Open Radar

 
Hum would like to include a musical chord keyboard as an in-app purchase. It'd allow for marking up lyrics much more quickly than manually typing every chord. This functionality is a good brand extension, allowing our keyboard to appear alongside other musical apps. For example, you might use it while writing lyrics in Hum, or creating guitar tablature in other apps.

http://cl.ly/image/2I1h2k150y46/hum_keyboard.png

Section 25.7 of the App Store guidelines states that "Apps offering Keyboard extensions must have a primary category of Utilities and a privacy policy or they will be rejected".

Our app Hum resides in the "Music" category. In order to sell a keyboard, we'd have to build a dummy, empty app that only adds a keyboard instead of allowing users of Hum to purchase their new keyboard. This is a strange experience for users. Allowing keyboards to originate in an app like Hum will be important to both keep context and reduce friction of a purchase.

Consider the following workflow.
1) Tap a button within Hum that takes me to the app store.
2) Pay for and download the app
3) Find a place on your springboard for the new app.
4) Open the app
5) Receive instructions on how to install the keyboard.
6) Install the keyboard
7) Go back to the originating app and begin using the new keyboard.

vs.

1) Tap a button within Hum to enable the in-app keyboard
2) Follow instructions to install the keyboard
3) Re-Open Hum
4) Use the keybaord.

Hopefully you'll consider the user and allow for a more simple keyboard extensions workflow.