The review is short and sweet: "Terrible app.. It doesnt work".

Now, I've been developing software for long enough to know that when a user tells me my software is broken, before I can do anything else, I need to find out what they're seeing, how they got to that point, and what they expected to happen instead. Last year I worked on a project which calculated metrics for hospitals. When the customer first saw the report with calculated outputs, we got back the feedback "all wrong", which is, as you can imagine, really unhelpful. Several hours later it transpired that she got confused when entering data about nurses' shifts that crossed midnight, and as a result the shifts she entered were a different length to what she had in her test data. When she put in the right shift durations, the outputs matched what she expected, but not before confidently asserting that the software was wrong.

This app is a cr[...]]]> It finally happened: I got a 1 star review on the Google play store.

The review is short and sweet: "Terrible app.. It doesnt work".

Now, I've been developing software for long enough to know that when a user tells me my software is broken, before I can do anything else, I need to find out what they're seeing, how they got to that point, and what they expected to happen instead. Last year I worked on a project which calculated metrics for hospitals. When the customer first saw the report with calculated outputs, we got back the feedback "all wrong", which is, as you can imagine, really unhelpful. Several hours later it transpired that she got confused when entering data about nurses' shifts that crossed midnight, and as a result the shifts she entered were a different length to what she had in her test data. When she put in the right shift durations, the outputs matched what she expected, but not before confidently asserting that the software was wrong.

This app is a crossword/word solving app. You put in your letters, leave the unknowns blank, and it tells you what words will fit. Simple to understand and not a new concept. Electronic devices performing this function have existed since the 90s, and maybe before.

I have analytics data that says that for many users, the app does work. Otherwise they wouldn't keep using it. Digging through the analytics data more, I can also see that the user who left the review used it three times to solve a 4 letter pattern (which I can't see). So I know that the app started, didn't crash, and he was able to input text into the input box and press solve. From this I can deduce that his problem is one of the following things:

1. Some property of his phone prevented the app from showing the results correctly. This is highly unlikely; although I have not tested on his specific model of phone, there's nothing unusual about it.
2. He put in some pattern and was frustrated it didn't show the result he expected, because:
   • The word is missing from the (very large) dictionary
   • He saw some esoteric words and decided it was just printing nonsense
   • He can't spell
3. He misunderstood what the app is supposed to do and expected it to do something else
4. He has other reasons for leaving this review, for example he is making a competing app.

This is annoying and demonstrates a serious flaw of allowing low quality negative reviews to affect an app's rating, because now I'm motivated to counteract it. As the review doesn't explain the problem, I have no way of constructively improving the app in response, so I am forced to explore non-constructive options.

Up until this point I've refrained from nagging users to leave reviews because I consider that kind of behaviour a bit annoying. However, now I'm thinking of strategies to target long term repeat users (who are presumably satisfied with the app) and invite them to leave reviews. I could go so far as offering them Play Store codes to obtain the paid version of my app for free.

This is extra work for me, it's also unfair user experience for satisfied users, and above all, it's gaming the review system to introduce favourable bias towards me.

I haven't implemented any of this and probably won't, but from the fact I've considered it, we can assert that the rating of an app is not probably correlated to the average user's opinion of it. You could even argue that a poorly rated app is simply one whose developer has not spent much effort gaming the system.
]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-devin-townsend-epicloud Fri, 12 Oct 12 20:52:37 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-devin-townsend-epicloud The first thing to say about Epicloud is that according to a sticker on the case, it's pronounced epic-loud, not epi-cloud.

The second thing to say about Epicloud is that it won't change your opinion of Devin Townsend. The Dev is probably one of the most unique and prolific metal artists around at the moment (or ever), and it's a shame he's virtually unknown outside of metal, because most of his stuff overlaps with metal rather than sitting within in. The man's a genre unto himself.

Epicloud is the 5th album Dev's released under The Devin Townsend Project, but while the previous four were distinct enough to justify the new moniker, Epicloud's not a huge distance from some of his older stuff. In particular it reminds me a lot of Accelerated Evolution. It's hard to pin down exactly why, but possibly because it's fairly commercial and despite being hard hitting high tempo rock, it's pretty well cushioned.

Personally for me, The Dev occupies a disproportion[...]]]> The first thing to say about Epicloud is that according to a sticker on the case, it's pronounced epic-loud, not epi-cloud.

The second thing to say about Epicloud is that it won't change your opinion of Devin Townsend. The Dev is probably one of the most unique and prolific metal artists around at the moment (or ever), and it's a shame he's virtually unknown outside of metal, because most of his stuff overlaps with metal rather than sitting within in. The man's a genre unto himself.

Epicloud is the 5th album Dev's released under The Devin Townsend Project, but while the previous four were distinct enough to justify the new moniker, Epicloud's not a huge distance from some of his older stuff. In particular it reminds me a lot of Accelerated Evolution. It's hard to pin down exactly why, but possibly because it's fairly commercial and despite being hard hitting high tempo rock, it's pretty well cushioned.

Personally for me, The Dev occupies a disproportionate amount of my favourite music. Infinity, Ocean Machine, Terria, Synchestra, Addicted, Ghost, Deconstruction, City, Alien, and let's not forget Vai's Sex and Religion are all albums I rank up there as being some of the best music ever created. But for me, Epicloud doesn't quite hit the same spots. That's not to say it's not enjoyable, it is. It's just different and focusses on different things. It's a lot more uplifting, a lot more positive. And it's a lot bigger. Dev's always been about the echos and the ambience, but Epicloud takes it to a new level. And that's possibly a downside: when so many things are layered up, there's a risk of losing personality; there's a risk of blunting the attack. And that happens to a certain extent here.

On the flipside, it's not all blunted and the production is crystal clear. And for example, the re-recording of Kingdom is absolutely incredible. Dev's vocal technique is incredible. That vibrato! And Anneke filling up the sound is great too. It's well known that Dev didn't like the production on Physicist, and (personally I didn't think Physicist was bad, but) hearing his reimagining of Kingdom explains that perfectly!

In summary: if you didn't get Dev before, you still won't get him now. If you did, you still will.

Rating: 4.5/5

If you do get it, it's worth spending a bit more for the version that comes with the bonus CD. Although the songs on there are supposedly demos, they're no less enjoyable than the main CD.]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-ensiferum-unsung-heroes Fri, 12 Oct 12 18:49:18 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-ensiferum-unsung-heroes

Ensiferum's original vocalist/guitarist, Jari Mäenpää, is an absolute beast. His guitar chops are close to virtuoso and both his growls and clean vocals were unique and fitting to the music. Tracks like Token of Time and Windrider set the bar for folk metal.

After Jari left to work on Wintersun's album¹ Ensiferum wobbled a bit. They nabbed Petri Lindroos from fellow Finnish metal band Norther to replace Jari. Petri is good, but Norther were always hit and miss, and they were never exceptional when they hit. Ensiferum then released Dragonheads (not a full length album, more a "look we're still here"), which was alright but the stand-out tracks were Into Hiding (an Amorphis cover) and Finnish Medley, which featured a female singer. They were still there, but they weren't hitting with the same force in the same areas. This continued throughout their next release, Victory Songs, which again was reasonably good, but never exceptional.

At this point, you'd be forgiven f[...]]]>

Ensiferum's original vocalist/guitarist, Jari Mäenpää, is an absolute beast. His guitar chops are close to virtuoso and both his growls and clean vocals were unique and fitting to the music. Tracks like Token of Time and Windrider set the bar for folk metal.

After Jari left to work on Wintersun's album¹ Ensiferum wobbled a bit. They nabbed Petri Lindroos from fellow Finnish metal band Norther to replace Jari. Petri is good, but Norther were always hit and miss, and they were never exceptional when they hit. Ensiferum then released Dragonheads (not a full length album, more a "look we're still here"), which was alright but the stand-out tracks were Into Hiding (an Amorphis cover) and Finnish Medley, which featured a female singer. They were still there, but they weren't hitting with the same force in the same areas. This continued throughout their next release, Victory Songs, which again was reasonably good, but never exceptional.

At this point, you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd lost it. But you'd also be wrong. They hit back with From Afar, which was blisteringly good. Everything clicked perfectly. They weren't writing songs for Jari any more, they'd figured out how to get the best out of Petri.

So, high hopes for Unsung Heroes, then.

Unsung Heroes opens with a symphonic (rather than folk) instrumental, a bit different, but so far so good. Then we move into standard Ensiferum territory, but it never quite lifts off. There are a few surprises later on, the album is a lot more diverse than previous offerings, but overall there's little that stands out. As seems to be tradition amongst some metal bands, the final song is 17 minutes long, but it's meandering and unfocussed; it moves from hints of the spaghetti west through to operatic soprano passages (Finnish metal band identity crisis?) and then onto traditional folk via a few neoclassical licks and a spacey-synthesiser that wouldn't sound out of place in something by Jean Michel Jarre, and, while there are good bits in there, it just doesn't seem to unify itself. Like the rest of the album, really.

The production's mostly good but the vocals seem to have been intentionally dropped down the mix, probably to make them sound a bit darker, but in reality it makes them sound weaker.

Overall, it's not the logical progression from From Afar. It's more like back to the Dragonheads/Victory songs era.

¹. Their yet-to-be-released second album, we all await eagerly and have done so since about 2006. It is aptly called Time, although supposedly it will be released later this month. I'll believe that when I see it.]]>