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Understanding User Data Storage in Apps
Users create data when they interact with apps. Applications often require access or save this data in order to function properly, and to provide the best user experience. This data can include personal settings, media and other documents. It can also be used to monitor clicks, purchases and other conversions within the application. This data can be obtained through a variety of methods, including by asking the user for it, assuming it based on their behaviour on the site, or purchasing it from an outside. Ideal customer data should be centrally stored and in a standard format to facilitate integration and exchange between different applications. There are currently forming customer data profile standards by industry to help define the data model to be used to accomplish this.
There are a variety of ways to store data, and the system used in an application will affect the way the user interface looks. File storage is the most popular type of storage, with data stored in folders and files that are arranged in a hierarchical way. This is the approach used by hard disk drives and cloud-based storage such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Another option is block storage, where the data is divided into blocks that can be stored anyplace on the storage infrastructure, with identifiers allowing them to be quickly identified and taken action.
The early systems came with built-in tools that provided detailed information about the properties of the storage medium in a textual format. Modern systems, like Android provide visualisations for these functions, including capacity/usage and life span. The visualisations for capacity/usage are usually horizontally bar charts that are stacked. Lifespan is typically shown as a circular pie chart or in its variations like doughnut charts.
