August 11, 2008

Write an App Store Review Today

You’ve probably noticed that most user reviews on the iPhone’s App Store are beyond useless. Instead of talking about the app, many reviews complain about the application’s price or its icon or its screenshots. Presumably, these reviewers never even bothered to try the application before they wrote their review.

I propose we make Monday «App Store Review Day». Every monday, pick one application you’ve actually used and write a sane review. It doesn’t have to be a positive review, but it has to be an informed review.1

If enough people wrote at least one informative review each week, perhaps App Store reviews could yet become useful.

  1. Marco Arment thinks that we should not write reviews if we intend to give less than 4 stars since enough people give negative reviews already. There is some truth to this, but as of now, most negative reviews are useless because they complain about pointless things. While positive reviews are clearly preferable, negative reviews are helpful if they are informed and objective. Try to give priority to positive reviews, but if you want to write a negative review, go ahead - just make it an useful negative review which tells people why the application is bad. back

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If you liked this, you'll love my book. It's called Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web. In it, I cover the whole design process, from user research and sketching to usability tests and A/B testing. But I don't just explain techniques, I also talk about concepts like discoverability, when and how to use animations, what we can learn from video games, and much more.

You can find out more about it (and order it directly, printed or as a DRM-free ebook) on the Pragmatic Programmers website.