If you own a smartphone, you spend a little over 2 hours every day with just your phone — using the hoard of apps you’ve collected over time.

Google Play Store, the largest user base for an app store in the world, has over 2.5 billion active users 🤯

Google Play Store has around 300,000 apps with at least 10,000 downloads.

The Overwhelming Store

Google Play Store throws nothing less than 100s of app choices on a generic exploration. How is a user expected to decide the best apps to download?

Of course, we are not talking about a user with a specific app in mind to download — Amazon, Zoom, Facebook, Twitter etc. We are focusing on the maximum use case — Explorers 🎖🙇

The 4 ways for an Explorer to be influenced to download an app are:

Search a keyword (best racing game, coronavirus apps, etc)

Recommended and suggested apps based on past activities

The categories and top lists (Grossing, Trending, Free and Paid)

And how can we not mention — advertising.

Apart from this exploration, understanding the actual usage or relevance of an app needs a considerably high effort & time. Why you ask?! 🤔

Each app requires you have to visit their showcase page to know further about the app. Naturally, the back and forth is painstaking 😰

Is there an easier way?

The smoother exploration

Let’s first understand the basics of app exploration. A few elements in the detailed section of an app, such as ‘description’ are usually ignored by the user. Visuals are the most enticing and in some cases, the most informational elements. Hence, most app developers focus mainly to communicate through screenshots.

Other decision-helping elements at this stage include ratings, number of downloads, and in some cases, size of the app.

What if a simple gesture, of touch and hold, could easily show these elements including the screenshots, in a preview?

One thing at a time (OTAT) | Google Play Store — Explore Faster

The time spent by a user while exploring multiple apps gets reduced through this one basic change. It also facilitates an easier discovery of apps.

Why not make the experience perceivably better and smoother, and app discovery a lot faster?

This works wonders for apps, and and Google Play Store 📱🤟🏼