Apps that fit
Designing around people’s lives to unlock sustainable growth
Posted by Isaac Pinnock and Micha Nicheva, Made by Many. Presented at the recent Playtime event in Amsterdam.
What does sustainable growth mean to you? This year’s buzzwords or a complete re-appreciation of how we design and build apps? Is it about making users fall in love with our apps so that they never leave? Or is it about stepping back and leaving engagement entirely up to them? The truth is — of course somewhere in the middle. To build a successful long term relationship with our users we have to carefully switch between holding on and letting go.
This article is about finding a balance between the two. Some of the techniques you may already be using, but are so valuable they’re worth repeating. Others may seem counterintuitive but are a powerful way to strengthen a relationship. We hope all are thought-provoking and will help you achieve meaningful engagement by adapting to people’s lives.
Earlier this year, Google Play approached Made by Many to create a toolkit that would help app developers unlock sustainable growth.
18 weeks later and after fieldwork in three markets (UK, US and South Korea) and across five app categories (Health & Wellbeing, Dating, Education, Entertainment and Social Media) our work has been turned into a presentation for Google Playtime and a series of e-learning modules in the Google Play Academy for App Success. Our full findings and recommendations can be found there and you can check out the talk here, but our highlights are discussed in this article.
Engagement on the user’s terms
As developers, we often imagine our apps at the heart of our user’s lives — there are no interruptions or distractions — from real life or from other apps.
We do this because we’re understandably proud of the things we build and see them single-mindedly. We need this focus to create, but we also need to take a step back to see the bigger picture.
This was a theme we heard over and over again in our fieldwork: whilst users may share common ambitions (e.g. learning a new language or getting fitter) the paths they use to get there are unique, as is the speed at which they progress. All motivations are different.
This means we need to build apps that work on the user’s terms. Let’s take the example of an app that helps you learn a new language. It helps users identify the overarching reason they want to learn. It then helps break up large tasks into smaller, regular actions (making these goals tangible) finally inviting them to set their own schedule.
Some apps do elements of this already, however, it’s often overlooked as these features are seen as ‘add-ons’ or, in the other extreme, things that might introduce too much friction.
The push to launch a minimum viable product and the desire to make experiences effortless are both important, however, to have a place in our user’s lives we have to give autonomy. This is the basis of healthy long-term relationships and sustainable growth.
This works because it helps our users translate ambitions into goals and then plot a route to get there. Secondly, easy and well-defined tasks are more likely to be completed and not overwhelm users.
And, finally, this is something that we kept hearing from the people we interviewed — they expect apps to adjust to their life-style and schedule, not the other way round. We need to give them both agency and flexibility to succeed.
Helping users get back on track
I’m sure we’ve all seen this — a user’s engagement falling off over time or suddenly stopping. It’s easy to assume that this is because a user has given up on their goals (or worse, that they’ve stopped liking our apps!).
The truth may be simpler: life got in the way. Often when we break a habit it’s because of an unexpected situation rather than a conscious choice. We encountered it many times in our interviews: an external event (such as a phone breaking or an impromptu night out) triggered the end of a habit.
Given that stuff happens, how do we help users get back on track? Often, we try to win back users through discounts or a heavier pace of notifications. However, as we heard in our interviews, we need to adapt to users — not the other way round.
So, what content can we create specifically for lapsed users? We tested, for example 2-minute language quizzes as opposed to 15-minute lessons, or 3-minute stretch routines rather than 30-minute workouts. Users saw these as a useful and compelling way to get back on track and back into a habit.
These bite-sized pieces of content can be so effective because they remove barriers or friction costs. Alternative content shows the user that the app can offer different ways to help them.
We found this to be very effective, especially when combined with notifications that used non-patronising and guilt-free language.
Disengage to re-engage
If it’s important to find ways to let your user’s get back on track, we discovered it’s even more important to let them take a break completely.
This sounds counter-intuitive. Normally, we chase maximum engagement or time in-app as a key metric. However, our fieldwork told us that trying to maximise usage can be damaging to the very idea of sustainable growth.
We must have confidence that once we’ve let a user go they’ll come back. We call it disengaging to re-engage. We tested the ability for users to ‘pause’ an app for a set period if they’re not able to keep up with it.
It’s a powerful concept that worked well with our interviewees. Yes, it overrides the badges, nudges, streaks, trophies and notifications we often use to keep people engaged. However, these were things that our cohort told us could be hugely de-motivational if they missed a session or received a reminder they couldn’t respond to.
Allowing people to dis-engage works because maximum engagement is unrealistic and unsustainable. The consequences can be harmful and unhealthy. We need to give our users a chance to take a break when they choose.
This means that users don’t need to feel demotivated by a line of zero’s and broken streaks. After all, missing a day doesn’t mean that the previous 30 days of continuous use didn’t happen. Our goals should be to celebrate progress and success — ultimately a far stronger motivator.
Acknowledging that our users are complex human beings with lives and commitments that they have to prioritise over app use is the cornerstone of a healthy and respectful relationship. One that can develop over time, which is what sustainable growth is all about.
Good product management enables sustainable growth
These may sound like simple features that are easy to apply. However, we’re not suggesting that you sprinkle sustainable functionality over your app — they need to be baked into and appreciated during the design and development process. Here are some best practices that particularly resonated with us throughout this project:
Understanding users
This often gets talked about but not everyone does it well. We rely on quant data (sign-ups, drop-offs, daily active users and so on) but numbers alone will never tell us why a user has made a decision. Qualitative research offers this depth of insight — talking to our users and understanding the reasons behind their behaviours. Using an iterative process to regularly meet our users needs and have our hypothesis explored and challenged allows us to re-risk our product roadmap instead of building the wrong thing.
Leveraging brand values
The definition of branding is often limited to logos, fonts and colours. But beyond that, the features we release and the tone of voice we use are a big part of it.
For example, when testing different disengage-to-re-engage options for the dating app Bumble we gathered some interesting results. When giving a reason for pausing the app users are able to select “I’m prioritising myself” — when this was presented attached to the original context and brand message, it was interpreted as empowering. When this was presented in more plain text however, users felt this was a selfish or negative thing to say.
Only building functionality that truly fits and reflects what our brand stands for is crucial, and the messaging around a new feature may be as decisive as the feature itself. What works for one brand may not work for another.
Communicating change
Whether it is a new feature or a design overhaul, telling our users why we have done it gets them on our side. They are less likely to resist change and won’t end up in a situation where their app has changed overnight. It’s about being transparent and avoiding the shock of the new.
The above example for Citymapper illustrates this perfectly. On the home screen a small banner unobtrusively informs users that there have been changes, and users can choose to view the changes in more detail on a separate page that explains them clearly, with pictures and a gentle tone of voice.
Conclusion
Growing in a sustainable way represents an amazing opportunity to have a long-term relationship with the people using our apps.
However, if our research has told us anything, it’s that it’s not a panacea for truly knowing our users or having a strong proposition, built well. Sure, there are tips and tricks to help us but people are different and apps should be too. In fact, differentiation is a compelling reason for a user to use one app over another.
It’s also taught us the importance of measuring the right stuff. We should constantly ask whether the industry’s standard metrics are right or relevant.
Finally, at the heart of sustainable growth is a healthy relationship with our users — one of mutual value. We have to ask ourselves — are we helping our user’s meet their goals or are we simply meeting our own financial targets? If it’s the latter, how long do we think a relationship like this can really last?
To dive further into this topic and test your knowledge, try the Sustainable Growth course on the Google Play Academy!
Want to know more?
This article is part of a series drawn from Playtime 2019. You can find the full list of presentations here.
