Why not create a Feature Request subcategory here in the forums? Isn’t that a better way than asking people ot email? Then the community could vote on features to help your product team prioritize.
I see in 2022:
We decided against this long ago, so this won’t be happening.
Would it be unreasonable to ask why?
Building what customers actually want should be one of a company’s top priorities. Many successful companies provide platforms for their customers to discuss ideas publicly, creating a valuable feedback loop. These discussions not only generate new ideas but also allow users to refine and evolve them collaboratively. By embracing customer feedback and engaging with users in public, companies make a powerful statement to the market: we listen and care about what our customers think.
As a product manager myself, I’ve contributed to many different products over the years. Seeing my own feature requests adopted into those products has been incredibly rewarding. It fosters a sense of connection and trust between the company and its user base. Having these feature requests in public allows contributors to receiving credit for having proposed an original idea.
The lack of a feature request category on the forums is depriving Squarp of the many benefits that come from this kind of customer engagement. A centralized space for feature requests would allow users to share, discuss, and upvote ideas, enabling Squarp to gather actionable insights. By investing in this kind of transparent collaboration, Squarp could strengthen its community and further establish itself as a customer-focused company.
I’m not sure I understand. Are you suggesting they want to limit customer feedback? Control their priorities without user input? Prevent competitors from seeing feature requests?
If so, this seems remarkably protective in an era where customer collaboration has become the norm. Companies that wall themselves off from user feedback risk becoming disconnected from their market. In today’s landscape, the most successful products are often those that evolve in partnership with their community, not in isolation from it.
The Oxi One has quickly shot to fame because of how responsive they are to their customer feedback; not in spite of that feedback.
not really. i dont know what they want. my suggestion means they might want to retain their identity instead of renting space out to the most popular demand? whatever that means. but like i said im no insider.
Welcoming and engaging with customer feedback doesn’t mean a product team’s roadmap needs to slavishingly follow popular opinion. As a product manager myself, I need to consider the larger context, weighing customer feedback against internal ideas, operational concerns, technical concerns, opportunity costs, and weigh the effort vs impact of various opportunities.
But I also believe that capturing and cultivating the ideas and creativity of a large group of people be a gold mine. A single idea great idea can revolutionize an entire industry.
I wonder if they could “open source” Hapax Algo and MIDI Effect development? It would be cool if third-party developers could develop new Algos and Effects, which could be installed from SD card. Basically, they’d need to expose an API layer for third-party developers to get and set various properties like BPM, transport state, track and step values, etc.
Then third-party devs could add new LFOs and a 1.5 bar length for LFOs, or create a better generative algo, like allowing the user to make slight adjusting to an existing pattern than than rolling the dice on a completely new pattern.
Perhaps the market is too small to justify this idea, since probably <1% of their user base has any skills with C++…
This is a company that actually listens and responds in-depth to user feedback when you mail them. That’s good. This is peak customer focus: treat the customer as an individual.
I’ve seen some other companies delegate it to the forum, this is actually the lazy solution. The forum quickly becomes a nasty mess of feature requests (one more unhinged over the other) and tons repetition all over the place.
I’ve had companies reply to my well-formed emails by rudely saying: post it on the forum (and nothing happens with it afterwards) without replying to any of my questions and feedback. I won’t be naming them here, but the contrast is very big.
Personally I see little benefit in a feature request forum. I’m very satisfied with how things are and how feedback is handled at the moment. I don’t think “democracy” will lead to good/consistent products, rather the opposite. So I’m not very fond of the idea of letting the community “vote” on features.
Perhaps you’re biased by your anecdotal experience. Oxi One forums is a great counterpoint. There are highly engaged. Often someone’s “feature request” may actually reflect a gap in their knowledge about how to accomplish something. Or a workaround for whatever issue they are facing. So having those conversations with the team in public can benefit the wider community. Oxi one’s forums are full of examples like this
I don’t think “democracy” will lead to good/consistent products,
Neither do I. Perhaps you didn’t misread my post?
Welcoming and engaging with customer feedback doesn’t mean a product team’s roadmap needs to slavishingly follow popular opinion.
Personally I see little benefit in a feature request forum.
There are many benefits. I even mentioned some.
Helps identify solutions - when users describe their needs, others can suggest existing features or workarounds they might not know about
Saves staff time by not answering the same requests repeatedly
Shows which features users want most through votes and comments
Lets the community improve ideas together
Creates a searchable record of past decisions
Helps identify gaps when many users don’t know about existing features
Shows the company listens to users
Builds stronger connection with users
Gives credit when user ideas are used
This is a company that actually listens and responds in-depth to user feedback when you mail them
Have you emailed them? What did they say? Could you repost it here?
I sent a batch of feature ideas over email and got a very thoughtful response. I wish these exchanges happened publicly so I could read the response to other user’s interesting ideas, and otherwise gain insight on their intended direction.
It’s odd they respond so readily over email but not here. It may feel like too much pressure? Or maybe whoever’s responding on their end is just comfortable with email and not a forum?
In any case I completely agree with the list of benefits above. I’m also a product designer and former PM and understand the fatigue of needing to say no to users.
But I always cringe a bit when someone posts a great idea, someone else says to email it instead, and the thread ends there. Personally I’ve held off on sending more suggestions. Just a bit too much friction.
Seems like having those conversations in public would benefit other users and also save their staff from having to answer the same questions all the time!
Try to remember that “their staff” is the three founders. It might be that staying on top of forums could become a slippery slope that leads to less time being spent on the products.
This has been posted/asked about in the past, and there is atleast a reply from squarp here
Maybe more related to roadmap / or just a list of stuff that has been requested.
But the e-mail form way to do it ofcourse works aswell.
one big benefit would be to not have the repeating "can we have … " or “is … planned” or atleast "is this thing asked about multiple times before, check here ->)
Maybe it’s time to grow their team. Oxi Instruments is twice a large at six team members. Both companies have three products:
Oxi Instrument has Oxi One sequencer and two Eurorack modules (Meta and Coral).
Squarp also has three products: Hapax, Rample, and Hermod+, but Hermod+ seems like a much more complex product to develop and maintain than Oxi’s modules.
Squarp might be painting themselves in a corner if they lack the resources to stay competitive. Already we can see Oxi seems to be running circles around them in terms of product revisions
oxi is a new company and might suffer from feature over saturation because theyre too eager to appeal to users who tell them they want everything under the sun added. i think this is a problem because it throws the identity of gear out of whack. they didnt save anything for one mk2 (or ‘two’ maybe?) and made it harder to wrap your head around. better to stick to simplicity. ever heard of kiss? if i wanted oxi one features for my mpc i would be sol but if i wanted the features mpcs are known for i would be very lucky! jjosxl makes the mpc 1000 into a highly sophisticated sampler and sequencer combo when the stock os is a toddlers toy by comparison. jjos allows you to add nuance to what might be a relatively boring output. the reason i love it in my setup is because of the contrast with something like hapax, and the fact that it performs so well at what it was designed to do: mainly percussion. it is tempting to make it do a ton of stuff it wasnt meant for and its crazy to know what some do use it for but im so glad i have hapax for doing what jjosxl isnt as good at. they make up for each others weaknesses. im sure there are other bits that could push that further. i dont wish to combine them, it would feel quite crowded honestly.
but also, some people who make stuff dont want people who wish to grab the steering wheel. do you know hapax sales figures? how do you know how well it sells? when you have spent a lot of time developing an idea do you like it when someone comes along and tells you they think youre not doing it right? maybe they want notoriety for what they add. feng shui doesnt dictate the need for feature creep or bloat. i suspect youll see some things that please you in the future.
Seems like having those conversations in public would benefit other users and also save their staff from having to answer the same questions all the time!