Surviving the Google Play Onslaught: When Droids Attack
Colin Lee
@colinmlee
Who Are You?
Colin Lee
Android Software Engineer
@ Vidku
Twitter: @colinmlee
Vidku: @colin
Surviving Google Play
- Quality
- Design
- Pick Your Battles
The Zen of Quality
Why We Put Apps on Google Play
- To get more customers
- To make more money
- To be more happy
Why We Fix Bugs
- To help users reach the value
- To get more customers
- To make more money
- To be more happy
No one gives a damn about your backlog if it does not drive value.
(Except your PM and BA and they're half-robot)
A lot of things companies do don't drive value.
What not to do matters
- 10,000+ devices
- Gingerbread must die
- Fire phone is a disaster
- Kindle only matters for Amazon
- Xiaomi is HUGE, but did you do Mandarin?
Battery Seppuku
Crashes Every 10 Mins
Quality is Value.
Not crashing is NOT quality. Value is.
But... If you crash too often, value is lost.
Analytics
Real data should assist decisions.
Twitter Fabric
Mobile Crash Alerts
Get Real Devices
Test on a Crappy Phone
Automated Testing
Is nice, but does not replace device QA.
Support & Email
May sound smart to make devs handle initial support, but you're paying $50-100/hr to burn them out.
Get case management software.
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
- The Art of War
Product is Hypothesis
You must let it fail to succeed.
An advantage of Google Play is you can test more hypotheses faster.
Beta Testing
- Users love to beta test.
- More so when they know they signed up for it.
- Even so, make sure it's not TOO broken
Design
Design Isn't Value
But it can make value easier to find.
Design Cannot Make Up For Value
But it does matter!
You should A/B test your user interface and store listing.
Tablets Matter!
And Google Cares A Lot About It
Design for
Engagement
Deep links, Google search integration, and social sharing drive virality and growth.
Pick Your Battles
who wishes to fight must first count the cost
- The Art of War
Platform Cost
- Each supported platform imposes a potential cost. There are over 10,000 devices to support.
- Research phones and markets you need. Make sure it works on those phones and languages.
- Fail gracefully if not.
Feature Bloat
- Features need to prove themselves with data.
- If users do not use a feature, you may be wasting money supporting it across devices.
- Cook some sacred cows.
Prioritization
- No app would ever be released on Google Play without bug prioritization.
- There will always be bugs on some device somewhere.
- One must make time to iterate and find real value.
