KonzeptioNerd

Featureitis

Dan Saffer at adaptive path blog has an excellent (though lengthy) comment on the feature overload debate:

[...D]on’t play in the features game at all. Because let’s face it: most features are commodities that will likely be replicated eventually. Instead, it is about the connection between the features that will create both product loyalty and product desire. That connection is much harder to reproduce. That is where design (and not engineering) comes in. First to create an strategy for which features should be included (or at least emphasized) and then a design to stitch those features together in a useful, usable, and pleasing way.

This is just so relevant for webdesign today. Pitches for websites ever so often come down to mere beauty-contests: if the CEO likes the colors, the concept must rock. But right next in line, esp. when the budget at stake is for an online-community, is Featureitis: How many features do we get for the buck.

We all know the feature-list of a successful online-commuity. Just pick your favorite hangout and start counting. But chances are, if this is your favorite social place on the net, it’s been around for a while and has grown with its user figures.

Starting an online-community with the “full” feature-set of its established and successful peers will take about a year in development and testing - and then you’ll lag a year behind the pack.

Better start small. For an online community, find your core, your killer feature, that which will make your site tick. Then add the basics necessary for community-building: ways for all users to perceive and participate in all other users’ content. A tool for self-presentation (like a profile) and communication-features (don’t forget the “tell-a-friend” mechanism). Add breadth and depth of those features later.

Saffer makes a case for “the story of the product”:

Instead of the engineering specs, design and marketing have to work together to figure out what the story of the product is, how all the features fit together into a unified product that can be sold and enjoyed. We don’t need to sell simplicity any more than we should sell complexity. We need to sell — and design — products that are useful, usable, and desirable. And that customers perceive as all those things (that’s where marketing comes in).

If the product can “tell” me its use-case, I am more likely to be able to use it successfully. Make sure your core feature has an easy story to tell - and tell it on the first page of your site.

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