Do you need an app for that?
A study on user psychology towards app trends.
The figures are in millions! Millions of apps on the store! How many of these are innovated out of necessity? Questioning these, I studied a bit on the trends of apps and the user behavior.
The study began with an assumption that the use of apps is identified in the beginning of the design and development phase. I had a mindset that the process flows as : a gap is identified which gives an opportunity to build a solution, then comes an intense research stage followed by design and development, eventually creating an application. There is no denial on this methodology being agile and hence the process goes around with several iterations. I was left dumbfounded when I found some really weird apps on the app stores. For example, apps like “Poop map”, “Send me to heaven”, “iBeer” and many more..Considering the process flow, what gap might have been identified that led to the creation of such apps? Can there be an app that is not created out of necessity? Are these apps necessary? filled my mind. What made me more curious to do this small study is the number of users who are installing and enjoying these apps!
Thinking as useless as possible
I stepped on to conduct few experiments by creating simple and mostly useless interfaces that acted as probes to understand the situation better. I can say, I created interfaces just for exploration. To act and think useless, I identified no problem area while creating these interfaces. They are not created out of any necessity. The sole purpose of these interfaces is to understand the perspective of users towards them.
Emo-me: An experiment that asks people to imitate the emojis shown on the screen.
Wipe: An experiment that asks the user to wipe (click) the screen until the screen turns white.
Primary research
Conducting a chat-bot survey and a usability survey, it was interesting to know the perspective of the users towards these interfaces. Here are some of the responses which gave several insights on the sectors on which users think apps are really necessary.
Insights
Firstly, I realized that the use of the app is defined by the user and not the developers or designers. Apps have become so prevalent that no matter what app is launched on the store, user tends to install it out of curiosity and extracts the use of the app and interprets it in their own way.
Secondly, around 80% of the 41 respondents think that there are unnecessary apps on their phones. Around 40% of these people keep these apps just because the UI is clean and simple to use. From the responses it can also be derived how boredom is now tackled using apps instead of any other activity. This shows a clear shift in the entertainment medium. “Hobbies” may fade away in future..
Thus, out of millions of apps on the store, I still question on how many are really necessary to solve a real and important problem. It is evident that apps have already changed user psychology. I consider it crucial to identify a real gap in the system and solve it using the necessary technology instead of dumping thousands of just-for-fun apps on the store.
Links to the probes
Emo-me: https://marvelapp.com/d3higg4
Wipe: https://xd.adobe.com/view/1af26ad7-9c39-438f-76a3-761bac194cce-6cc3/
Make me work: https://xd.adobe.com/view/fa97bf83-4fe9-4d3c-78b7-842962ef951f-8ca6/
