“What features should we add to our new product?” is the foundational question in product design. At the same time, we all know that the more features we add, the more complicated and expensive the product becomes. There is no magic formula that allows us to find the optimal number of features for your product
Define the Core Set of Features
Defining the core set of features is by far the most challenging part of product design, but here are a few practical tips to help product designers overcome this challenge.
Introduce gradual, not radical, changes
Adapt your product to the user behavior by introducing small changes that will improve the user experience.
- This strategy is beneficial for two reasons: it’s faster and less expensive to add small changes and it’s easier to track the effect of introducing those changes.
Applying Pareto Principle
The number of features is not directly relevant to the product’s value
- Don’t aim to build a feature-rich product that covers all potential use cases
- Instead, define the one job to be done with your app that will be extremely valuable to your target audience
Track features people use most of the time
Identify features that the majority of users engage in
Building Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
The purpose of MVP is to reduce the number of assumptions you have about your product.
- MVP allows you to strip your product down to its core, the basics, that will enable you to validate whether your initial idea is valid.
Carefully analyze user feedback
Don’t consider everything that users say as a plan for the action.
- Learn whether this feature is valuable for a large segment of your users
- A tool called user journey map can be a helpful tool for this analysis
Beat the fear of getting on the market too early
Give access to your MVP to a relatively small group of users (i.e., early adopters who signed up for the beta version) and track their performance
- Early adopters are typically selected from loyal users, and they are more willing to explore your product and provide detailed feedback
Learn how users interact with your product
First product release gives you a huge opportunity to learn how users react to the features you added
