A few weeks ago in Product Management we received a message from one of our app developers: “The iOS version of Magazine Apps (at least since the rewrite) is ten years old today 🥳”.
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Nils works as a product manager at Heise and primarily oversees C’T when it comes to magazine brands. They always have a lot of questions for users.
The iOS apps’ code has October 16, 2014 as the creation date.
(Image: Heise Online)
16 October 2014. That day, heise reported online about the new Android version 5.0 (today we are at version 14) and the new iPhone 6 Plus that amazed people with its flexibility (today we are at iPhone 16). The NSA scandal involving whistleblower Edward Snowden showed its consequences in the Bundestag investigative committee and Tageschau called for a planned meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel (third term) titled “Hoping for a new start with Putin”.
So: a lot has happened in the last decade. The apps for our magazine brands c’t, iX, Make, Mac&i and c’t Photography no longer run on Android 5 nor are they opened with any relevant frequency on iPhone 6 Plus. During this time, the technology and software of mobile devices has evolved rapidly, but not our apps. With all the love for tech nostalgia, you might want to consider an update here.
Your opinion about our apps
If you read the reviews of our apps in the store, you can see how many people use them loyally and regularly to be able to read our branded articles digitally at any time. We are very happy with it! At the same time, reports of technical shortcomings and the need for further development are also increasing. One user described his overall impression thus: “Heise and C’T are not lighthouses that are not worth the quality of the app.”
In product management you read customer feedback every day. Since many of our loyal customers also use feedback channels to praise us, this is often a good thing. Of course there is criticism, mostly objective and constructive, sometimes not. The above feedback matches our internal views on how we want to shape the further development of our product landscape in the coming years.
At the end of these thoughts, the decision was made: this customer is right. And the deeper we got into the technological status quo, the more we became convinced that we should start from scratch.
To get the right direction from the start, we sought your perspective in addition to our own. Evaluating past customer feedback, our own app surveys and usability testing with a selection of users, we identified the most important points we should consider when developing new apps for our magazine brands C’t, iX, Make, Mac Was taken into consideration. & i & c’t Photography must be taken into account from the user’s point of view – the heise online app is currently unaffected by this.
What feedback you gave us (among other things).
- Apps should be more performant (loading speed and stability).
- The offline function is especially important for you so that you can read on the go.
- You want to read new articles before the magazine is published, but you also have the issues available (PDF).
- You use the app more often than we publish new issues of the magazine.
- We need to rework our search in the app.
- User guidance, navigation, and design could also be improved.
Here is an excerpt from our user survey, which was incorporated into the concept of our apps.
(Image: Heise Online)
Your feedback is not the only basis on which we base our views, but it is certainly the most important. Therefore, we kept these points at the center of our conceptual development from the beginning. Entrepreneurial and technological conditions also influence the development of these apps. For example, keeping in mind the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) coming into effect next year, we need to pay attention to product design, not least the colors used in it.
it’s time to evolve
We know that the advent of new products also brings with it changes. A new app will look different, some familiar paths will suddenly not run normally, you’ll have to re-orient yourself. As informed readers of Heise magazines, you also know that technological innovations are necessary at regular intervals to meet present and future requirements. Our apps aim to make it even easier for you to find out about technological developments, innovations, products and projects in the coming years, quickly, easily and to a manageable extent. Because when was that more important than today?
Your opinion is important to us. So, as already mentioned, we collected a large amount of feedback from a customer perspective before considering new developments for our magazine apps. If you still have something important regarding this, please feel free to use the forum for this article or write us an email at epapersupport@heise.de.
(rme)
