
Google Play Store Ratings Drop - radley
http://blog.testfairy.com/google-play-store-ratings-drop/
======
dredmorbius
That's a nice bit of legwork to show that poor UI design translates directly
into erroneous user interactions.

In conjunction with other recent Google stories
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107325))
it's both cautionary, largely exculpatory of users (Google caused this
problem), and speaks more than slightly to Google's hubris (I've seen plenty
of poor UI from them over the past several years).

An interesting aspect of this dynamic is that the object and subject of the
error are asymmetric in this case. It's one thing to accidentally out yourself
through "not reading instructions" or "just winging it" or "accidentally
hitting the wrong control". It's another to accidentally take an action that
hurts another person -- here in a significant way as it directly affects their
reputation.

Hacker News is of course hardly blameless. I've more than once downvoted a
comment or flagged or upvoted a story, _especially_ on mobile, trying to
access other controls on the site. At least the story flagging can be undone,
though the other actions cannot be. But that's only if I care enough to do so.

~~~
banachtarski
Google design sucks. They've never in the history of the company made a solid
effort to nail UI and it's not part of their culture at all. Every one of
their products is marred by UI inefficiencies, clutter, or inconsistency.

~~~
jmduke
* They've never in the history of the company made a solid effort to nail UI and it's not part of their culture at all.*

Regardless of how you feel about how it turned out, they clearly have spent
the past two years focusing on unifying design and UX across their products.

~~~
dredmorbius
One of the worst sins of UI is "unification".

It's helpful to have meaningfully consistent metaphors and themes across
applications. For the UNIX / Linux commandline, that's processes and pipes,
BSD and GNU argument flags, and the like.

There are various competing keyboard accelerator schemes: emacs, vi,
Wordperfect keyboard templates, DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 9x/NT, Apple's Mac
hotkeys, GNOME and KDE....

There are fundamental layout, font, and color palette schemes.

But one of the worst overall design features I see is taking a given scheme
and applying it without regard to suitability across a wide range of
applications with a wide range of use cases. For Google this results in the
insanity of persistent browser elements occupying 25-30% of vertical screen
real estate in Gmail, Groups, Book search, and other products. When the
workaround is for me to either push my browser window half-height above my
viewable monitor frame and drag down the bottom of the window, to be able to
present my work front and center, or to open the elements inspector and delete
elements from the DOM just to be able to see the relevant work, something's
very, very wrong.

Microsoft of course was infected with similar idiocy with its modal, non-
resizeable dialogs and wizards. Even GNOME, for all its UI/UX brain death,
generally provides for resizable dialogs, and allows text to be copied from
its error pop-ups (under Windows the only recourse was and to the best of my
knowledge remains screenshotting the damned thing).

But ... Google and UI/UX? Not so much.

~~~
watwut
The worst thing for me is that they design for big screens and I have small
one. Even when you pick up compact scheme.

The record was stats screen on blogger which shown me 3cm of information panel
and the rest was taken by huge sticky !mostly empty! top and bottom rows.

Way to go, really.

~~~
davedx
You see that everywhere, unfortunately. I'm on a 2012 Macbook Air, and the
Bootstrap documentation's sidebar navigation doesn't fit in the height of my
screen.

If that doesn't demonstrate how hard it is to get responsive web design right,
I don't know what does!

------
abcd_f
So here's the UI in question - [http://blog.testfairy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/quick_s...](http://blog.testfairy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/quick_suggest.png) \- and apparently the large stars
represent not a _suggestion_ rating, but an _app_ rating. So dismissing
suggestion as a bad one you'd basically give a 1 star rating to an app. Or so
the devs claim.

Coming from the iOS side, I just don't get it. How can you rate an app that
you haven't downloaded? And then if you did download it, why is it being
quick-suggested to you again?

Furthermore, if you did in fact download it, removed it and then reacted
negatively to a suggestion to download it again - how's your low-star reaction
is NOT really a rating for an app itself?

Also, if you look closely at the graphs, the "crashing" involves rating slide
from 4.67 to 4.38 and from 4.79 to 4.74. It's still an unpleasant development
for sure, but that's not a "crash" or a "drop", that's a dip. The matter
appears to be completely blown out of its proportions.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Also, if the dip affects everyone equally, then its more like a rescaling
(presumably on average these reviews are lower than before, I'd guess because
no-one bothers to review a 2-3 star item, only if they love it or really hate
it)

~~~
igordcard
If the dip affected everyone equally it wouldn't be that bad, as most of the
saturation found above the 4.8 would be leveraged... However these suggestions
will be rated, in average, as greater as the overall empathy and knowledge
users have regarding the kind of app in question. For instance, regarding my
app Tabata Trainer (which went from solid 4.57 in December 9th to 4.21 at the
time of this post), how many persons identify with the word "Tabata"? Most of
them will never give a 5. If someone creates a game with a very similar name
to a widely known and adorable game, then people will probably rate the
suggestion highly. This kind of stuff will just lead apps to be rated
unequally... and bad (really bad) apps will raise their ratings, which is
shameful.

------
simcop2387
Cache since it's down right now:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.testfairy.com%2Fgoogle-
play-store-ratings-drop%2F)

~~~
tgasson
It also had an update post [http://blog.testfairy.com/google-play-store-
ratings-drop-upd...](http://blog.testfairy.com/google-play-store-ratings-drop-
update)

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z4GGDYq...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z4GGDYq_4qUJ:blog.testfairy.com/google-
play-store-ratings-drop-update/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk)

------
fauigerzigerk
I understand the frustration of the developers affected by this UI change, but
I think that actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may
lead to better ratings in a statistical sense.

User ratings greatly suffer from self selection bias
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
selection_bias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias)). Asking
users who didn't initially rate an app do so as part of some other workflow
might reduce that bias a little bit.

That said, I'm very distrustful of user ratings in general, both as a
developer and as a consumer, because people often rate stuff based on criteria
that don't concern me at all.

~~~
quarterto

      actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may lead to better ratings 
    

But it's not asking them to rate the _app_ , it's asking them to rate the
_suggestion_. And since rating a suggestion is usually a thumbs-up/thumbs-
down, it primes users to select the extreme ratings.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> But it's not asking them to rate the app, it's asking them to rate the
suggestion._

No, if this is really the UI in question then it is not asking users to rate
the suggestion: [http://blog.testfairy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/quick_s...](http://blog.testfairy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/quick_suggest.png)

It's clearly asking users to rate one app to get suggestions for other apps.

~~~
zango
Sadly, many users just don't read past the title. And users familiar with
other suggestion engines (pandora, etc) expect to teach the system their taste
and relevance.

------
Pxtl
I don't know if google is evil, but I'm pretty sure they're kinda stupid.
Seriously, how many UI whoopsies are we going to hear about this week?

------
mixedbit
When Google started to require users to use G+ and real names to post a review
on the Play store, a number of reviews dropped significantly. The poor design
decision described in the article may be a result of an effort to fix this
dropped user engagement rate.

------
hannahmitt
Interesting. I'd wondered about an inflection point in my graph as well, but
in the opposite direction.

Our average rating has been climbing much faster since Dec 10.

Looks like this feature is influential, but not necessarily negative.

------
nmohideen
On my 2.3.3 phone, the quick rating widget takes the entire width of the phone
and about 15% of the height. Any flick that originates on a star is
irreversibly treated as a rating. Once the star is touched, there is no way to
cancel the action. My flick style never results in any accidental 5 stars
(because it is near the right edge). Wonder how many of my app users are
inadvertently screwing my rating because of this design. I am surprised that
Google's has such a low regard for UI design. They hide their contact forms,
and don't respond when you happen to find the form.

------
fharper1961
I'm Android dev, and I think the "Want quick suggestions?" feature is a good
addition to Google Play, because it encourages users to rate apps.

Yes, the average rating for my app has gone down since Google made this
change. But rankings are relative, not absolute, and all apps are being
treated equally, so it shouldn't make a difference in the rankings.

What wasn't mentioned is that the number of ratings has increased
substantially. I get at least twice as many ratings as before.

In my opinion, more users giving ratings will result in more reliable
rankings.

~~~
zango
If Google will fix the user interface of the box, than it will be acceptable.

(1) let the user correct a rating if tapped by accident

(2) offer the option to leave a comment

------
moondowner
Maybe it's related to this new awful app review trend?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044833)

~~~
magicalist
They're at least referring to the same phenomenon. The followup article to
this one that tgasson posted[1] quotes and links to that very HN thread.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7113614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7113614)

------
mschuster91
I think legislation should be made (maybe anti-trust laws?) which requires
companies to provide adequate, free 1st-level user support for paid services,
and reasonably priced user support for free services.

The current way of big companies "just doing stuff" which deeply affects other
people/businesses who do not have a single way to contact the offender is a
nightmare which has to stop. As the market obviously fails here, legislation
is required.

------
kaeawc
Has this been fixed? The post is dated Jan 1st.

------
k00pa
I added a dialog that asks the user rate the app, remind later or just ignore
it.

The trick is to add the dialog to show up on like 5-10 startup off the app.

If the user is starting the application after 5 tries, he is going to like it.
And provided the way to rate it in couple of clicks, the user usually gives
positive ratings.

------
PaulHoule
Google Play is a joke.

Maybe it's better if you have a different version of Android but when I search
for anything broad I see a bunch of free shovelware apps. I'd like to have an
option to see just the paid apps or the most expensive apps just to clear out
the noise and the spam.

------
ajjai
I see similar behaviour on my app.. Many 1 star ratings without any comments..
Initially I was convinced it must be competitor playing games.. But the trend
continued.. Not sure how long Google will take to address this issue..

------
xeroxmalf
Or the other new problem[0]:

"Actually a great app, but I left 1 star so my review would be seen first!"

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044833)

------
pilif
I might be an overly conservative old fart, but there was a time not so long
ago, where your success wasn't depending on the UI decision (or any other
decision) of a corporate overlord.

Back then, you made a product and it was immediately available for all the
world to use. Yes, you had to spend some time/money/effort for promoting it
and yes, the success might have been dependent on your ability to promote it.

But you didn't have to ask for permission to build it and there was no way to
get screwed because the UI design of an entity you have no control over has
changed slightly from one day to another.

I think it's a real shame that these days seem to be over more and more.

~~~
andybak
> Yes, you had to spend some time/money/effort for promoting it and yes, the
> success might have been dependent on your ability to promote it.

And you're back in exactly the same situation. Where are you going to promote
it and who else has control over that communication channel?

------
mtgx
I can definitely see how trying to touch the icon could've hit the 1/2 star
rating instead.

------
product50
The number of times I have seen the database connection error for an obscure
site which appears on Hacker News is alarming. It is not like millions of
users are trying to get to their site that they go down. If you can't host it
don't - why can't sites just use something like Posthaven or something - to
ensure more reliability.

------
coin
"Error establishing a database connection"

------
blueskin_
Google are crap at UI design.

It's all Metro, and then they do things like this.

------
daphneokeefe
Site is down already.

