Ben Barden

product strategy

Software quality: why you shouldn’t ignore the small things

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When your product to-do list (aka the product backlog) is very long, with “urgent” items or requests from your biggest or most demanding users, the natural path is to focus on the high value work.

New features that could bring in new users or retain existing ones. Major bugs. Quick wins.

Everywhere I’ve worked, and in fact in most software projects I’ve heard of, there’s always more to do than you can actually get through. You can’t do everything, so you have to prioritise what to work on next.

As part of gathering feedback from users, QAs, or your own product review cycles, you’ll sometimes identify issues or potential tweaks which, in the grand scheme of things, seem very minor. Perhaps there’s a small layout bug on iOS. A little-used setting doesn’t work for a small number of users. An old page that hardly anybody goes to doesn’t look right with a recent design overhaul. Or a page is retired and removed from the navigation links – but it’s still accessible if you visit it directly.

I’ve heard numerous excuses for not dealing with minor changes such as the above. It’s not important. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. We’re too busy. Etc. However, if you ignore all of these small issues, they can build up and collectively give users the impression that the product is being neglected.

It’s a broken window situation.

In The Pragmatic Programmer, there’s a section called Software Entropy that mentions broken windows. I’d like to highlight this quote:

Don’t leave “broken windows” (bad designs, wrong decisions, or poor code) unrepaired. Fix each one as soon as it is discovered. If there is insufficient time to fix it properly, then board it up. Perhaps you can comment out the offending code, or display a “Not Implemented” message, or substitute dummy data instead. Take some action to prevent further damage and to show that you’re on top of the situation.

If something’s broken, fix it. If it’s not used anymore, remove it. To help with this, gather feedback to see if users are finding pain points that you’re not aware of. Use analytics to see which parts of the product are being used.

Don’t ignore the minor things. While one small UX quirk might not make much difference if you fix it, lots of UX issues in the same area of the product can really annoy your users. Leaving this unresolved can make software feel awkward and frustrating to use, or just plain broken.

Is that the kind of product you want?

6 pitfalls with user feedback

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Getting feedback from users can be an invaluable way to determine how your product is viewed by its audience. But it’s important to understand some of the pitfalls with user feedback before you start allowing comments to shape your product strategy.

1. Not everyone likes change

There’s a running joke that whenever Facebook changes something, people are up in arms for a week or two – maybe not even that. After that initial period, we get used to the change. Sometimes, negative feedback may be purely down to the fact we don’t like change. If you’re going to ask for feedback, don’t do it immediately after a big release.

2. People are more likely to give negative feedback

Negative feedback can be a good way to measure if a recent change has annoyed users. Unfortunately, a lot of people won’t give any feedback at all – including those who are happy with a change. Don’t take negative feedback to mean you need to reverse a recent change.

3. One-off comments may not help anyone else

If one person asks for something, don’t jump on that task immediately. If it’s a good idea and you can make a change as a result of their feedback, it’s something to consider. However, if you react to every comment without considering if it’s right for the product, you may end up with a product with a sprawling feature set, and that pleases an extremely narrow group of users – the most vocal ones.

4. New designs need time to bed in

A new design can attract a lot of comments – most of them are purely down to opinion. Issues such as elements overlapping, fonts being too small, or scaling not working across different screen sizes are important things to fix. Beyond that, aesthetics shouldn’t be up for debate.

5. People don’t know what they want

If you ask 100 users of your product what they want from it, the collective feedback may be a laundry list of missing features. In fact, your best change could be something that nobody even thought of. You are in control of product strategy – find things that people didn’t even know they wanted. Make the product quicker and easier to use.

6. Surveys can help – but be careful what you wish for

A user feedback survey can give you a limited set of feedback on the questions of your choosing. But don’t ask for things you don’t want to do. “Should we build an app?” is a pointless question if you have no intention of building one.