All I Want for Christmas Are These 5 Product Features That Don’t Exist
This piece originally appeared on Medium here
Holiday shopping is upon us. Just ask all the content producers pumping suggested wares into my inbox. Consider the sheer number of Cyber Monday deals geared towards gifting. Look at the decorative snowflakes now adorning the streets of New York City.
Which all means at least one thing: ’Tis the season for wish lists!
No, this is not a post where I’ll rattle off items you could/should/would be buying for your loved ones. Instead, this little ol’ consumer is turning the tables with her own wishful thinking.
Holiday Wish List: Product Feature Edition
Have you ever found yourself mindlessly using some common app, encountered a familiar pain point and thought to yourself, “Man, it would be great if this product could [insert desired feature or function here]”?
No? Well, I do. All the time. So much so that I have started writing it down. Call me a natural list maker.
The following are the top 5 that I really would love to exist (but don’t), and I think you might too. Maybe if we all wish hard enough, our PM-Santas will climb down the update/release chimney and deliver on one of these by December 25th.
1. Multi Hashtag Search on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook
Content is king… but only if you can find it. If discovery is the kingmaker, then hashtags line the path to the royal throne. Savvy social media strategists and wannabe influencers know that tagging up a storm is table stakes for getting those likes… so why can’t content consumers search for what they’re peddling using more than one hashtag at a time? Imagine a world where the Boolean bliss of AND, OR, NOT is enabled while you’re deep ‘gramming in search of shiba inu puppies that live in the West Village. That’s a world I want to live in.
2. Rideshare Peer Ratings on Uber, Lyft, Via
Hear me out, all of you Black Mirror sensationalists. Think about the last time you were in a shared ride and your fellow passenger made you wait ten minutes, puked in the back seat, or otherwise violated the sharing economy social contract. Knowing that the driver might give that jerk a bad rating probably felt like vindication, but how much sweeter of a vengeance if you could also throw in your two cents (or stars, in this case)! Whether a terrible peer-to-peer rating has any actual consequences on permission to use the service is neither here nor there — it’s all about the satisfaction of expressing your dissatisfaction. [Yes, you could also use it to reward that super cool person for being super cool but that’s a smidge less compelling.]
3. Transit Settings for Online Dating on Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, etc.
This is *exactly* what it sounds like. Have you ever swiped right on a cutie, matched to your delight… only to find that the two of you are as transit incompatible as one could possibly be? Sigh. Transit settings on dating apps would allow you to select which trains you’re willing to match with or the maximum average time it takes to get from your pad to theirs. Current distance related settings take an “as the crow flies” approach and yet none of their users are in fact avians. While some hopeless romantics wouldn’t mind a long-urban-distance relationship, many single straphangers are looking for love a little closer to home… like just a few stops away with no transfers and on an express line, amirite?
4. Job Search by Responsibilities for ̶M̶i̶l̶l̶e̶n̶n̶i̶a̶l̶s̶ People Who Don’t Know What They Want To Be When They Grow Up on LinkedIn, Indeed
This suggestion is brought to you by two very millennial trends. First, that pesky tendency to want to truly enjoy one’s work… and second, the willingness to jump ship when one doesn’t. Who do you know who isn’t job hunting? But here’s where many of my peers have gotten stuck, including myself: even if you know roughly the type of thing you enjoy, what are the commonly understood roles or titles that let you do exactly that? It seems less cookie cutter these days, because it is less cookie cutter these days. Rather than having to pour through all the different flavors of “People Lead” or “Growth Hacker”, a search function for listings that combine a certain set of duties beyond keywords and regardless of role/title could allow jobseekers to target their search and expand their horizons at the same time.
5. Wedding Date Optimization on The Knot, Zola
Let’s be real. There are only so many dates on which weddings take place each year. Matrimonial clumps happen. Like when all of your friends are getting hitched within a few weeks of each other and your RSVP is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you’re in a relationship, it’s this headache x 2! Would it kill these couples to coordinate? This proposed feature would allow lovebirds to do exactly that. While creating their digital footprint within the wedding industrial complex (websites, registries, etc.), couples could also see hotspots of when second-degree Facebook connections are already planning their big day… and when they’re not. Want everyone invited to be able to make it? Avoid the conflicts. Want a natural way to eliminate some headcount? Embrace the conflicts. Knowledge is power…ful planning.
6. Sarcasm Text on… all the things
Okay, so this technically isn’t a product feature, but I think it’s worth proposing. Why, you ask? Well, have you ever built a chatbot? If you thought teaching it to understand straightforward Q&A was challenging, imagine training it to understand sarcasm on its own. If AI will someday run the world, let’s help singularity have a sense of humor. Hat tip to my neighbor Patrick who came up with this solve: a way to explicitly indicate sarcasm over text.
Isn’t that just italics, you ask? What about italics, I respond with an emphasis. There are too many other uses, and it’s not supported in all messaging apps. What about ~ or / or > to really get the dry humor across? Too potentially confusing in a world that runs on code. Thanks, nerds. Here’s where Patrick and I landed: matching your sarcastic text with something equally jarring, like )inverse brackets(. AI would learn that in no time! Plus, when your text messages are being read aloud in a court of law, the jury will know you wanting to )stab his eyes out( was really quite harmless. You’re welcome.
… and that’s it for now. Not a bad list of stocking stuffers, right? Please @ me with some app that is already tackling the above, but then also @ your local product owner at any of the companies listed because that’s where these features probably belong.
Merry shipping/shopping to all and to all a good night,
Jodi