How do you balance user feedback with product vision?

Hey there! As a tech enthusiast who's deeply involved in both the startup and agency scene, finding the right balance between user feedback and product vision can sometimes feel like walking a tightrope. It's essential to listen to your users and understand their pain points, but also important to stay true to your product's core purpose and unique value proposition. Ultimately, it's about finding that sweet spot where user needs and your vision intersect harmoniously. Remember, feedback is like a compass, guiding you in the right direction, but it's up to you to navigate the path. Happy balancing!

I intergrade user feedback into the product needs

For me vision is longterm and user feedback short term. Feedback is super important to develop your product and realize your vision.

I am a Behavior Designer and work on deep engagement and long term product retention problems. When we conduct research we are looking for motivators that drive user behavior, barriers that stop them from completing behavior, rewarding moments (some call them Shine or magic moments etc.) that we can use to reinforce behaviors, ways of prompting behaviors at the right time with relevant notification and finaly value we can retain as a result of users action and how we can use that to prompt another engagement cycle. We have a framework for that. Research is integrated part of that and it's integration a step in the process. Balancing with vision: Main goal is ofcaurse to have people do something in your product. If client vision reflects a need on the market, then aligning with right user behaviors is a matter of iterations. However, if there's a missmatch between vision and what users already want to do, aligning can be very difficult and oftentimes a pivot in vision is required. Eg. People will not always know how they want to do things, but they will know for example they want to connect and exchange messages between each other. They will not comeup with idea for Messanger, but they will exhibit "exchanging messages" behavior which we can than think about easifying with technology at scale. I hope that makes sens.