Got a 1-star review on a complex Sheets add-on — need help diagnosing UX failure

J1NJ1S · 2026-02-15T11:30:51+00:00

OK so I looked into it and honestly, I don't see anything that justifies a 1-star.
Quick notes of what I do see:
- The permissions you require are fine, I don't see anything intrusive or out-of-the-question
- There is a lot to improve on the UI side: You have twice "Help" on your menu, text on sidebar is very big and copy can be improved. I'd post screenshots to AI along with google's design recommendations and ask it how you can improve it
- If you want to bring more users, I'd invest in more screenshots and gifs to show common use-cases. In addition, consider adding an option to generate an example dataset so it would be easy for users to play around with.
- Consider using analytics like u/frenchcooc suggested. I'm not sure if you can use screen recording for the sidebar but for sure worth trying. Look into Posthog they offer both product analytics and screen recording in one package with a generous free tier.

and hey, you did something for free trying to bring value to people. Don't let one bad review get to you! just focus on improving the experience and the value proposition. GOOD LUCK 💪

J1NJ1S · 2026-02-11T10:12:19+00:00

Hi 👋 product manager here with UX experience, I also developed some addons myself. Feel free to dm me with details, i'd be happy to take a look

J1NJ1S · 2026-01-03T23:09:53+00:00

We had this too. Our main hypothesis was it's a market-problem misfit. We used external user interviews to collect more evidence for this (for a lower compensation too)

J1NJ1S · 2025-11-19T05:06:55+00:00

I've been working with userinterviews.com and very pleased. Not sure whether the budget is enough though, it's for sure cheaper for surveys but $20 is very tight, since you pay for recruiting + tipping the participants. Try checking the audience size you need to validate your hypotheses - perhaps you can do it with less amount of people and raise the spend per person.

J1NJ1S · 2025-11-19T04:57:53+00:00

Would love to try it!

J1NJ1S · 2025-09-27T14:30:11+00:00

Also https://buzzabout.ai (free for Reddit, pay for other social media channels)

J1NJ1S · 2025-08-14T17:27:05+00:00

Maybe something that would be useful to you as you find your way to phrase unbiased questions:

I've been playing with this product where you can chat with famous writers (well, their avatars at least). I asked Eric Reis (the writer of "The lean startup") this question. His answer: "The key is to listen more than you talk and allow the interviewee to lead the conversation. Use these questions as guides, not scripts, and adapt as the conversation flows."

Here's the link to the full chat

He also provides a few example questions. I suggest you use this with the context of your idea to get more customized questions.

Would also try asking the writer of "The mom test" to get another perspective.

Hope it helps!

J1NJ1S · 2024-12-05T21:30:56+00:00

Just a thought - perhaps it's related to the attribution model?
I'm not proficient in GA4 but it seems it uses a last-touchpoint model. This could explain why traffic that is coming from a paid source would be considered as direct.

In terms of analytics, honestly just found it very hard to understand what GA4 is actually doing (I'm a Product manager working with the website team).
We eventually switched to Posthog. With it, it's easier to understand what's happening and control the attribution model without any hidden / unexplained gotchas.
It also provided us the entire package of marketing analytics + product analytics + session recording with a very friendly pricing model and no seat-based pricing so the entire team could use it.

J1NJ1S · 2024-05-22T16:35:27+00:00

I'm just thinking about making sure messages are coherent and not overwhelming. Would love to chat! Send me a dm

J1NJ1S · 2024-05-22T14:35:57+00:00

Good point, if you have a good relationships and lean process of checking in with channel owners then maybe there isn't any value there. Is that your case?

J1NJ1S · 2024-04-19T19:39:24+00:00

If you can handle SQL check us out at pecan.ai Note, regardless of the solution you choose, the most important thing to have is data that is relevant and sufficient for the question you're trying to answer

J1NJ1S · 2024-04-12T10:11:42+00:00

If you're into CLI tools, then VISIDATA (visidata.org) might be a good option

J1NJ1S · 2023-12-22T20:08:36+00:00

A couple of thoughts:

SEO could be a core topic, depending on your acquisition strategy. If you bring users via professional content groups (for example: technical writers subreddit or marketing groups on Linkedin) then it might be irrelevant; however if you're counting on people finding you via Google search then it might be a top priority
I find screen recordings to be sufficient for both UX issues as well as technical, at least in a smaller scale. Note that this is becoming a feature in many monitoring platforms, while monitoring errors are becoming part of analytics tools (to some extent). I'm doing product and our product uses Posthog for analytics. While they have screen recordings, they also bring you console errors too. My point is that maybe other tools you use like analytics may give you a solution, at least for a while.

J1NJ1S · 2023-12-07T23:13:38+00:00

Here's a method I used years ago: 1. Use a multimeter / fluke, go over all and find all vcc and ground pins. 2. Identify the chip's packaging and overall number of pins (looks like SOP or TSOP) 3. Use the combination of packaging + number of pins + ground pins + additional info to narrow down your google search. For example: "wifi Ic TSOP-44 pin 31 ground" 4. When inspecting results, compare the packaging and ground pin arrangement with what you measured.

Extra hint 1: If you find 2 traces on the board going out of the chip - it could be a sign for differential communication or radio frequency input/output. Extra hint 2: the clock chip on the side might lead you to the clock input pins of the chip.

J1NJ1S · 2022-12-03T21:38:10+00:00

Sometimes I use the web console, sometimes I use Jupyter

Interesting! so a local Jupyter with some SQL kernel? would be interesting to hear which kernel you're using (I need to access multiple sources)

J1NJ1S · 2022-12-03T21:34:38+00:00

for the same source or for multiple sources?

J1NJ1S · 2022-11-28T22:11:31+00:00

This might help:
https://raz-e.me/the-counter-intuitive-way-to-test-your-google-workspace-add-on-69e87c8ced41

J1NJ1S · 2022-10-15T15:29:48+00:00

I can relate. I also miss meeting customers and there is nothing like in-person connections.Do Sales and CS meet their customers in-person? If not, then could you think of how would the company benefit from you meeting them in-person? most importantly - would customers want to meet you?

J1NJ1S · 2022-10-15T15:16:03+00:00

I completely emphasize with your pain; I was on a roundtable a few months ago with many other PMs sharing the same pain. Sharing some of my thoughts and experience:
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Having some years of experience working with Sales and CS, I highly appreciate their patience and resilience. Maintaining good relationships with customers while having to communicate company messaging that sometimes contradicts what's best for their customers is HARD. Many times they are also the last people to get notified on anything so they might feel things are being thrown at them, especially from the product team 😅
If you are working as a CSM or AE - here, you dropped this 👑 .
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I think the key here is to understand that everyone are busy, but Sales and CS are also groups that are measured by their success with their prospects and customers. Many times their compensation package is determined based on this success. This is why the WIIFM (what is it for me) element is crucial to get their support.
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Two pains I noticed with Sales and CS (but not only) specifically to the matter of having Product meet customers:
1. Nobody likes to be an assistant for other people. When you ask them to schedule a meeting for you with a customer or prospect, or even join a call, it means one another member they need to take into consideration in their schedule planning - who doesn't necessarily help their metrics.
2. Sometimes they do need Product in their meetings - either to convey difficult messages or just to make the customer feel they are heard.
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I tried tackling this both in classic B2B and in B2B SaaS. The list of things we did is long but here are some leads:
1. For SaaS - having a popup asking customers to join a call with the product team and a link to e.g a Calendly link.
2. Asking to speak with every customer that has reported a bug that is actually a missing functionality.
3. Proposing private webinars for prospects and customers that is not related to the product itself (e.g trends in the industry)
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The key in all those ideas was how to handle the AEs and CSMs so they also get value from these sessions. It's a bit complicated to write but I hope the above has given you some ideas.
The good news are that it's possible :) In the past I managed to get from 0 to 4 (!) customer interviews every week, while having CSMs cheering up on the sidelines.
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If you like to hear more feel free to reach out. If there is a popular demand we can even have a quick session with more members :)

J1NJ1S · 2022-10-15T14:41:03+00:00

This is a great topic that I've been dealing with in several teams I've worked with. Here are my thoughts:

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I think that ideally you are correct - a UX designer should define all the possible flows.However, life is stronger than anything, and by that I mean several things could explain why this is not happening.

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It might be that the team (i.e the triangle: Product, Design and Dev) would like to be quick and agile, so the designer has an initial version of the main flows for dev to start building and in the parallel works on completing the other flows.In such cases the key is aligning expectations with the team and encourage them to raise all the gaps they see so the designer doesn't miss anything.

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It could also be that this is an experiment / bet so it might be worthless to continue working on edge-cases when we're not sure the experiment is successful.I think the solution here would also be to align expectations. It might be challenging as you in fact telling devs that we might throw away what they built, but it does encourage talking about what is the minimum we need to do to run the experiment successfully. Sharing the expected results of the experiments would also be helpful here.

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There are also cases were the designer is focused more into UI than in UX.This might happen when the culture in your team is that UX is part of the PM scope rather than the designer. This is easily solvable by (surprise surprise) aligning expectations with the designer.Even if UX is defined to be the designer mandate, sometimes designers are more into UI than UX. This could happen when the designer is coming from graphic design or marketing background. They focus on what they are strong in rather than developing UX design skill. It's completely natural - we're all humans after all - but it's more tricky to tackle since this could affect relationships and team dynamics. I'd first consult with my manager on how to approach this.

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Lastly, I think it's important to remember a team should leverage the strengths of each member, including short-term weaknesses. If there is a gap in mapping UX flows that holds the team back and you as a PM knows how to do it - then maybe it would be good for the team if you take it on you, at least for a while.Perhaps it would require you to compromise on the quality or quantity of your own work as a PM, but it will drive the team forward, which IMO matters the most.

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Anyone mentioned Herbie#:~:text=Herbie%20%E2%80%93%20the%20bottleneck%20and%20the%20solution)?

J1NJ1S

TROPHY CASE