A Checkbox that didn't work!

I installed a new mobile application today. As usual, I was curious to know what it actually does and was playing with various settings.

One of the features listed in the settings tab was very interesting. I had never seen a mobile app do that. So, I clicked on the checkbox to enable that feature. Immediately, I saw a message like this:

“You found a future feature! We’ll treat it as a vote for what to build next. Thanks for your help.”

Naturally, I was disappointed and angry. I felt the developer has cheated me: he/she has shown me an interesting feature which was never built.

Within a few seconds, I realized the developer (or the product manager) is not a cheater, but a brilliant strategist. This is what he/she has done:

• Identify a product with great features
• Classify these features as “people need this” and “people may need this” or “people may be interested in this”
• Build only those features which are in the first list: those features which are absolutely necessary
• Put the remaining features as settings, but don’t build them
• Release the app
• Every time a user clicks on an unbuilt feature, count it as a vote for that feature
• Use these votes’ count as the base to decide what to build next: I assume the features with most votes are built next, as many customers have already indicated that they want those features: you can’t argue with THIS data!

However, this works only if you have a decent, basic product ready. Otherwise, you frustrate your customers by calling even basic features as “future features”. That just shows you are lazy and don’t care about users.

To illustrate this, Let me give a bad example, that is, how NOT to do it.

Recently, I went to a book fair. Many publishers had put up stalls and I was browsing them leisurely.

In one of those stalls, I found some interesting books; I started collecting them in my hand so that I can buy them together.

Immediately, the person managing the stall came to me and told, ‘Sorry sir, these copies are not for sale. Please keep them back on the shelves.’

I was very surprised to hear this. ‘If you are not selling them, why display these books?’

He calmly answered, ‘You can see these books, select the ones you want and place an order with us using this form. We will contact you once the books are ready.’

It was a logical, but unbelievingly stupid answer. You are in the middle of a book fair where hundreds of publishers are selling millions of books NOW and you expect people to help you by filling a paper form to express their interests on your future books? Wow!

So, what did I do?

I just came out of that stall and bought books from the other stalls. That’s what most buyers will do in this situation I believe.

To be fair, that stall had some very good books; I would’ve bought them if they had copies to sell. They instead decided to keep a single copy of each book, just to generate interest and lost my business.

When you compare these two use cases, the difference is clear:

• In case of the mobile app, they had a good, working application with “basic features”; on top of it, they had some “future features” which I could select and vote. Hopefully, those features will be added after a few months. That’s my motivation to “vote”
• In case of the bookstall, there were no books available for sale; means, they had no “basic features” available, everything (every book) was a “future feature”. The customer has no motivation to vote for the books they may need in future, especially when there are many books available immediately in other stalls.

What could they’ve done differently?

Let us say they wanted to publish “X” books, they could’ve actually printed “Y” books: make them available for people to buy and read. Take care of the “basic features”.

All those “Y” books can have a form on the last page, which people can fill and send to the publisher. Or, they can print a QR code which people can scan and fill an online form. These forms can collect data on the other books (“future features”) that the reader wants to read.

This may not be the best way to handle this; I am sure experts on bookselling can come up with better strategies to handle this; but the point I am stressing is different: No customer will go out of his way to give you feedback on what you could do in future, unless and until you keep him/her happy today with your basic features.

If you are a product manager or a software developer wanting feedback from your real users, make sure you give them the “basic features” to do their routine job well; once this basic need is met, you may ask them for feedback on “future features” (just a nice way of saying “features which we haven’t built yet”) and they may be kind enough to tell you.

Image Courtesy: List Checkbox Checked Tick Note Office Choice by OpenClipart-Vectors: CC0: https://pixabay.com/en/list-checkbox-checked-tick-note-147904/