Tabling Ideas

I once had an idea for a new user interface feature. It would inform the user about the health of their resource quota by showing a small indicator in the corner of the screen. The key to this component was that it was small, unobtrusive, and visually intuitive. Colors and icons would do most of the work in indicating any change in health. It was never implemented. Was it a valuable feature to have? I thought so. But the reason it was never implemented was because the idea was tabled — pushed into the background of our then development efforts. That's where it stayed. I came up with the idea fairly early on in the development life cycle. There wasn't a huge code-base to contend with yet, and so less chance of causing problems by introducing a new feature. But all that changed — as the code base grew and the feature set ballooned, my notification idea collected dust. It grew old, frail, and obsolete. Eventually it died.