I'm part of a developer-experience team that's focused on building internal platform capabilities for around 70 backend and frontend developers. We want to function like a product team—working through discovery, prototyping, and iterating—but we're facing challenges when it comes to gathering effective feedback. Currently, our channels include Slack announcements and dev channel questions, which only engage a small group, occasional low-response surveys, and asynchronous prototype demos that don't get much commentary. While we conduct 1-on-1 sessions to get user feedback, this approach is quite time-consuming and doesn't scale well. We do receive immediate feedback when things go wrong, but we're struggling to obtain insights about what direction we should take in our development. I have a few questions for anyone involved in running internal platforms or developer tools: What strategies have you found effective for consistently getting user feedback? Do you rely more on office hours, interviews, champions, or usage metrics? What lightweight methods can scale beyond just the handful of engaged developers? How do you ensure you're not just catering to the loudest voices while still keeping a fast pace? And if you have a process for requesting feedback, how do you encourage more people to participate? I'm eager to hear about any practical tactics and what you'd approach differently if you had to start over.
1 Answer
In my experience, CSAT and NPS scores don't provide much value. I focus directly on usage metrics instead. Talk to your most active users to understand what they appreciate and dislike about the platform, and then reach out to those who rarely use it to discover their reasons. You can't enforce participation, but you can create a product that folks genuinely need!
Totally get that! But how do you apply these metrics when you're still prototyping features? If you have an idea and want feedback before committing fully, would you just release a prototype and test it out with users to gauge reactions? What if the feedback isn't great?