Summary at the end. Writing this story makes all of the problems and solutions sound so obvious. Hindsight... Let's review a few of the lessons I learned: Ke

Summary at the end. Writing this story makes all of the problems and solutions sound so obvious. Hindsight... Let's review a few of the lessons I learned: Keep your users in the loop, always. Do not go build in isolation. Don't underestimate engineering challenges that you only have an external view of. Voice your concerns to your team regularly and often. They might be to solve them far more quickly than you or they might be able to identify what will turn into a major roadblock. Be ready to pivot. Users say things for a reason, but there may be more to it than face value. If you make assumptions about your users, they will find a way to surprise you. Features will go unused if they aren't easy to use, no matter how great they are. A user's workflow is everything. (I keep relearning this lesson...) Users are far more clever than you think.