series of activities, and then extract the findings from what they do rather than what they say, which we find works quite well. What I found interesting was that reactions to ratings and reviews mirrored what we saw a while back when we did a study for Yahoo! looking at the impact of social media and search on major purchases (that presentation is at http://createwithcontext.com/media/yahoo-summit...).

]]> By: Andrew Chen http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/11/10/usability-presentation-for-iphone-apps-and-store/comment-page-1/#comment-1161 Andrew Chen Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:04:54 +0000 http://andrewchenblog.com/?p=756#comment-1161 re: reviews, it may be that this is an error with self-reporting, actually - a good way to drill into this further would be to do a cardsort asking them to rank different attributes in importance (reviews, rating, icon, description, WOM, etc) and see how they would rank them. If you ask them explicitly if they would trust reviews, I think there's a distinctly American attitude of "I don't care what people think!" even if they might.<br><br>As a comparison, consider what it'd be like to ask everyone if they picked fashions based on what other people would think - I'm sure you'd get an above average number of people stating that they dress for themselves, not others, when it's probably not true ;-) re: reviews, it may be that this is an error with self-reporting, actually – a good way to drill into this further would be to do a cardsort asking them to rank different attributes in importance (reviews, rating, icon, description, WOM, etc) and see how they would rank them. If you ask them explicitly if they would trust reviews, I think there's a distinctly American attitude of “I don't care what people think!” even if they might.

As a comparison, consider what it'd be like to ask everyone if they picked fashions based on what other people would think – I'm sure you'd get an above average number of people stating that they dress for themselves, not others, when it's probably not true ;-)

]]> By: rtwomey http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/11/10/usability-presentation-for-iphone-apps-and-store/comment-page-1/#comment-1160 rtwomey Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:39:41 +0000 http://andrewchenblog.com/?p=756#comment-1160 Very interesting research. I'm especially intrigued about the results of the App Store behaviors. Most of what I saw confirmed my own suspicions, but it's reassuring to see people taking reviews "with a grain of salt". A lot of developers (myself included) have felt that the reviews on an app can make or break it with new users, but if people really are skeptical, then there may be some hope. Very interesting research. I'm especially intrigued about the results of the App Store behaviors. Most of what I saw confirmed my own suspicions, but it's reassuring to see people taking reviews “with a grain of salt”. A lot of developers (myself included) have felt that the reviews on an app can make or break it with new users, but if people really are skeptical, then there may be some hope.

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