Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Feature Creep: "It's a Floorwax AND a Dessert Topping"

While technology makes our lives easier and more efficient in many ways, often times it seems to make things more difficult. To wit: I have a remote control for my stereo, my t.v., my digital video recorder,  my dvd player; I even have one that came with my digital camera. Each of these devices also came with a user guide presented in six different languages, none of which clearly explains how to accomplish that one particular thing that I want the device to do.

This “spiral of complexity,” also known as feature creep (a cousin of mission creep, but only remotely related to super creep or astro creep), not only costs users time, it also costs businesses money. A recent article in The New Yorker (28 May 2007) talks about how product returns in the U.S. alone cost around one hundred billion dollars a year. It turns out that people are returning products not because they are defective, but because consumers simply could not figure out how to use them. Author James Surowiecki willfully asks:

Companies now know a great deal about problems of usability and consumer behavior, so why is it that feature creep proves unstoppable?

Surowiecki goes on to note a major factor associated with this creepy phenomena -- The internal-audience problem. Often times what designers and engineers think is important, consumers do not. In other words, options engineers think are valuable or more powerful are often deemed unimportant or useless by Joe Sixpack. (I am reminded of this everytime I pick up my mobile phone. I didn’t ask for a camera with my phone, but my choice of mobile devices that carried the features I did want left me with a camera that I have only used once.)

Engineers are the not the ones to notice that these additional options are making devices less useable. Production costs are not deeply impacted by additional features, plus sales and marketing units now have an additional selling point to attract customers with. Another great example of feature creep can be found in your copy of Microsoft Word. According to Surowiecki, Word 2003 had thirty-one toolbars and more than fifteen hundred commands. How many do you use? Fifteen? Thirty? Five?

 
"It's a Floorwax AND a Dessert Topping!"

Here’s where things get tricky. What do consumers really want? A loaded question, no doubt. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland revealed that when consumers where given a choice of three models of a particular digital device varying in complexity, more than sixty percent chose the more complex device, i.e., the device with the most features. When these same subjects were able to customize this device to their own specifications, given a set of twenty five possible features, the average number of features added was twenty five. However, when asked to use this device, the users reportedly became frustrated with the number of options they chose.

The Simple Life

This study and others repeatedly show consumers are not good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As such, consumers end up paying more for more features that, in the end, they overestimate actually using. Researchers from Duke University and the University of Michigan found that when buying things like golf balls and digital cameras, consumers overestimate their skill or ability level and thus purchase products that are, for all intents and purposes, “unsuitable.” As a result, consumers are again willing to pay more for additional options and will feel “shortchanged” if they do not receive them. However, once consumers own the product, their reported patience quickly runs out. A researcher at Phillips Electronics found that Americans who returned a product out of frustration only spent on average twenty minutes with it before throwing in the towel.

So, product manufacturers face a dilemma: create a digital device with too many features and risk annoying customers or create a device with too few features and risk not capturing our attention. Savvy users will always demand more choice. So does a company risk alienating less savvy users or do they cater to the more elite users?

I am also reminded of this same feature creep issue whenever I consider evaluating learning management systems and social/collaborative softwares. In terms of learning management systems, my uni spent quite a bit of time arguing over which features where necessary and which were simple nice to have. In the end, we purchased a product that was feature-rich, yet completely underutilized by a majority of users. My own college opted to take a different route with a more friendly, customizable solution and are quite happy we did.

iThink ergo iAm

Perhaps the key is somewhere in the middle. Think Apple’s iPod or the computer printer market (with different products for different skill levels). Theoretically, the better choice might be to pack in a lot of power and utility into a simple design. This is what Apple is hoping they have accomplished with the iPhone – a device with a notable range of features and a clean interface that, in theory, is easy to operate (even when you smudge the touch screen up with greasy fingers).

Time will soon tell whether Apple got it right. The truth is no one will be surprised if they fail. The bottom line is, even when product manufacturers give people what they want, consumers can still damn them for it. As David Byrne once said, “There’s less irony then there used to be. I’m sure that will disappoint some people.”

References:

Larrick, R. P., Burson, K. A., & Soll, J. B. (2007).  Social comparison and confidence: When thinking you’re better than average predicts overconfidence (and when it does not). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102: 76-94.

Rust, R.T., Thompson, D.V., & Hamilton, R.W. (2006). Defeating feature fatigue. Harvard Business Review, 84(2): 98-107, 165.

Surowiecki, J. (2007). Feature presentation. The New Yorker. 28 May 2007, p. 28.