757 WORDS | READ TIME: 3.2 MIN | CHANGE FLAG: PERCEPTION

How do you say anesthesiologist in 3-year-old?

The costume my oldest picked as soon as she had an opinion? An “anasneezeologist,” complete with scrubs, a shower-turned-surgical cap, and a stethoscope that stayed around her neck for weeks. Every stuffed animal in the house was subject to surgery that year.

She was inspired by her Papo, my father. And let me tell you, it was good fun growing up with a doctor for a father. While everyone else bragged that the longest word they knew was a made-up supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I had an actual word no one else could pronounce. My school supply box was filled with the coolest swag – the drug reps' pens had bells and whistles no Bic could stand up against. And every so often, when my father had to log medical ethics credits before his license renewal, we got to piggyback along to the conventions.

So I grew up on the life and death version of "do no harm," and honestly? It felt funny the first time I heard DNH applied to product launches.

But the principle is a good one – and DNH speaks well to the nuance of feature launches. Especially since the real line is: help, or at least do no harm.

If Home is a help, why not hand it out?

In Episode 7 of Churn Flags, Brandon Green, Staff Product Manager at Buffer, tells us about a scary problem he saw in his usage metrics: active users only ever using Buffer as a scheduler.

His team was churning out actually-valuable features that bring measurable outcomes beyond just "post consistently." And many users just didn't notice.

So they built a home screen. One deliberately calm dashboard with the comment inbox, the grow-with-you post inspiration templates, and the analytics.

Clearly, they built the home screen to help feature adoption – but going another level deep, it was really built to help users hit their outcomes.

But Brandon didn't push it out to existing users.

While new users land on Home after initial segmentation, existing users keep opening Buffer to the same Publish view they know and are familiar with – with just one little tooltip letting them know they can switch over if they want.

Because help, yes. But at least do no harm too. Or in Brandon's words:

"So we made this conscious decision to just do no harm and give the option."

Which is a little spicy, if you think about it. As a product expert, he made a decision to build a better experience, and then didn't give it to his longest-standing customers.

Help or harm depends on who's on the table

A new user has nothing to lose. When Google's UX team launched Google Drive, they studied previously failed Google launches and theorized that change aversion was at play, noting that new experiences weren't at risk.

While Home is a pure help for a brand-new Buffer user learning their way around, a long-time user is a different patient.

Especially true because power users need the new features least: Templates help people figure out what to post, the posting streak nudges them to keep going, and the weekly pulse shows them it's working. Someone who's opened Publish every morning for years is already doing all of that. They're posting, and they're consistent. Their habit already gets them the outcome Home is trying to unlock. They might miss an opportunity for a better workflow, but not if it comes at the cost of their habit and comfort.

Because an unfamiliar dashboard breaks a working routine. That Google UX team studied habit as a flywheel, alongside the psychological oddities of loss aversion according to Kahneman and Tversky. And the conclusion I took away?

The small upside (help) isn't worth a big disruption (harm).

No harm doesn't = hidden

One caveat: Existing users still see that Home exists. The tooltip flags the new view and the setting is one click away. Brandon says roughly 10,000–12,000 users visit Home per month.

As the product expert, Brandon built what he knew would help. He just didn't make it mandatory for people who didn't need the help. The people whose routine was already working.

Product teams do track DNH. But Brandon didn’t wait to see the frustration in his dashboard.

My father’s retired now, but dinner conversations were always about the pre-op. Reading the chart, asking about history, planning what this particular patient could safely handle – all before he picked up a IV line. (No details disclosed, obvs.)

Because a lot of DNH happens in pre-op. Brandon’s launch had one: is this procedure right for this patient?

Does your launch plan have pre-op?

In the episode (listen here)

What else did we dive into in Episode 7 of Churn Flags?

Brandon shares a metric from his Mixpanel: a feature Buffer worked hard on with a single-digit percent adoption. We trace that number back to the Change Flag we've featured twice already. (Guess before you hit play.)

How Claude wimping out on a two-click upload sent me to Buffer – even though I had an old Hootsuite account and Sprout Social was a former client. Hint: it's the Buffer team's LinkedIn strategy. And it actually helps them build the a better product too.

And one more story that happened weeks after we recorded: the Buffer feature that solves my exact problem, and why I'm only just starting to use it, thanks to the email that landed in my inbox the week of the episode drop.

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