How we screwed up an awesome feature (and learned our lesson)

How we screwed up an awesome feature (and learned our lesson)How we screwed up an awesome feature (and learned our lesson)Users want new features, thats always been a fact of life for companies like us. But I recently encountered something new user after user demanding a feature wed had for mora than a year. It was a huge wait, what? moment for me, and getting to the bottom of it led to some big learnings and changes. Because, as it turns out, having a cool feature doesnt matter if nobody uses it.We realized wed made a terrible mistakeThe feature in question lets you send your resume to friends and get their comments and feedback on it. Ill be totally honest, when we launched it more than a year ago, our plan was to get more signups. Were a small departureup and theres a ton of pressure to grow fast. Thats why your friends were required to create an account in order to give you feedback, which would lead to more new users. But that choice made it harder for our users to get the feedb ack they wanted. We were thinking about us growing and elend about you making a better resume.So, we made a tough decisionAfter yet another user asked if theres an easier way to get feedback, we knew we needed to change something. First, we had to change our mindset and start thinking about the user before anything else.Ultimately, we decided to remove the signup requirement to leave comments on a resume. Yes, were not going to get new users, but we want to make sure that this process is as easy as possible. Now, you just open the link, view the resume and leave comments. Even your grandma can leave comments on it, and we never underestimate the power of feedback from grandma.and learned the power of social validationEvery single user we interviewed used one word when talking about getting feedback on their resume Confidence. The feeling of an imaginary pat on the shoulder and words You can do it made a big difference in how they felt going into an interview. Getting feedback and co mments from people who know them best made all the difference for the people we talked to. It turns the solo-process of resume creation into a team effort.That got me reading more about social validation. One article perfectly summed up what Id learned, explaining When we are uncertain about what to do we will look to other people to guide us. And we do this automatically and unconsciously.. The best way to create a feature that solves problems is to learn the problems from people that have them. Our users did guide us to make this feature better. Listening to their stories, we learned that we should think less about our growth and make something that is going to give them real value.Another lesson was that everyone needs to send their resume for a fresh look and that it should be easy. If some of our users feel more confident after a few comments from their friends, why not harness that powerful social validation yourself? After screwing things up a little, we want to make our prod uct better. More importantly, we want to build a product that gives value to you first, not us. So if you want to feel more confident in your resume, go to your resumes dashboard and start asking your friends for feedback.Id love to hear your thoughts if you have any, so feel free to write me at alexandar.com.