Play Store: Editor’s Choice 2.0
Bringing Editor’s Choice content forward in the discovery journey by applying special treatment to distinguish its cluster and landing page from other clusters in-stream.
Role
Lead Interaction Designer
Deliverables
UI + UX Design
Prototypes
Specs & Guidelines
Team
1 Lead Visual Designer
1 Visual Designer
1 other Interaction Designer
1 Product Manager
1 Eng
Duration
3 months
Context
A content-forward future
At the time of the project, Google was pushing to scale coverage, quality, & visibility of existing content types and create new ones, with the goal of more distributed Editorial content earlier in the user journey. This influenced our work of bringing EP2.0 more exposure in the discovery process.
Problem
Today, Editor’s Choice content – the best of the Play Store apps and games, filtered by the Editorial “Merch” team – is buried in the user discovery funnel, exists only on Editorial Pages (EP) or on detail pages, and is not personalized, so all users see the same static Editorial Pages with predefined lists of apps / games which need to be manually updated.
Solution
Show editorial content higher in the discovery journey & assist decision making by:
A personalized EC 2.0 cluster on Apps & Games Home
a) With new EC badge in cluster title,
b) Specific Editor’s Choice category titles for a given topic e.g. “EC racing games”,
c) Editorial snippet over each title
A new Cluster landing page with three “Why we love this” bullet points per app/game
Proposed Design Solution
In order to make Editor’s Choice content stand out, I needed to take a 2-pronged approach and customize not only 1) the cluster on the Apps Home (AH) and Games Home (GH) streams, but 2) the landing page the EC clusters led to also had to be customized to include the 3 “Why we love this” points manually written by the merch team. However, this proved to be a challenge because all cluster landing pages followed the same template: lead first with screenshots or video of an app/game, followed by the App bar or Install bar. This posed a unique challenge because for the first time, we were proposing a deviation from the normal pattern of a LP to give preferential treatment to one of our “programs” (Play programs included Editor’s Choice, Teacher’s approved apps and games, among others).
I explored over 20+ different iterations of the new cluster for Editor’s Choice, introducing the concept of animation. Since overlaying an editorial snippet over an app’s screenshot proved difficult because of the variance in the image color and quality of said screenshots, I created an option where the snippet looped with the screenshot. The whole idea was to balance bringing the content forward (snippet) onto the home stream level to entice users to tap on EC content without compromising visual quality.
Part 1: Editor’s Choice Cluster on Home
2x cluster for games, 1x for apps
In the end, we chose the option with the least deviation from the previous 2x games clusters: leave the editorial cluster the same size, but overlay a short snippet over a dark gradient at the bottom. Naturally, I had concerns about legibility of the snippet and long localized strings. So I did a few tests in long locales like German, Russian, and Vietnamese, and created a framework to truncate the snippet after 2 lines.
For Apps, we chose the path of least resistance as well: keep the clusters at 1x to maintain recognizability and not introduce any new cluster that might be mistaken for an ad. This is because new formats historically tested negatively and were perceived as ads, so the PM has been very careful to introduce new formats for clusters. The Apps Editor’s Choice clusters would only be differentiated with the EC badge and the short description under the cluster title.
Part 2: Editor’s Choice Cluster Landing Page
Problem
Store landing pages all led with screenshots. This was problematic because separation of content was unclear. Users didn’t know if another set of screenshots (called the App Hero cards, or AHC) belonged to the previous title, or if it was another altogether. Additionally, adding the three “Why we love this” bullet points for EC could make these landing pages very long. Finally, the “Editor’s Choice games” title up top is too generic, with no categorical differentiation.
Leading with screenshots didn’t serve all use cases, and was a good test to challenge old notions and industry app store conventions.
Though it deviated from the existing landing page structure, the new landing page for Editor’s choice content called for a different structure. It made sense to lead with the Install bar with the title’s name and all relevant information, to differentiate the titles in a long list. In addition, I introduced a divider after the 3 “Why we love this” bullet points for even better separation.
The earlier options I created were not as successful:
The first option to the bottom left leads with a Mini Details Page - a more content-dense version of the Install Bar, with Ratings & Reviews, downloads, IARC, and Editor’s Choice badge. The team and leadership decided this would make each title too long and the landing page too long and dense.
A second option I explored was to keep the current landing page structure, but add the 3 bullet points and a divider at the end. As expected, this did not provide enough list separation, and early testing proved that when scrolling vertically, users wanted to find out the name of the title and relevant metadata first, before flashy screenshots. In the end, the team decided on leading with the Install Bar, then the screenshots or Apps Hero Cards (AHC), and finally the “Why we love this” bullets and divider.
Lead with Install Bar
Leading with the app/game name, metadata, and CTA did a better job with information hierarchy, especially in vertical consumption.
Through this project and various iterations, I learned of the importance of good IA, in challenging standard and industry norms, striking a good balance between clutter or content that’s too dense for the sake of discovery, and ultimately listening more to the user.