Search Was Slow and I Blamed the Feature

I built an all-in-one search that checked docs, users, and settings in one query. Powerful on paper. But it took over two seconds and usage was quietly low.

I assumed people didn't need search. Then I cut it to documents-only in milliseconds and moved the full search behind a second click. Usage tripled.

People weren't avoiding search. They were avoiding the wait. I'd been blaming the feature when the problem was the latency. What feature in your product is being avoided because it's too slow to bother with?