Before you jump to any conclusions about the image above this mock up does not represent (“AFAIK”) what the Natty Software Centre will look like. Some information about development is available from our friends at OMG Ubuntu and you may want to read the following blog posts.
Some may consider the idea of moving Software Centre to an app store a big leap but the design changes are not that radical.
Actively Promote Products
The most common method used to promote products is the use of an advertisement (“AD”) banner. The role of the AD banner is all about marketing and adopting this design would require occasional marketing updates to keep it fresh. In the example above, the banner informs the user the popular software title “Angry Birds” is available from the Ubuntu Market Place. I envision banners will scroll and feature Open Source selections as well. The design is very similar to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Web Store.
Ability to Purchase Software
Like it or not on-line software stores are the rage and with the pricing of many selections equivalent to an audio CD, sales are brisk. Apple reported the Mac Store sold one million applications the first day. For the purposes of this design I created an on-line store which I titled Ubuntu Market Place and I would expect this site to have similar functionality to the Ubuntu One Music Store.
Product Ratings
A very popular and effective marketing tool is user evaluations and product ratings (it appears this enhancement may make it into Natty). Many individuals use ratings to mitigate the risks of installing an unknown product and this IMO is must have functionality. The rating system of this design uses a scale of one to five to represent bad to good and displays the number of reviews as a hot link. The link offers the user the opportunity to read posted reviews and the ability to add their own.
Centralized Navigation
I moved the bulk of the navigation to the left panel. Users would maneuver to the desired “department” or “sub-department” and select from the content displayed in the right panel. In addition to an application icon and title, this design supports a description of the product to enhance the user experience.
Filtered Content
Frequent users of Software Centre will want content filtering. This design supports the popular categories of “featured”, “new”, and “purchased”.