Feedback from a beta tester made me kill my favorite feature

I was building an AI tool for sorting through medical notes. Thought this one feature where it auto-categorized everything was brilliant. A beta tester from a clinic in Austin straight up told me it was too noisy and they couldn't trust it. They said 'I'd rather click three things myself than have it guess wrong once.' So I stripped it out completely and made the tool just highlight key terms instead. Took two weeks to rebuild but the next round of testers actually used it. Has anyone else had to ditch something they built because of one strong opinion?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordangibson13d ago

Honestly, I think you might have overcorrected. One person's feedback is just one data point. If the feature was actually useful, maybe you could have added a way to turn it off or tweaked the accuracy instead of nuking it entirely.

charlie_stone7213d ago

Wait, are you saying the person who complained was the ONLY one who said anything? @jordangibson, that's just WILD to me. Where I come from, if you get ONE complaint about something like that you check your data or logs before you go scorched earth. Who throws out a whole feature just based on one person's grumpy comment? I mean, you'd think they would at least look at how MANY people were actually using it or if anyone else cared. That seems like a HUGE overreaction unless the feedback was extra nasty or the person was the boss's kid or something. Seriously, you don't nuke a useful tool over one bad review - you add a toggle or a setting and move on.