- What not to cut
- Find what’s core
- Kill lame features
- What if the user…?
- But our customers want it
- Features that trigger errors
- Errors
- When features don’t matter
- Will it hurt?
- Prioritizing features
- Load
- Decisions
- Distractions
- Smart defaults
- Options and preferences
- When one option is too many
- Visual clutter
- Removing words
- Simplifying sentences
- Conversation
- Cutting time
- Removing too much
- You can do it
- Focus
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Prioritizing features
When you’re trying to figure out which features to keep and which to remove, follow these principles:
Identify the users’ goals and set them in order of priority. For the TV remote control, a main goal is to find a channel to watch and set the volume (I’d include “subtitles” in this); a secondary goal would be to switch to a different video source like a streaming video player; a less important goal would be to adjust the picture.
Focus on solutions that completely meet users’ high-priority goals. Only then move on to the lower-priority goals. Don’t botch what’s core in favor of delivering more stuff.
Identify things that are common sources of anxiety or stress and prioritize features that alleviate that stress effortlessly. For instance, interruptions (such as the telephone) are a common frustration when watching TV. The pause button on a DVD remote control is a way of minimizing that frustration.
Identify the controls that satisfy mainstream users’ needs (in general, those are the ones that allow “good enough” control) and the controls for experts (in general, precision control and customization). Set aside the “precision” controls or replace them with “good enough” alternatives.
Remove duplicate ways of performing a task. For instance, the TV remote control in this book has two different controls for scrolling text on the screen. Pick one.
And finally, don’t be tempted to judge the value of your product by the number of features. Instead, consider how well it meets users’ high-priority goals. In other words: Watch people using prototypes.
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