Are you solving the real problem or the easy one?
by•
I observed that when we were designing a new feature, we automatically prioritized the aspect of the feature that was easier to track.
There was a spike in clicks, there was healthy usage, and our dashboard was looking good.
However, upon speaking with the users, we found that their frustration stemmed from an earlier part of their workflow process.
This got me thinking that product metrics will always show you what the user is doing but not why he is doing it.
How can you ensure that you solve the right problem and not just optimize the easily measured part of the process?
9 views
Replies
This is a great reminder that easy to measure does not always mean important Sometimes the real problem is understanding why users behave a certain way rather than just optimizing the numbers we can see
the trap I keep falling into with Dial is treating "they used the feature" as the win condition when the real question is whether it closed the call faster or just gave them something to click on. the only thing that's worked for us is sitting in on actual calls instead of reading the dashboard - the dashboard tells you engagement went up, the call tells you they're still stuck 30 seconds before they ever touch the feature. metrics are good at confirming a hypothesis, bad at generating the right one.