Are Feature Requests A Bad Thing?

Kathy Sierra's blog, Creating Passionate Users is one of my favorite reads and was a big part of what inspired me to start the TypePad Hacks project. Which is ironic, in a way, because although I agree with Kathy on a lot of things, our take on feature requests is totally opposed. Her recent post Don't give in to feature demands! starts out:

The more successful the product or service is, the stronger the pressure to give in to user requests. The more users you have, the more diverse the requests. One user's must-have-or-else feature is another user's deal-killer. And the more popular your product or service is, the more those requests start turning into demands and ultimatums, and finally very harsh criticisms.

The worst thing we can do is give in. But as the requests/demands and criticisms become louder and angrier, the harder it is to resist the siren call— "But if we just added this one thing… these guys would ease up."

But when we've blended all the colors into one muddy blob, then nobody hates us, and nobody is delighted, excited, or turned on by what we do. We become mediocre. Usually the worst place to be.

She goes on to list 13 categories of "people who might make feature requests or demands," and suggest how and when companies should respond to them. It's an interesting read. I recommend it for regular readers here who have participated in the discussion of adding features to TypePad.

Now, I get where Kathy is coming from when she says that trying to do too many things can lead to mediocrity (or worse, even). At the same time, I wouldn't necessarily agree that the bulk of features fall into a must-have/deal-killer dynamic. There's hardly an app on my laptop where I use all the features, but generally it doesn't bother me that they do more than I need them to. So long as the application remains stable, reasonably fast, and the options are well-organized, I'm perfectly willing to ignore what I don't need. The place where I see a risk of alienating one user to please another is not so much in adding features as in changing them. Everyone gets frustrated when a new version launches and they can't find or use the features that had become second nature. But new stuff? I don't see an issue…

The work being done here at TypePad Hacks has drawn an awful lot of favorable response from both the community of users and the TypePad Design Team. Although most of the feature suggestions on the Agenda page are things that I'd like to see integrated into the standard feature set (and hence available to Basic and Plus accounts) I can also see the value of developing them as hacks for the Pro set crowd when possible. While some things can only be added at the home base, there're workarounds for a lot of the desired features and I'll keep featuring them as I ferret them out.

In the mean time, I suggest reading Kathy's post for an alternate view on the issue.

Comments

[Posted: May 13, 2006 12:03:10 PM]

John,
Kathy's blog is one on my list of reads also. She has some great insights and ideas that actually make sense. Even if I don't totally agree with her all the time (which is seldom), her topics are definitely thought-provoking. I'll second you on the recommended reading suggestion.

In general, I support what Kathy is saying in this particular post. It's interesting though, that the largest software house in the world, Microsoft, does just the opposite with Windows. And Microsoft is hugely successful.

The Windows platform has evolved into something way beyond an operating system. There are tons of doo-dads and whiz-bangs built into it and every new update brings more. The general public seems to like the "all-in-one" package even though they utilize only a small portion of what Windows can actually do. There's not alot of thinking and the Windows platform is pretty intuitive. Techies on the other hand, understand that Windows has become very bloated and is full of glitches.

While Microsoft took a basic operating system and kept building non-operating-system functions into it, Linux took the opposite approach.

Linux is built around a basic kernel that is focused only on operating system functions. If you want to add other functionalities, you "attach" them to the kernel. Therefore, the Linux kernel arguably never becomes "bloated". Techies love Linux because they can control what their OS looks like by adding or removing functions. The general public, on the other hand, liked the thought of something other than Windows, but soon learned that Linux required more of a learning curve and time than they wanted to invest.

When developing a website or an application, I always consider the Microsoft/Linux dichotomy. Of course, I want my product to be user-friendly and intuitive. The Windows approach of using a consistent user-interface is crucial for that. But I also want it flexible enough to be able to add functionality without becoming bloated. That is usually easily accomplished by using the Linux approach.

Bottom line? I'm still searching for that perfect mix. More functionality, but user-friendly and intuitive. I think that's my personal holy grail!

Sheesh... I got a little carried away here!
James

[Posted: May 13, 2006 1:42:39 PM]

James,

Carried away? No, not really. Your points are spot on.

What came to my mind as I was writing the above post was another Microsoft product… MS Word. It used to be my favorite writing program, but eventually feature bloat caused it to be too unstable for me to trust any more. I've lost a lot of good writing to crashes in Word, and finally gave up on it altogether. I miss the thesaurus, but other than that I can pretty much do everything else I used it for in a stripped down, basic text editor.

I'm never going to understand why a word processing program would need to support sound and video, for instance. It's not like you can print a video… and if you're creating a multimedia project, I guess I wouldn't do it in a word processor.

My example of choice for the opposite approach would be Firefox. A lean, mean useful browser that easily allows you to add functionality based on what you want in your browser. There are a lot of open source products that I admire, but Firefox is probably top of the list.

So yeah, Kathy's not wrong in her post at all. At the same time, I do think there's room to add to or improve on a platform like TypePad. Your bottom line of "More functionality, but user-friendly and intuitive" is exactly the right idea, and maybe, like Firefox, the best way to handle a lot of the requests is to allow users to extend the product by using advanced templates and hacks rather than adding every feature to the Basic level blog platform.

TypePad's initial response to many of my requests (before I started this blog) was that if I wanted more control of features I should think about switching to MT… and for people who really want a simpler interface, there's also LiveJournal. Six Apart has definitely showed wisdom in providing multiple platforms that address different "geek levels." I'd hate to see TypePad suffer from the kind of bloat that affects MS products… at the same time, I think TypePad is the best combination of user-friendly and functional in the Six Apart line.

I'd leave LJ pretty much alone, and leave MT to it's own devices. But TypePad has the potential to be morphed into more than one flavor pretty easily. The top secret Comet project is a *version* of TypePad that won't replace the existing platform, just as the Business Class service is an extended version of TypePad that is also separate from the main platform. I think that kind of forking of the platform is a great idea… It's worked for Mozilla, and I can see it working well for Six Apart too. Maybe what will emerge from the discussions here at some point will be a power-user version of the platform that hangs between the standard TypePad account and the Business Class level. An extended version of TypePad Pro?

Now look who's getting carried away. heh.