I finally sent my little habit tracking app to five friends yesterday and I felt physically uncomfortable doing it. It works, it does the one thing it is meant to do, and it looks quite plain. Two of them replied politely, three have not said anything, and I have spent all day assuming the silence means it is bad. Is this a normal part of shipping something or a sign that I sent it too early?
For what it is worth, the embarrassment does not fully go away, it just changes shape. I have shipped a lot of small things and I still get a version of that feeling on the day. The difference now is that I recognise it as the feeling of having actually done something rather than as evidence that I made a mistake.
Five friends is a kind audience and that is both good and a limitation. They will not tell you the hard things and you should not expect them to. Their job is to prove the thing works on a device that is not yours.
When you are ready, five strangers is where the real information is. It is more uncomfortable and it is far more useful, because a stranger who does not care simply leaves, and watching where they leave tells you the truth.
Strangers also give you the one thing friends structurally cannot, which is an honest answer to whether the thing is worth the effort of using. Five friends tell you it works. Five strangers tell you whether anyone would bother.
It looks quite plain is not a problem for a habit tracker sent to five friends. Plain and working beats polished and unfinished at this stage every time. Save the visual work for after you know whether anyone opens it twice in a week.
Practical note: check whether you can see any usage at all, even just a count of who signed in. Sitting with silence and no data is much worse than sitting with silence and knowing three people opened it. That uncertainty is doing most of the damage today, not the feedback.
@margin_notes_mo · 11mo ago · 3 replies
Completely normal, and the discomfort is usually a sign of taste rather than of a bad product. You can see the gap between what you made and what you pictured, and nobody else can see that gap because they never saw the picture.
The silence almost certainly means they have not opened it yet. People are busy and a link from a friend sits in a message thread for days. It very rarely means they hated it, because people who hate something usually say nothing forever rather than saying nothing for one day.
One fix for next time: do not ask what do you think. Nobody knows how to answer that and it invites politeness. Ask something narrow like: open it, add two habits, and tell me where you paused. Paused is the word I use because it gets people to report friction they would otherwise not mention.
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@ask_first_ari · 11mo ago
The narrow question is the whole game. What do you think produces looks great, well done, which is worthless. Where did you pause produces I could not tell if it saved, which is worth a week of guessing.
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@wind_down_wren · 11mo ago
Also give a deadline in the ask. Something like, if you get five minutes before Sunday. Open ended requests from friends drift indefinitely and then everyone feels awkward about it.
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