‘Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.’ Why? ‘Because you’re thinking about it!’ -- ``Daniel Kahneman

Ever found yourself or your team obsessing over a single feature or piece of feedback, only to realize later that you might have missed the forest for the trees?

🔎"Focusing illusion" describes the tendency to overestimate the importance of the problem we're currently focused on, neglecting other potentially critical issues.

I have faced this when we were building a smart home automation solution backed by extensive research. The idea was to enhance remote access for seamless connectivity and user-friendly interfaces. We built cutting-edge features like remote appliance monitoring, complex scheduling options etc.

However, we overlooked other critical aspects of the smart home experience like local control usability, integration with existing home ecosystems and enabling users to share access with family without compromising on safety and security concerns. Because we assumed that the primary value for our users was in the novelty and convenience of remote control.

Upon launch, users were initially thrilled with the idea of managing their homes remotely. It wasn't long before user feedback started to highlight significant oversights like heavy reliance on internet connectivity, security vulnerabilities (didn't fully account for user and family authentication) and poor integration with existing smart devices in home setups.

Though we eventually pivoted towards the right solution, but months of effort and resources were wasted because we concentrated on a specific aspect of product i.e. remote operation capability as we perceived this to be the most critical feature/selling point (Confirmation bias).


🤔 How to escape the focusing illusion is given beautifully by Shreyas Doshi  where he talks about Customer Problem Stack Rank" (CPSR).
The CPSR process involves discussing a problem (Problem X) with customers and then asking them to list and prioritize (stack rank) their most pressing issues, including but not limited to Problem X. This exercise reveals where Problem X stands among a customer's priorities, highlighting a common scenario where a feature, despite being considered important during discussions, might not be a top priority for the customer. This insight is crucial because most businesses can only address their top few priorities each quarter. This approach prevents over-commitment and ensures that new requests are evaluated within the context of existing priorities.