Design Strategies
Be transparent. Support developers throughout the developer journey. Not just the submission and maintenance flows. For example:
- Developers want better guidance around requirements, and they want it both up front and during the submission flow. "Checklists" are concepts they like a lot.
- Currently we can't compete on things like number of users or revenue. But we can compete on transparency and ease-of-use of the developer workflow and interface.
Be experts. Use Mozilla expertise to provide guidance that helps developers make informed choices. Don't leave them with a paradox of choice. For example:
- Developers are submitting to multiple app stores. They're busy people invested in their apps (not in learning the intricacies of an app store). So they want an opinated experience that is fast and easy to use.
- Developers receive post-release incentives from other app stores, i.e., prestige and profit (iOS), developer ecosystem (Android). Currently we can't compete on these. But we can beef up our post-release communication to celebrate our developers and to provide "expert" tools/guidance for how to track, manage, update, and (perhaps) market their apps.
Be generous. Always default to the most common and logical use case(s); rather than trying to address all potential use cases.
Don't try to be the "everything app store." Focus on doing several things really well. Do those for a period of time. And then see what's needed to make the experience even better.