What if giving users what they ask for is holding them back from a better solution?

Yesterday, a user asked me: "Can you add PDF OCR?"

A simple request because we’re already doing that. I could have just replied and called it a day.

But then I asked: "Why do you need it?"

Turns out, he takes notes on an e-ink notepad, and those notes can only be exported as PDFs. He wants to convert the text from those PDFs so he can ask the AI in our app questions about them.

He doesn’t actually need OCR. He just needs a way to get his handwritten notes into text, and OCR is just the solution he came up with.

So I thought, what if we integrate directly with the notepad to get the notes directly from there? Faster solution with no extra steps for him.

Deciding which feature to build in each phase depends on many factors, but if we really understand the why behind each user’s request, we’re more likely to create something truly useful - something that goes beyond what customers expect.

And that, I believe, will be our competitive advantage