Removing features

Kano categories can help you decide what features to dispose of

Any credible insight the designer can develop with respect to which customer requirement can or cannot be sacrificed is invaluable for keeping development effort focused, making necessary trade-offs and maximizing customer benefit. (Berger et al, 1993)

A product with too many features is overwhelming and frustrating to use. I get anxious when I see apps with too many options, TV remotes with too many buttons, or steering wheels full of handles and knobs. I don’t know or remember what button to push. And if the result is not what I expected, I get angry.

Packing too many features into a product or service is not only a burden on the customer’s mental load. Customers may also feel they are paying for things they don’t need. Cable television is such a service: why pay for channels you never watch? Or the GPS in a car: more and more car buyers don’t want to pay for a feature that their phone can do better and cheaper.

Rationally, product developers know they must sometimes throw things out to make things better. But actually doing so is hard. There are a few issues at play. One is psychological: we just don’t like to throw things away. It’s similar to admitting we were wrong about something. Adding something creates a sense of accomplishment, removing something feels like a loss.

Recent research has shown that even when we’re thinking about how to improve something, adding instead of subtracting is in our nature. We systematically overlook subtractive changes when thinking about making changes to something (Adams et al., 2021).

Competitive pressure is another reason why we keep adding instead of trimming down products and services. All too often, competition is seen as an arm's race, where more, better, faster seems the only way to go.

In his 2016 "Jobs To Be Done, Theory To Practice", Anthony Ulwick describes how there's potential for profitable growth with overserved and non-consumers. Smart companies look for new markets instead of following the herd.

Internal teams too can benefit from having to deal with less features. Features come with development, maintenance and support costs. Deciding what features to add to a product is an important decision. Conversely, deciding what features to remove is equally important.

Using the Kano model makes the process of deciding what features to remove or downsize easier.

Must-Be features are features whose presence causes no dissatisfaction and whose absence does. There’s no increase in satisfaction above a certain level (think of the brakes of a car).

So if customers consider a certain feature to be mandatory, try and think of how you could trim that feature down to its essentials without impacting satisfaction. Do the photo editing tools in your social media app still need all their bells and whistles? Or is good enough good enough?

One-Dimensional features — the “the more, the better” kind, like the mileage of a car — are different. These are the features products compete on. Throwing these out is risky.

Yet, as the life-cycle of successful products indicates, a One-Dimensional feature can one day become a Mandatory feature. It’s therefore wise to look at the feature’s components, and find out which of its components is edging towards the Mandatory category. Trim down the performance of these subfeatures, as improving them will no longer contribute to your product’s overall competitive strength.

Attractive features differentiate your product from the competition. Their presence increases satisfaction (up until a certain level of performance) and their absence does not lead to dissatisfaction. If your Kano study shows that many of your features are Attractive, you may want to remove some of them.

You could also consider creating different versions of your product, each with a different combination of Attractive features. These alternative products will appeal to different customer segments.

In any case, a single product must not have too many attractive features. Continue working with the features that have the highest impact on customer satisfaction and throw the rest out or move them to another version of the product.

Don't dismiss Indifferent features right of the bat. Customers may not know the value of the feature, because they have not used it yet.

You may also be inclined to remove Reverse features without further thought. But Reverse does not only mean that customers do not want such features, it also means they expect the reverse of it. Reverse is a underutilised source of customer insights.