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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a very "woo woo" theory, because few users know how big their apps are, or what a "good" size or a "bad" size for a particular app is.

So, let's assume Segment is right and there's a causal relationship between app size and downloads. What am I missing?

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User has device at 95% capacity. User tries to download app. If the app is under lets say 40mb, it installs. If app is over 40mb, user gets "please make room for app" alert. User loses interest, app is not installed. I know I have done this before, has anyone else?

I've just lost interest in installing silly apps for everything all together. My phone is basically a phone/email/imessage device at this point.

@CharlesW we mostly focused on the facts and running as controlled of an experiment as possible without bias or drawing conclusion on exactly why heavier apps get downloaded less. Though my personal guess from working years in the mobile app space is that users are surprisingly conscious of data & disk usage. Not everyone has unlimited data or 128GB storage iPhones.

If you are not modeling causality, then why do you have an "Impact on Installs" metric next to each asset size?

Impact can exist regardless of the underlying cause for impact. It may be because someone's device is full, or does not want to download over cellular, or any other myriad of factors. But you'll still lose an install statistically speaking.

Can you disclose what the limits of that experiment are, and highlight on the website when they are exceeded?

For example, I assume if you tested apps sized 0mb-200mb, the data does not extrapolate as far as Hearthstone, which clocks in at a sizeable 1.2gb!

The largest size we tested was 150mb, that's why the x-axis of the graph ends at that point :)

They might not know how big an app is but if an app takes too long to install they might cancel and try another one.

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