How we built the wrong feature(7shifts.com)
7shifts.com
How we built the wrong feature
http://7shifts.com/how-we-built-the-wrong-feature/
2 comments
Exactly. Letting users dictate how you design/implement something is more often than not, a bad idea. When a client starts to do this, you need to draw them back to the original problem by asking questions around it. This forces them to elaborate on it, rather than getting caught up in their idea of a "solution".
Well, it's a nice adage.
Don't let your users design your features, and don't let your designers choose they problem they are solving.
Don't let your users design your features, and don't let your designers choose they problem they are solving.
Been there, done that, got a T-shirt. The "talk to two" idea is the best one on the list. Find MULTIPLE people who want this product, get MULTIPLE use cases, and then build a tool that is abstract enough to cover a variety of use cases but solid enough to get the job done for them.
I can't tell you how much of my time has been wasted on toy features for clients that never came on board.
I can't tell you how much of my time has been wasted on toy features for clients that never came on board.
Don't let users send you problem reports in the form of unimplemented feature requests, if they do you need to retranslate them back into problem space before ingesting them. This is a special case of "satisficing". The amount of work that a user puts into figuring out what they "need" to solve their problem is often trivial, and insufficient compared to the amount of work that needs to actually go into feature development. More often than not users are just going to tell you the first idea that comes into their head on how to solve their problem. Sometimes that's fine, more often than not it's a mistake. And it's a much worse mistake to dump lots of implementation work into a feature that was designed based on a nanosecond of effort.
Take control of your own design, evaluate lots of options for solutions for problems, take the time and effort to figure out which ones are actually good, and then implement those. Don't become a marionette for user requests.