Features don’t matter any more?
A nice little article from the “Association of Computing Machinery” proposes features don’t matter any more and pro-ports “welcome to the age of user experience”. I totally agree with the central thesis, that once technical features reach equilibrium in a market, be it processor speed, or storage space, or bandwidth etc. the the overall user experience becomes the differentiator. This is a pretty common aspect of the technology “innovation” lifecycle which is explained and illustrated by Don Norman.
Anyway, I do rather like the “10 fundamental rules for the age of user experience technology”, or what might be called the 10 truisms of customer experience:
- More features isn’t better, it’s worse.
- You can’t make things easier by adding to them.
- Confusion is the ultimate deal-breaker.
- Style matters
- Only features that provide a good user experience will be used.
- Any feature that requires learning will only be adopted by a small fraction of users.
- Unused features are not only useless, they can slow you down and diminish ease of use.
- Users do not want to think about technology: what really counts is what it does for them.
- Forget about the killer feature. Welcome to the age of the killer user-experience.
- Less is difficult, that’s why less is more
I certainly I agree with the concept that “features check lists” can’t compete with a superior user experience, but features still matter. Sure the ipod on its own is a simple piece of technology, but look at the features when used in concert with itunes; the music store, the audio books, the podcasts, internet radio, the album covers, the music rating, the recent photos, the games. There are lots of features, it’s just they work in concert to create a killer user experience. The features hang together to create an “integrated” experience. What it shows is product management discipline, design discipline, and leadership with a vision.
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
Tim Whelan
I agree to a point. This is all great and nice, but there are a few assumptions left out of the issue. Number one is innovation. Innovations change the customer need or perceived need and the change then creates new features. Innovation also out dates technology leaving need for new features extending the product life cycle and usability. Utility features and usability features extend product life cycle by changing need or refocusing customer need.
Another assumption is that customer need stays constant which it never does. It constantly changes adding more demand for product changes and this is often satisfied in ad on changes like styling, color, functionality or performance.
Another area ignored is the product life cycle and the law of diminishing return when no changes are added to any given product including unitarian need and use let alone gadgets and such. Your perception of the ipod is a good example of this.
The issue here is that the article was written by people who have no clue as to the market and customers. The technology community (sorry guys ) just have no clue when it comes to customers, customer experience and business processes as understood by the business world. They define everything by IT terms and functionality which the referred article is a good demonstration of.
If you can create a need even demonstrate and sell a perceived need, which ipod and sound blaster did, you now have changed the user definition and associated characteristics of need and functionality.
The 10 points also has many challengeable week points and maybe on Friday I’ll address those on my blog. http://cdccustomerservice.blogspot.com. They are certainly worth noting. The point here is there is a lot of short sightedness in this world by people who are stuck in old school concepts and they need to weighed and measured. Not all is what it seems especially in relationship to the evolving dimension of the customer experience.
Mar 1st, 2006
karl long
I think we’re in agreement, the reason I linked to the Don Norman article was to highlight that moving from “feature lists” to a refined “experience was just part of the product lifecycle, which of course includes innovation. In the same article he has the classic innovation curve, which illustrates the “innovators dilemma” innovate or refine. Apple is a company that has made mistakes in this area before, see the newton vs. the palm pilot. Newton had very sophisticated text recognition that was technologically superior to the palm pilot “graphiti” recognition, but graphiti was more reliable.
I was certainly trying to highlight that it is too simplistic to say features don’t matter, it’s really an issue of balance of features vs. refinement and then of course “percieved cost”.
Mar 1st, 2006
Gary Bourgeault
I think one thing that is left out of the equation here is the age of the user. I have found that the older a person is, the less likely they are to use a lot of features that are offered.
Although in general research has born out that the more complicated a feature is, the less likely a customer will take the time to learn it.
But I also agree with the first commentor who said that, “the technology community (sorry guys ) just have no clue when it comes to customers, customer experience and business processes as understood by the business world.”
This is one of the great problems of IT departments: the disconnect between what they think of as a feature and what the consumer really wants and needs.
Mar 1st, 2006
karl long
I’m not even old, and I have found myself less enamoured with features as time goes on, but I wonder if that’s just because I’ve been so facinated with technology for so long, i’ve somehow become burnt out on the “marketing promise” of a feature not quite matching up with the experience. Additionally, owning a mac teaches you pretty quickly that jumping on the lastest and greatest can be a painful experience. Lesson: never buy the first generation of any apple product, they always have kinks to work out and inevitably 3rd generation apple products are the best.
Mar 3rd, 2006
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