Things users don’t care about

From Pete Warden, a good list of things that users don’t care about:

• How long you spent on it.
• How hard it was to implement.
• How clean your architecture is.
• How extensible it is.
• How well it runs on your machine.
• How great it will be once all their friends are on it.
• How amazing the next version will be.
• Whose fault the problems are.
• What you think they should be interested in.
• What you expected.
• What you were promised.
• How important this is to you.

It’s easy, when you’re in the thick of designing your product, to get excited and focus on those internal variables that help guide your way. It’s good to honor these things and focus on them within your team, but in the end the only thing that matters is whether your customers like and use what you made. Metrics for success can be internal or customer-focused. Keep both, but make final decisions based on those that are customer-focused. (the things your customer does care about)