MissingMethod

Kathy Sierra has numerous posts about helping the user “kick ass.” It has been helpful for me to run the “kick-ass” filter on every feature I consider for my projects. Invariably, I find myself cutting out features that might be new and fun to develop but don’t actually help regular users kick ass. It’s similar to the idea that “nobody loves your kids like you do” – the more you know your product, the less objective you are about what feature it ought to include.

So, let’s say you’ve gone through your set of features and decided what will actually help the user kick ass, and you’ve cut out the features you slipped in there merely to pique your developer curiousity. Now that you have a list, how do you prioritize? Or better yet, how to you prioritize features from the user’s point of view? If you don’t have a user around, and it’s just you and your buddy working on a social-networking app for cat lovers, just ask yourself this question: “what would I bitch about next?”

We all know what users are like and how they get their way - they complain. So, pretend your app has one feature: signup/login. Now, just start complaining about what you’d want if you were a user (as a developer, I know complaining comes naturally to you ;)) After you’ve complained a little, notice what feature you asked for first. Was it editing your profile? Adding a photo of your cat? Commenting on someone’s profile? Let WWIBAN prioritize your list of features.

If you develop a feature and release on a regular basis, and don’t have enough real users to do your complaining for you, WWIBAN will keep your little project going in the right direction better than any project manager or marketing dude.

Good luck! And keep bitching.

Last Modified : October 9th, 2006
Filed under : Usability, Entrepreneurship
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