In this year’s update to Zune, you’ll find a brand new rating system. We’re moving from the 0-5 star rating to a simpler, more straightforward rating system: “like” (symbolized by a heart), and “don’t like” (symbolized by a broken heart).
Now for the backstory: I spoke with some folks on the design/dev team about this and picked up some of the reasoning and thinking behind the new rating system. Last year, we extensively tested the 0-5 star rating system with users – both on the current system and their potential usage - and learned a few interesting things. First, there was a great degree of confusion between different ratings for different users – e.g. a 3 star rating for one user might mean “I love this song” but for another user, it could mean “this song is just ok.” And when we asked users if they would rate content using the existing system, 90% said that they wouldn’t. So we had to figure out a way to implement a rating system that users both understood and would be likely to use. We tested several different variations, and in the end users gravitated towards the heart/broken heart system, as it put track ratings into more human terms. Hence, the new rating system.
It’s important to note here, too that the new rating system is transferable. That is, ratings that you had in your existing (pre-November 13 update) will automatically convert to the new system – anything below 2 stars will display as a broken heart, and anything above will display as a heart.