We designed it, but it never launched.

Some features are like Arthas Menethil…. once noble, now undead. And they still haunt the roadmap.

If you’ve been in product design long enough, you’ve heard (or said) this line more than once. Screens were built, prototypes were polished, maybe even development started.

Then: silence.

The feature never sees daylight.

Sometimes it’s politics. Sometimes it’s timing. Sometimes, it simply wasn’t needed.

But that’s not a failure. It’s insight.

---

Why Product Strategy Shifts (and That’s Okay)

You were working on Feature A. Then the company pivots to Feature B. Then they cut budgets. Then a new Head of Product says, “We’re focusing on something else now.”

Frustrating? Sure. But real.

As designers, our job isn’t to cling to features; it’s to align with problems worth solving. Great UX isn’t attached to deliverables. It’s attached to outcomes.

---

How to Smell a Dead Feature Early

Bad features have a smell. You feel it in vague briefs: “Just make it look nice.” You feel it in absent KPIs: “We’ll measure it later.” You feel it when nobody can explain the user’s need clearly.

These features are often:

• Executive vanity projects

• Panic responses to competitor launches

• Internally-driven, not user-driven

Designing them is like building a fancy door to a room nobody wants to enter.

---

The Value of Not Designing

Some of the best design decisions are the ones you never execute. Killing a feature early is not a loss…it’s wisdom.

Designers who speak up, ask questions, and challenge weak features save teams months of wasted time.

A feature that dies might be your best contribution.