Great to see the process, and all the best to y'all!
One potential problem I see down the road: design by committee. Even if the committee is your user base, that can still be a problem. Similarly, how do you handle feedback overload? How will you handle making decisions as your user-base grows, where you cannot factor in everyone's feedback? How do you maintain a centralized vision, instead of something designed by five hundred different people?
(Historical context: Minecraft was developed in the open by Notch, and he incorporated a lot of people's ideas before starting Mojang. Now, they get flooded with feedback, and have to ignore most of it.)
Hey Jason! Thanks for a great comment, it made me think!
Right now we haven't yet reached feedback overload. We'll keep asking for feedback from the maker communities which will remain moderately small and keep questions on social media to something easier to manage like polls. I also anticipate more A/B testing with some marketing to drive people to the website.
I'm not sure if we want a completely centralised vision. We knew the features the product needed to get off the ground, but now we're not the ones driving the future of it - our customers are. So we've created a public roadmap where people can suggest and vote for the next feature.
We've built several apps in the past which have not been a success because we built what we thought users wanted instead of asking them. For Leave Me Alone we want the users to be the driving force behind the app. And I may regret it but I hope we grow enough to be flooded with feedback!
Thank you again for the comment :)
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Great to see the process, and all the best to y'all!
One potential problem I see down the road: design by committee. Even if the committee is your user base, that can still be a problem. Similarly, how do you handle feedback overload? How will you handle making decisions as your user-base grows, where you cannot factor in everyone's feedback? How do you maintain a centralized vision, instead of something designed by five hundred different people?
(Historical context: Minecraft was developed in the open by Notch, and he incorporated a lot of people's ideas before starting Mojang. Now, they get flooded with feedback, and have to ignore most of it.)
This comment made me think there must be a better way to allow people to give feedback...
So I've just released a new version with better way for people to give feedback leavemealone.xyz/feedback and report a bug leavemealone.xyz/bugs - they're both Airtable forms!
What do you think?
Hey Jason! Thanks for a great comment, it made me think!
Right now we haven't yet reached feedback overload. We'll keep asking for feedback from the maker communities which will remain moderately small and keep questions on social media to something easier to manage like polls. I also anticipate more A/B testing with some marketing to drive people to the website.
I'm not sure if we want a completely centralised vision. We knew the features the product needed to get off the ground, but now we're not the ones driving the future of it - our customers are. So we've created a public roadmap where people can suggest and vote for the next feature.
We've built several apps in the past which have not been a success because we built what we thought users wanted instead of asking them. For Leave Me Alone we want the users to be the driving force behind the app. And I may regret it but I hope we grow enough to be flooded with feedback!
Thank you again for the comment :)