#06 Story of App Store redesign
There was a presentation on the App store redesign at the WWDC keynote. But I recommend watching the particular session on Redesign of App Store, where both the lead designer and content team lead were on the stage and shared their version of the story. I find it very interesting how the design and content team work together, and how the design tailors to the content and brings out the maximum power of content.
In our practices, there are huge gaps between these two teams. Either the editors wait for the design and follow the format to create content and then complain about the constraints, or designers want to design with real content and follow the current content. But if you have an in-house content creation team, they can actually recreate the entire content if needed. There are a lot of possibilities to explore. Another possibility is the editor talks about lots of ideas and designers try to do mockup, and then they find out the content is not standardized or consistent. So let’s check out how App Store made it.
App store was launched 9 years ago with 500 Apps. Now it has over 2.2 million Apps. It changes how software is distributed.
To redesign App Store, the first thing is to clarify the goal. All the design is addressing how to achieve these goals.
Designer’s Perspective
- Today Tab
Today Tab is a card list. It is the editor recommendation. The editor team will have full control over all the cards.
But I like how they describe it. It is all about telling the story of the apps, what’s the app, who made it and who motivated them. The design team comes up with 12 card templates for editors to use. They provide enough variety and meet the needs of different stories.
2. Game Tab: App Store strives to be the world’s best game store.
After separating out Game, Apple makes such an interesting claim.
3. In-app purchase：new design highly promotes the exposure of in-app purchases. You can find them everywhere. The design team also introduces a way to design icons for In-app purchase features. It is one-fourth of the App icon shape with a plus icon. The original app icon is also added to the corner of it. I like this nice metaphor. It is like adding a piece of puzzles to the app.
4. App detail page
Features added are:
- put achievements and age restrictions to the top
- autoplay of video preview and up to 3 videos
- universal: showing if it has iPad and Apple TV apps
- update versions will clear the accumulated ratings
- more recommendation of related apps at the bottom
Editorial Perspective
Now it is the turn of the editor team to speak about the redesign. It will highly change their team workflow to produce the corresponding content and make the best out of the new design.
How to serve millions of users with perspectives?
Who we are: we are fans; we play & recommend.
Our principles:
- We celebrate Apps
- We are the voice of App store: smart, fun, passionate and humble
- We offer independent insights
- We share interesting and important stories
- We deliver a fresh and unexpected take: to keep up with the pace of the crazy trend
Four topics we like:
- Gaming: Apps are the future of gaming.
- Lifestyle: Apps transform your life.
- Culture & Entertainment: Apps shape pop culture, e.g. TV, music
- New Tech & Innovation: Apps change everything
Three key intentions: the goal of stories we want to tell
- Inform: “Cool, I want to get that!”
- Help: instructional and motivational; “I had no idea. Thanks!”
- Inspire: “Wow, that’s super interesting!”
