Giraffe Forum

Customers buy complexity in the same way they buy insurance. It’s a bet against the future. They think they might need all these extra features at some stage in the future. Joshua Porter of User Interface Engineering has a very interesting piece on this trade-off:

People are reluctant to make trade-offs because they can’t predict what functionality they will need in the future. Choosing a product with fewer features is a trade-off that could hurt them down the line. When users don’t understand the advantages of each feature, such as when a user is buying her first digital camera, they are much more likely to avoid making a trade-off by choosing the feature-laden product.

Joshua references a study published in Harvard Business Review in 2006:

As anyone who has bought a cell phone over the last couple of years can tell you, manufacturers love to cram as many capabilities into a product as possible—cell phones are now also cameras, music players, and game platforms. Why the rush toward “feature bloat”? Because consumers perceive value in this Swiss-Army-Knife approach and will pay for the added utility. The problem comes when the buyer actually starts to use the product. The increased complexity makes for a very unhappy consumer, who will look to return the product or look for another vendor in the future.

Simplicity: The Ultimate Sophistication

Feature Bloat: The Product Manager’s Dilemma