The Feature Trap
I spent six months building a project management tool a few years ago. I had a perfect tech stack, a clean CI/CD pipeline, and a set of features that looked great on a landing page. I spent weeks polishing the dashboard, adding custom themes, and optimizing database queries for scale I didn't even have yet.
When I finally launched to a small group of beta testers, the feedback wasn't about the features. They didn't care about the custom themes or the query speed. They told me the app felt "clunky" and "slow" during specific transitions.
I realized I had fallen into the feature trap. I was building things I thought users wanted, rather than fixing the friction they actually felt.
Where the real friction lives
