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When users never use the features they asked for

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Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#101

Post by xyzelement »

smoldesu wrote: post #90
kureikain wrote: post #66

So I want to share a story about user asking for a feature then not using it. I run an email forwarding services( https://hanami.run ) basically you add your domains in and add some records. We had this one heavy users who has like hundreds of domains. So our UI isn't design for that. Who has hundreds of domains? So they approach and asked us for a way to organize those domains into a hierarchy structure. All good. T…

If I'm being honest, that sounds like a net win for you and your company. Even if they aren't still around, now you've got a better and more attractive interface!

Yes but the question is - what do they NOT have because of this. Sounds like they bumped something more valuable to get this done.

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#102

Post by commandlinefan »

buu700 wrote: post #80
commandlinefan wrote: post #22

I once spent a week working on a fairly complex feature for a product that the users were demanding almost daily updates on. I delivered it and, by coincidence, happened to be where the users were a couple of weeks later and I stopped by to say hello and saw that the user who had been asking for the feature every day was still using the product the "old way". I asked why and he didn't seem to follow what I meant, so…

To clarify, was he not aware that the new feature had already been released? Or did he think the "old way" was the new feature (and that he'd simply been blocked before), thus suggesting that the urgency of his ticket was unnecessary?

Well, I definitely told them that the feature they had asked for had been finished.

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#103

Post by gridspy »

pram wrote: post #78
AmericanChopper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst programming experience of my life related to lost source code. I was working for a place that had a service running from a Java app that was customized for each customer, about 200 copies of roughly the same app. There was source control at some point, and when a new customer was being on boarded they’d just make the customizations they required, compile the app, and deploy it. By the time I worked there (y…

Hilarious. Why didn't you refactor the customizations into a config file, and just deploy a single jar though? If you went through the effort of rewriting the entire thing!

The OP wasn't re-writing them.

Instead the OP fed the old version into a tool (Disassembler) which spat out terrible source code, worse than the original with no comments and bad variable names.

This was the only way to get source at all.

Then they made the disassembled source compile in a really nice way.

Finally the boss asked them to make huge changes to this horrible source with time pressure.

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#104

Post by gridspy »

pull_my_finger wrote: post #97
amatecha wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started collecting screenshots of app updates that are simply "bug fixes and performance improvements" because it's such a joke at this point. What bugs? How much performance improvement? Did you also nuke one of my favorite features while you were at it, or require other actions of me that I wasn't intending to perform? Who knows? Guess I'll roll the dice once again...

When I read release notes like that I immediately assume malice. I don't believe that the information is not available or that the devs are too lazy to bullet point _at least_ the major changes or vulnerabilities fixed. I think this is generally an excuse to slip in tracking/etc without resistance.

Nah, it seems more likely that the mgmt. saw the list of bugs and said "don't admit to those!" and the performance improvements ... " Don't say we used to use a stupid O(n^3) algorithm!

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#105

Post by gridspy »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #99
kerblang wrote: post #9

One of many things I learned from writing software just for myself is that I'm just about as bad as anybody at figuring out what I really want, even when I'm talking to myself. I've even had one or two cases where I ignored a feature I asked myself for, and much later realized: Hey, I could actually use that. The worst is asking myself, "How many times do I have to ask for this before you quit procrastinating and jus…

Sometimes it's wise to ignore what you want. So many times I started a project only to end up with 3 libraries and a custom build system. It's like I can't help myself. It got to the point I was too embarrassed to publish these things on GitHub.

Oh no. I was just tweeting about my new build system. Already got 3 libraries.

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#106

Post by AmericanChopper »

gridspy wrote: post #103
pram wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious. Why didn't you refactor the customizations into a config file, and just deploy a single jar though? If you went through the effort of rewriting the entire thing!

The OP wasn't re-writing them. Instead the OP fed the old version into a tool (Disassembler) which spat out terrible source code, worse than the original with no comments and bad variable names. This was the only way to get source at all. Then they made the disassembled source compile in a really nice way. Finally the boss asked them to make huge changes to this horrible source with time pressure.

Pretty much this.

A lot of the work would have been roughly equivalent to trying to de-minify some JS.

With a modern IDE the task would have been a lot easier. I don’t know if Eclipse had refactoring assistance built into back then, but if it did, I’d never even heard of the idea. I was sitting on not much more than a year of programming experience at the time.

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#107

Post by cratermoon »

Warning: vague, hand-wavy half-memory incoming.

One place I worked at had a tool, I forget the name, that could record and report on which features and parts of the site where got used and how much. At one point we were discussing a particular bug we found and how much effort it would take to fix it. I asked my co-worker who happened to have the usage reports at her fingertips, because that was her thing, how much the feature was used. Just wanted to prioritize it. Zero. Users had never touched the screen the entire time since it was rolled out. I expressed my sympathy for the developers who worked on it because they were told it must be done, but it was an easy call to throw the bug into the WONTFIX pile.

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#108

Post by darknavi »

xyzelement wrote: post #101
smoldesu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm being honest, that sounds like a net win for you and your company. Even if they aren't still around, now you've got a better and more attractive interface!

Yes but the question is - what do they NOT have because of this. Sounds like they bumped something more valuable to get this done.

Any how much does it cost to maintain a not-used, complicated feature going forward.

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#109

Post by danbolt »

oceanghost wrote: post #91
oceanghost wrote: post #39

Before the launch of the XBOX 360, the company I worked for was one of their suppliers, and without going into enough detail to make me identifiable, the management of our two companies had arrived at sort of a stalemate: We didn't want to tell them exactly how our algorithms worked, and they didn't want to tell us exactly what they were doing with them-- think of it like a data compressor where, we don't want them t…

I can't edit my post anymore-- before someone realizes my mistake, it was the XBox One, not the 360. Rails barely existed at the time of the XBox 360 development.

Thanks for updating! I was a little confused since Heroku wasn’t around before the 2005 launch of the Xbox 360, but figured it was shorthand for something else.

Given the Xbox One SOC had a lot more security in mind, I could see how Microsoft was more cautious about these things. [1]

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo&feature=emb_title

Re: When users never use the features they asked for

#110

Post by snowwrestler »

jsemrau wrote: post #32
commandlinefan wrote: post #22

I once spent a week working on a fairly complex feature for a product that the users were demanding almost daily updates on. I delivered it and, by coincidence, happened to be where the users were a couple of weeks later and I stopped by to say hello and saw that the user who had been asking for the feature every day was still using the product the "old way". I asked why and he didn't seem to follow what I meant, so…

The wonders of digital transformation. One of my biggest insights here was that digital transformation is not only the technical upgrade or simplicity of implementation but rather the cultural implementation i.e., process re-development and re-training.

The main things getting transformed in “digital transformation” are the people.
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