Users will pull you in every direction if you let them.
Most user requests and ideas are well-intentioned, but they cover so many facets and directions that there’s no way you can do them all.
The easy part is getting ideas. The hard part is deciding which of your users’ ideas to implement, and then making those ideas simple.
Product owners and CEOs have to balance their own opinions with that of the users. Time and time again, failures in software products result from not allowing people to use it how they want.
At ClickUp, we’re building project management software. I didn’t see it when we started in this category, but each user has their own use cases and their own set of needs. We have to be flexible. So, we started with lots of customization options, and that’s what has carried us to more than 30,000 teams using ClickUp in less than a year. We want you to be creative and use ClickUp how you want.
But to what end? You can’t build everything, so how do you decide what to build?
You can employ teams of UX researchers that have never used your product to do the dirty work for you, or you can listen to the people that know your product best.
Here’s our test for which requests you should consider:
It may sound simple, but if you can truly answer “yes” to the first two, then you’ve made the decision for yourself. The last question is meant to ensure you don’t end up building something that already exists. You must add unique value and that goes for every type of product or industry.
How can you answer the first (and most important) question? Would at least ~80% of current and future users use this feature?
At ClickUp, we’ve added a Feedback Platform where users can request features, and then the rest of the community can upvote and comment on what they think.
We’ve had thousands of requests there, so how can we manage the noise? By choosing what to listen to.
Why you want to listen to your users
Why you may not want to listen to your users
Overall, you want a flexible product for customers—those are the people you’re helping and serving after all. But flexibility doesn’t mean gooey, taking any shape in your hands. It’s more like a popsicle stick—it can bend, but not break.
Despite my bad metaphors, here are some factors to consider when customer requests come in.
Just because a request is the most popular doesn’t necessarily that it should get added right away. And it’s impossible to do everything all at once. To that end, you and your team will have to make some hard choices.
Rank them in these categories:
Ultimately, the decision is up to your leadership team or product owners. You’ll probably make a mistake here and there, but the important thing to remember is that everyone feels heard—even your customers.
Fights like this are exactly where company culture can come undone and why your team communication must be on point.
Here’s the bottom line. The best way to make an incredible product is to use the product yourself and listen to the users that use your product. There’s just no reason to hire massive product teams or firms to do research around what people want. You have the best possible candidates for people already—and they’ll tell you what they want.