I’m wondering how you might manage your feature requests or ideas, particularly to gauge interest in them on your user base? Do you use specific software for this or communicate ideas in focus groups/social media to measure interest.
I’m wondering how best to approach this for my system. I have a lot of ideas and features waiting, and my users suggest things all the time, but I feel like I’m just using my “best guess” when I come to choose what to build next, rather than actual user data telling me the most appropriate feature build for my users.
I have no experience with feature requests from a wide range of people - my application is a one-client application so it is easy to deal with and prioritize the requests, but FWIW here is my take.
Obviously if a number of people make the same request, it reflects a need that is felt by more than just a few of your users, so those requests would get at the top of the list. But in this whole process of using your “best guess”, I guess the most important requests are the ones that will benefit the most number of users (as opposed to custom requests for a user’s specific situation). It’s mostly a judgement call. You don’t want to load up your application with features that a lot of users won’t find helpful. That’s why I tend to recommend to clients custom solutions, instead of commercial ones that are already out there which try to do everything for everybody.
Thanks for the reply. That’s kind of how I do things currently, I try to make an educated choice based on my knowledge of the system and of course if I get multiple requests it makes sense those ones should be prioritised.
It would be interesting to see if there are any products on the market for this too. Giving people a place to submit these requests I can see being a good thing, and might encourage new ideas from people that otherwise wouldn’t send them in.
That’s a good idea. If I were using an application, and there was a small discrete modal asking for feedback (maybe in the lower right hand side of the screen that didn’t get in the way and annoy me), I would definitely be more likely to send suggestions. If it is too much work, I might just put up with the inconvenience until I got so fed up I would move on to a different application. It would be worth your while to sift through the responses.