92: Notifications to Increase Engagement
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Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
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I'm Marco Arment.
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And I'm David Smith.
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Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
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So today we wanted to talk a little bit about the ways in which you can motivate your users
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to come back to your app, and the situations and scenarios where you might do that in an
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active way or in a passive way, and kind of some of the implications for that.
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Because I often find personally, this is an area that I have a lot of sort of hand-wringing
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about, because there's this one part of me that thinks, "I want to do everything I can
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to get my users back into my app."
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In many ways, my business is largely supported by advertising, and so the more I can get
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people into my app, the better my business does.
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But on the flip side, I also want to make respectful apps.
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I want to make apps that I enjoy using, that I hope my customers enjoy using, and so I
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want to bring them back into my app for the right reason.
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And this has all come to the surface recently for me, because the next major version of
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Podometer++ is all geared around the concept of achievements and badges, and so as you
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walk so many steps, you earn badges as you go.
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So you get a badge for when you had a 20,000-step day, good job, you get a badge and achievement
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And I built the feature out for just showing and displaying those badges, but then you
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get to run into the question of, "How should I show this to people?
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As soon as you earn a badge, should I pop up a notification that says, 'Hey, you earned
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a badge, come and check it out in Podometer++.'"
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And I could.
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In a weird way, it almost seems to be the trend.
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If you take a look at the Apple Watch, it is the chattiest thing by default with notifications
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for things like this.
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Breathe, David.
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You have to stop and breathe.
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Take a minute, stop and breathe.
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There's all the coaching ones that are like, "Great job starting off today.
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You've already gotten a half-year move goal.
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Keep it up!"
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And it can get so chatty, and that seems like, from Apple, which is ostensibly a company
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to try and imitate.
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They do a lot of this, but it never really sat well with me.
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And so, in the end, what I did was I tried to be more subtle, and in the app itself,
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there's just this nice little glisten, shimmer effect on the badge icon in the top right
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corner of the app whenever you have badges you've earned but haven't looked at.
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And my hope is that it's a subtle thing that if you open the app, you'll notice because
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it moves around a lot.
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But it's not going to ever get in your way.
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It's not something that I'm trying to...
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I'm not asserting that you earning a badge is more important than you seeing your current
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step count, which is the core and main feature of the app.
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And so, it was kind of an interesting journey to work through because I feel like knowing
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when to find that...
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When to notify and when not to notify is tricky.
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And I think in this particular case, I like where I ended up, but it feels at odds with
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the general trend, and that always makes me nervous.
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And so, it seemed like something that was worth discussing.
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Yeah, definitely.
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I think a lot of times we have to, as programmers...
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Let's face it, there's a lot of similarities among programmers.
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We're usually a certain type of nerd.
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And for example, when we want to sell t-shirts for our things, I believe it is the programmer
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instinct to sell only black t-shirts.
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And that's why there are so many black t-shirts for technical things.
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And eventually, I think some people realize that...
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Or were told, "Hey, you know what?
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The rest of the world exists too beyond just geeks."
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And some people want different colors of t-shirts.
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And so, in some cases like that, we have to overcome our geek sensibilities to make everything
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just black and to offer color to the world because they actually want that.
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And there's something to be said for the style of more chatty notifications, more aggressive
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notifications to increase engagement in your mobile applications, all these things that
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we don't usually like to even think about, let alone talk about or consider.
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Some of that is just a style of usage.
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Some of that, users actually want.
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So in this case, I have had Pedometer++, your app, installed on my phone for a very long
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time, probably since it came out.
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And usually, it is in a folder on my second screen because usually I don't check it every
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However, while I'm on vacation, I'm in a place where I'm doing a lot of walking, tons of
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tons of walking.
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And so I've been checking it every day now.
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The way I used to rely on the Apple Watch's activity rings to close, and I would make
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sure I closed those.
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Now, I'm making sure I really hit my goals in Pedometer++, in all this walking during
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this vacation.
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And I was actually just thinking yesterday, before you and I discussed the topic for this
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show, before you told me you were thinking about having these notifications, yesterday
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I was thinking, you know, it'd be nice to have this app update me throughout the day
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in some way if I need a little bit more to reach my goal or something like that.
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And the watch does this too.
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But to have, you know, I was literally thinking in my head, requesting a feature that you
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just said you weren't sure you wanted to do.
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And the fact is that not all of your users will want this.
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Just as many of tech podcast listeners and app users happily buy black t-shirts because
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we're all nerds.
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But there is a portion of your user base that actually not only would not see this as annoying
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or spammy, it would actually increase the value of the app to them.
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They actually want this.
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And it is against so many of our sensibilities to offer a feature like that or to build that
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in or especially to do something like enable it by default.
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Because let's be honest, if you don't enable these kind of things by default, you might
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as well not even build the feature because so few people will use it.
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But sometimes that actually is what people want.
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And we are so conservative about annoying people or about prompting them with notifications
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whose sole purpose is re-engagement with the app rather than like, "This is a fact that
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It's like when Overcast sends notifications, currently Overcast only sends notifications
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for two things.
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Only for new episodes of podcasts that you have said, "Notify me about this."
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Or if you have gone on the website and said, "Notify me when ads are available for purchase
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in this category, I will notify you for that as well."
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I don't have any notifications in there for things like, "Hey, you have 40 episodes
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Why don't you think about a time to listen to them today?"
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Something like that.
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And I probably should consider something like that because that is such a common engagement
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And those things, first of all, it is questionable whether they are permitted in the app review
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Technically, anything that is promotional or for marketing purposes is not allowed.
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In practice, apps violate that constantly.
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Really, really big apps too.
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Like apps that Apple definitely would know about and this rule seems to go fairly unenforced.
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And the app store violates it sometimes.
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This is not a small thing that happens sometimes.
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It happens all the time.
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And there's also, there's a line to walk between like, "Hey, buy more gems.
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They're on sale right now," which I think is annoying.
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But also something that might actually provide value to people like, "You're 90% to your
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step goal, but you seem to have slowed down in the last couple hours.
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Why don't you go take a walk?"
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I mean, obviously, there are ways to word this that are a little bit less…
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Not, "Hey, get off your butt and get out there."
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So that kind of feature, I think, if you want Podometer++ to be more of like an everyday
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thing for more people, if you want it to be a thing they check multiple times throughout
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the day, I think not only should you do that feature, I think you need to do that feature.
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I mean, the other thing, the counterpoint, and I definitely appreciate where you're
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coming from, and it's lovely to hear that you have a very different view on this than
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I do in some ways as a user who wants the feature and me as a developer who's like,
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"Hmm, maybe not."
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>> Oh, and by the way, I don't know how big your beta is, but because you revealed the
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secret about that nice shimmery effect on the badge section on the toolbar, I noticed
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that immediately.
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I'm like, "Ooh, what's that?"
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And I tapped it.
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I've never tapped that button before, ever.
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I didn't even know badges were in your app.
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How long have they been there?
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>> They appeared in that beta.
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>> Oh, okay, good.
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>> This is the first time you could have seen them.
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It's like a button to share your steps with making a little share image.
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Now it's this new area for badges.
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>> Oh, okay.
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Well, but yeah, I saw that button.
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I'm like, "Ooh, what's that?"
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And I tapped it.
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And then I noticed later in the day, I went back to it, and it was still shimmering.
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And I thought, "Oh, there is something in here I haven't seen yet or I haven't cleared
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it or I haven't marked as red or something."
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So I tapped it again.
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And at neither point, I was like, "Oh, God, that's so garish.
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I wish that app wasn't there."
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It's something that's small and subtle, but it kind of gets your attention in a tasteful
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So if you look at the tag or the marquee tag in HTML, it's not blinking bright pink and
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covering up the part of the app that I want to see, anything like that.
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It's a nice little animation shimmer effect on a bar button item.
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And that's totally tasteful and within the bounds of reasonable.
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And at least in this small testing group of one, it had exactly the intended effect, which
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is I noticed this thing and I tapped on it to see what I was missing.
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And I think that was my intention with that.
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And I'm glad it worked in that regard.
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And I think this discussion is interesting because it reminds me of the very first time
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I went to WWDC.
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And I went to one of the user interface design labs, which are those really hard to schedule
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things at WWDC where back then, you couldn't do it in the app even.
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You had to get up early in the morning, line up outside of Moscone West.
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As soon as they opened the door, you'd run into the place where you could sign up.
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And they had 40 for the day and the first 40 people got design reviews.
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And I remember I went to one of those.
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And in general, the guy was very helpful and gave me a lot of feedback on my app.
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But one of the things he said that stuck with me and has still stuck with me is this -- he
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said one of the things that's important to find in your app is having an area or a purpose
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that gives somebody new value every time they open the app.
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So making sure that there's a reason for them to come back to it on a regular basis.
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And with an app like Podometer, in some ways, it's like just the fact that the step counts
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are changing is sort of that.
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And the impression I get from a lot of my users is that there is this natural habituation,
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if that's a word, of use of the app where if you are somebody who starts to care about
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your steps, you will just naturally start opening the app on a regular basis to check
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your step counts.
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And in many ways, my goal with this other version is to -- rather than pulling you into
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the app with a notification to try and be like, "Hey, you earned a badge.
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Good job," is to in some ways create this curiosity about, you know, "Hey, did I get
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And especially because the nature with a lot of badges kind of stuff is once you've had
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-- and most users will probably download this update -- have an initial wave of badges that
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they earn in terms of, you know, because it takes into account your past history.
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So if you've had a day with 40,000 steps, like, "Great job, you earned that badge,"
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or you've had a long streak, or your lifetime steps have crossed over any of the boundaries,
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you'll have this big swath of badges.
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And hopefully that's exciting and cool and is useful when the app comes out and can make
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people excited and want to show people.
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But then from that point on, there's actually not going to be that many badges that you
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will earn on a regular basis from that point on, just because the nature of having it be
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an achievement that you work towards -- you know, like right now I'm working towards
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my 10 million step badge, which is currently the highest lifetime step badge, which, you
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know, fair enough, I've been using the app for a very long time.
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But I think I'm something like 300,000 steps away from that.
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It's going to take me a while to get that 300,000 steps.
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And so it's not something that's necessarily something I'm going to check on a regular
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basis, but in the weird way in the back of my mind, now that this feature is there, I'm
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always kind of hoping that there'll be this shimmer in the top right corner the next time
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I open the app, that it creates that sense of somewhat excitement or curiosity, which
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is different than if I just know whenever I hit it, I'm going to get a notification.
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Like I have this feeling of I'm going to go back and check on a regular basis.
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But yeah, it's a funny tension, though, because I appreciate the way you're coming
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from, for like, you can get into such -- it can be so useful to do this kind of notification
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stuff and to do this kind of more coaching-based behaviors.
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But at the same time, I also kind of just want people to keep opening the app on a regular
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basis because that's not there if you care about it.
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If you're like -- if you are any highly engaged user of the app, you're just going
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to be doing it anyway.
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And maybe I'm losing some of the attention of the less engaged users.
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But in a weird way, I'm okay with that.
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I don't know.
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I'm probably not making a good choice necessarily, but it's just the thing that feels more
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right to me.
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I'm curious, do you do things like measure monthly active users in any way?
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I use Fabric still, and so it measures it for me.
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Because the reason I ask is, I have always found that whenever I start measuring anything
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-- and this is not a thing I invented, this is a very common thing -- whenever I start
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measuring anything, I do start caring about that thing and I start trying to optimize
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And this happens with lots of things that get measured as part of jobs or work or even
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just hobbies.
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That's one of the reasons why it's so hard to evaluate programmer productivity with things
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like lines of code written or things like that.
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And as I started evaluating Overcast in this way, when I built my own analytics to replace
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Fabric a few months back and I started measuring monthly active users for really the first
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time -- and anybody who does this sees two things.
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A, way more people install the app than use the app.
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B, lots of people use the app first and then stop using it and you just kind of lose them.
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They just kind of, you know, they don't really stick.
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And so it's very, very tempting for anybody measuring any kind of engagement type activity
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in their app like this to make changes like adding notifications or sending out email
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reminders or things like that to make these changes to remind people to get back into
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And that feels so spammy to me.
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Like I really don't like that.
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However, I do think, you know, in areas like this, I think it is possible and reasonable
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that not every app will have a way to do this, but that many apps have an opportunity here
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to remind people to come back to the app in a way that doesn't just feel like outright
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It's a very, very hard line to walk.
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And again, not every app is going to have something like this that they can do or that
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would make sense to do.
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I always think of like James Thompson's Pcalc app, which is a wonderful calculator.
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And James is, he is so devoted to this app and these platforms.
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He adds every feature he possibly can.
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Like whenever iOS enables something new, like now you can change your calculator's icon
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to like all sorts of wonderful little icons and iOS finally added that option.
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He has like a version of it for Apple TV, stuff like that.
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And I always think of like an app like that, a calculator, a utility app.
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What would that do with some of these tricky behaviors or engagements or in-app purchase
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And it's hard.
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And it reminds me like so many apps, it's hard to come up with useful ways you can either,
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you know, have in-app purchases to help you achieve a more successful business model or
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a sustainable business model or, you know, things like how do you use notifications to
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increase engagement.
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Sometimes it's just really hard for the app.
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Sometimes there isn't an option like, you know, what's Pcalc going to do?
00:17:26
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Like bother you, you know, every, every like, you know, few days saying, hey, need any math
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You haven't done any math in the last few days.
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I can help you out there.
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Like it's just so many apps are not going to have a reasonable way to do this that doesn't
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just seem like pointless spam to the user.
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So when you have something like that, like you do with these fitness apps where you have
00:17:47
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like as you said, like the coaching behavior goal setting, you can notify people about
00:17:52
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their progress towards a goal and help them reach it if they are about to not reach it
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or congratulate them when they do reach it.
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That is actually valuable for this type of app in a way that is way more, way more clearly
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valuable and not spammy than most apps have the opportunity to do.
00:18:09
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So it would almost be a waste for you not to do features like this.
00:18:13
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The only reason I think you wouldn't want to do a feature like this is either if Apple
00:18:18
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bans it, which they haven't and likely won't, or if you just don't want to justify putting
00:18:23
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this much time into this app, like if, if the app for you was otherwise pretty much
00:18:27
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done and you wanted to invest the time in a different app.
00:18:29
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But as long as you're investing time into building features for this app, that feature
00:18:33
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seems like low hanging fruit and it seems like a win all around.
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Anyway, we are sponsored this week by ZOJO, X-O-J-O, ZOJO.
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00:19:58
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So you're doing a very good job of turning me a little bit on this, I'll say.
00:20:06
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The things that come to mind though that are kind of interesting as I try and think through
00:20:10
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if I were to go down this road of like being a bit more chatty or a bit more engaged.
00:20:16
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I think first is the thing that I'm realizing as you're describing the situation is in many
00:20:21
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ways I am reticent to do this because of the experience I've had in other applications
00:20:28
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that were not respectful in their use of something like this.
00:20:34
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And in some ways as I'm just as I'm sitting here thinking about it in some ways it's nice
00:20:39
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to think of this as a potential opportunity as a result.
00:20:44
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It's like the doing it in a respectful, thoughtful way that is clearly not spammy or problematic
00:20:53
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in those kinds of ways is potentially an advantage, is potentially something that would be distinctive
00:20:59
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and attractive to users.
00:21:03
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And I should not have in my mind that just like doing something like this is always sketchy
00:21:11
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just because other developers have done something like this in a sketchy way.
00:21:16
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It doesn't preclude me from finding the right way to do this.
00:21:20
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And in many ways I think that's something that in the back of my mind as I'm developing,
00:21:24
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that's like my goal in most things is to try and find that respectful, thoughtful approach
00:21:30
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to something that is potentially different than a mainstream competitor, like a big,
00:21:37
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larger company.
00:21:39
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So that's, I think, A, is good to keep in mind.
00:21:41
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And then two, something that is interesting that's probably worth unpacking slightly just
00:21:47
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from a technical perspective is the interesting thing with notifications on iOS is that they
00:21:51
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are always opt-in.
00:21:54
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Unless you're Apple, in which case you don't have to have users opt into notifications,
00:22:00
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which is a side note.
00:22:02
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But in our applications we have to have users opt into them.
00:22:06
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And so the interesting thing as I think about this is like earlier you made the very valid
00:22:11
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point that having something like this not on by default drastically diminishes its impact
00:22:19
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because very few people proportionally will turn it on.
00:22:22
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And it's tricky though with notifications because in order to enable it, I have to pop
00:22:28
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up a modal blocker that says, "Would you like to allow this application to send you notifications?"
00:22:34
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If I don't do that, I can't show you a notification.
00:22:38
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So at some point I have to show this to you.
00:22:42
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Now if it's not enabled by default, then I would just have this be in the settings app
00:22:48
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to be like an area that was just like coaching and we'll have a little description of what
00:22:52
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coaching would be and then like a switch that you would turn on.
00:22:58
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At that moment when you first turned it on, it would pop up the blocker at that point
00:23:01
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and say, "Hey, in order for me to send you these coaching prompts, you need to give me
00:23:07
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permission to do this," which feels very natural.
00:23:10
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But if I wanted it to be enabled by default, what I would have to do is presumably the
00:23:14
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first time you install the app probably or very shortly thereafter just sort of blindly
00:23:21
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pop up this notification that says, "Hey, this app can send you coaching stuff.
00:23:27
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Do you want to say yes?
00:23:28
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Would you like me to do that or not?"
00:23:30
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And that's, I think, in many ways, if anything, the thing that I get more stuck on, especially
00:23:35
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because the app already unfortunately has one of those right now because when you first
00:23:40
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install the app, it pops up a notification that says, "Would you give me permission to
00:23:43
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access your motion and fitness data?"
00:23:45
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Because the app is completely useless without turning that on.
00:23:50
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And so it's interesting because I don't think I would ever feel good about having it always
00:23:54
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on by default because I would have to show that notification as part of the onboarding
00:24:01
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process unless then it would go off.
00:24:03
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So you could be like, "Okay, well then that's when you start doing the big walkthrough thing
00:24:07
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where the first time you launch the app, it kind of has this little walkthrough thing
00:24:11
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where it's like, 'Hey, this app needs your motion data.
00:24:15
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It's about to ask you for it.
00:24:17
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And then it asks you for it.
00:24:18
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And then the next page is like, 'Hey, this has coaching.
00:24:21
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Would you like coaching?'
00:24:22
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And you kind of have the user fill out a questionnaire on their first run experience, which I don't
00:24:28
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love either.
00:24:29
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But anyway, these are just some funny things.
00:24:33
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As you convince me to explore this more and not just discount it offhand, these are the
00:24:37
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kind of things that I start to then think about because there's some interesting technical
00:24:40
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challenges to going down this road as well.
00:24:43
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What about if you, instead of naming it "coaching" necessarily and just asking, "Do you want
00:24:49
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Like, "I think people might not get what that is or why they would want that."
00:24:53
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How about you make it a two-step process.
00:24:55
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You have step one, "Please enable your motion."
00:24:57
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Prompt, done, okay.
00:24:59
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And then second screen is, "What would you like your goal to be, your daily goal?"
00:25:05
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And then on that same screen, you can have an option that says, "Would you like to
00:25:10
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►
be notified about the progress you're making towards your daily goal?"
00:25:16
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►
And then that prompts them for notifications.
00:25:18
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►
Yeah, it's like it's doing it in that kind of having an onboarding process.
00:25:23
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And then for existing users, on the first run of the new version, you prompt, put up
00:25:27
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►
a box saying, "Would you like to review your daily goal?"
00:25:30
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►
And then on that screen, have the...
00:25:35
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►
Right now, this is something that, again, in a way that would make sense as a feature
00:25:39
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►
for a user, you might want to, similar to what the Apple Watch does, you might want
00:25:44
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►
to have periodic prompts to the user of like, "You've been hitting your daily goal every
00:25:49
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►
day and exceeding it by 30% for a while.
00:25:52
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►
Do you want to maybe increase it?"
00:25:54
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Or if they never hit their daily goal, you can prompt them to say, "Do you want to
00:25:57
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►
modify your goal?"
00:25:58
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►
Maybe lower.
00:25:59
◼
►
You've got to word it carefully, obviously, to not show like, "Hey, you're kind of
00:26:04
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►
But there's a way to do that where it is part of a feature that's actually helpful.
00:26:09
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►
And the Apple Watch shows such a great example of this.
00:26:12
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►
And there's a lot of people out there who don't have Apple Watches but do have iPhones.
00:26:16
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►
So this could really be a big help for them.
00:26:21
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►
And this could bring a lot of the value of the Apple Watch with its daily fitness rings.
00:26:25
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►
It can bring a lot of that value to iPhone users who don't have the watch.
00:26:29
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►
And so I feel like if you roll this in as just like a couple of minor prompts, like
00:26:35
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►
periodic goal change prompts, depending on their on performance, and then also like,
00:26:39
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►
"Do you want to be notified of your progress with this goal that you're setting or modifying
00:26:43
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►
on in this screen?"
00:26:44
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►
Simple as that.
00:26:45
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►
Then you have, then you cover existing and new users.
00:26:47
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►
I mean, this is, I'm just spit balling here.
00:26:49
◼
►
I have no thought about this at all besides what's happened on the air right now.
00:26:53
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►
But I thought about that as you were saying, like, "Oh, this could be like kind of one
00:26:58
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►
Because you do have to think so hard when you're designing apps about wording of things,
00:27:03
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►
when you ask for permission to do things like notifications, you know, how you ask, when
00:27:08
◼
►
you ask how it's presented to the user, what kind of selling proposition is being shown
00:27:14
◼
►
Like, if you just ask for notifications kind of like the dumb way, like in your app to
00:27:18
◼
►
finish launching method, and so that way, like the very first time they launch the app,
00:27:23
◼
►
it just asks.
00:27:24
◼
►
They don't know yet why you want notifications.
00:27:27
◼
►
Like you haven't actually shown them why.
00:27:29
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►
And so you will probably have a lower accept rate or lower opt in rate unless you have
00:27:34
◼
►
shown them a good reason why.
00:27:36
◼
►
But if you have this, you know, you already have that problem with the motion settings,
00:27:40
◼
►
you already have a system in place to kind of like, you know, the first run experience
00:27:43
◼
►
to manage that, it would not be that much work to add a second screen to that, that
00:27:47
◼
►
just says, "All right, how about your goal?
00:27:48
◼
►
What kind of goal do you want?"
00:27:49
◼
►
And then, you know, roll it in with that.
00:27:51
◼
►
>> Yeah, maybe.
00:27:53
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►
And it's, yeah, it's interesting.
00:27:54
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►
I mean, that's why I'm glad we talked about it on the show.
00:27:57
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►
Because it's these types of things where I make a choice, and then I don't feel confident
00:28:03
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►
in the finality of that.
00:28:04
◼
►
And it's certainly helpful, I think, to talk it through.
00:28:06
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►
Because there's a lot of these, you know, there's so many different options.
00:28:08
◼
►
And I think, too, maybe as a closing thought, like the thing that comes to mind is how,
00:28:14
◼
►
in many ways, we have to make choices about the sort of the scope of our application and
00:28:21
◼
►
the type of customers we want, in the sense that, do I, you know, one of the things that
00:28:26
◼
►
in the back of my mind, I then have to decide is, do I want to have an app with lots and
00:28:31
◼
►
lots of slightly interested users, or do I want to have optimized for fewer fanatical
00:28:39
◼
►
users, for example.
00:28:41
◼
►
And these are the kinds of things that go on in the back of my mind when I try and think
00:28:44
◼
►
through features like this.
00:28:45
◼
►
Because in some ways, I think my general, my knee-jerk reaction is always to have, I
00:28:51
◼
►
would rather have fewer, very, very passionate, engaged users than lots and lots of users
00:28:56
◼
►
who don't really care.
00:28:58
◼
►
Not with the paid up front price you don't.
00:29:01
◼
►
Yeah, well, this app's free, so.
00:29:02
◼
►
Oh, that's right, it is free.
00:29:04
◼
►
It's just at the tip jar, right?
00:29:05
◼
►
Yeah, it's just at the tip jar.
00:29:07
◼
►
So it's interesting to just try and think through what kind of users I want, and then
00:29:12
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►
how do I want to treat those users.
00:29:14
◼
►
And I think as long as I do that respectfully, then, you know, I'll probably be in good shape.
00:29:18
◼
►
But it's just, it is a good reminder of all the different things that we have to balance,
00:29:21
◼
►
you know, to make our apps be the things we want them to be.
00:29:24
◼
►
I think you're pretty respectful.
00:29:27
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►
We're out of time this week.
00:29:28
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and we'll talk to you next week. Bye.