Michael Gaigg: Über UI/UX Design

Feature Fatigue: Say NO to Your Clients

Posted by Michael Gaigg

Are your clients asking to add features upon features to your application because they think it will boost their success? This might really harm them and therefore you in the long run. Here is why:

Feature Fatigue

A study by Harvard Business Review (Defeating Feature Fatigue) has found that the features of a product mattered more to participants (customers) before they bought a product but after the purchase the actual satisfaction was greater with the simpler version of the product.

Feature Fatigue; This graph extrapolates a bit from the results.

That means that customers think they want feature-loaded offerings while they are shopping but once they start using their purchase, they suffer feature fatigue: they become overwhelmed by the product's complexity and annoyed by features they realize they don't want or need.

There is an inverse relation between expected utility and experienced utility. The turning point is the purchase and subsequent use of the product.

Say NO to your Clients

It's been common knowledge for some time and we all kinda felt it and even saw it with our own eyes with products like the Flip camcorder taking 13% of the market with doing less. I can find plenty of useful features for my new search portal but the reason why google is so successful is because they perfected their main task and prevented adding useful but unnecessary features to their portal.
So now you know why you should say NO to your clients when they brainstorm cool and sexy features.

What you should do

• Design products with just enough features to stimulate sales
• Ensure the features are easy enough to use once the customers start using them.
• Provide a variety of simpler application, each tailored to a particular task.
• Remind your client and your team about the main task that enables their users to do something outstanding.