A few weeks ago, I was reading an article about the next wave of features that will overload my next cellphone and I asked any and everyone around me this one question...isn't the product supposed to solve my needs and problems, not add to them?

Remember the old saying "Just because you can doesn't mean you should"?

In addition to my next cell phone, I am making the investment into an HDTV home theatre system and, after seeing the remote, I am very, very afraid.

Great post! Absolutely marketers oversell features that nobody needs. Even ads are confusing these days.

Some things I'd like to see simplified:
- remote control devices
- cell phone menus
- almost all software
- search engine results

well, i could go on. all of these things have too many, or too few, or too confusing instructions, options, steps, functions.

after all, you can't always have a teenager at your side to figure it all out.

Hi all,
This is an interesting topic and my experience is that it is not typically marketers who add all the extra features, but engineers who do it.

For example, I was once consulting with Intel in Israel several years ago where my colleague and I were talking to the engineers there about "ease of use" and simplicity and how this is important for consumers. One engineer told me something I haven't forgotten, which was that the engineers were trained (in college and at work) to work on and solve complicated problems and are rewarded for doing that. Thus, it was logical for them to focus on complexity, rather than simplicity.

With that in mind, marketers can work with that by better segmenting the market and have the engineers turn off and on various features that are desired by different market segments.

That's at least one way marketers can help the reduction of feature creep.

David,

I once worked as a VP of Marketing for a high-tech company that produced industry software. My efforts to create software that was simple to use and met the wants and needs of our customers went unheard. The tech and sales departments believed that customers wanted functional, not value in terms of usability and serving only customers want and needs.

So we produced software that could all but walk. (It did talk.) And we spent millions on tech and maintenance support because the software was so difficult for our customers to use. So there you go. A real-life example.

I get the dilemma. Lewis' story is a great example of the cost of poor usability. On the other hand, creating a product that has features that can be used by different audiences can lead to higher production numbers and economies of scale.

I'm not sure it's an either/or proposition, though. Why can't we have convergence devices that are feature-rich AND easy to use?

I just want it all. Is that so hard? ;)

The marketing people have to make themselves heard on this issue. Certainly, there are techies who like all the bells and whistles. But the average person wants necessary features and wants to be able to use them easily.

B.L., it's so true about needing a teenager to help you use a new gadget. I remember the days when my son was around 12 or 13, and we'd get a new Nintendo game. I'd try to read the instructions to see how to play it, while my son would just sit down at the TV and start going. Without even glancing at the manual, he'd beat me every time. I finally gave up on video games. I'd be terrified to even go near X box or the new virtual games.

Just saw this news about Palm introducing the Foleo, a $599 device "designed to let users manage and edit their e-mails and other documents by communicating with their smartphones through a wireless Bluetooth connection."

Smartphones? Wireless Bluetooth? Sounds scary to this long-in-the-tooth guy.

Story is at http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8PF25A00.htm

I just can't get over the term "feature creep" It's so illustrious. I love it. and "feature fatigue" Great terms.

I'm with Cam on this one.

Tammy, I wish I could say those phrases are mine, but they both came from the New Yorker article. I don't think the author coined them either.

I think of "feature overload" when I am confronted with a product that is filled to the gills with buttons and gadgets. Like Pat said up above, too many bells and whistles can actually turn some buyers off -- or scare them away.

I have to agree with Allen, up to a point. The engineers “do it”, but marketing enables it. This really has to do with the relative power of marketing in the organization.

As Lewis Green has pointed out, he tried, but went “unheard”. Lewis, I don’t know your personal experience, but I do know a lot of our clients have the same frustrations.

The role of the VP of Marketing (or VP of Product Management), is to OWN THE PRODUCT. And yet, this seems to happen a lot less frequently than it should. Part of this comes from who is running the company, and/or who founded the company. Because they are often technical, they defer to the technical experts.

If the VP of Marketing can create the right argument for simplicity over complexity, they can create the next iPod or Google homepage. They are both incredibly complex systems with wonderfully simple front ends.

(Having said that, I’d argue it’s the founders of those companies that are enabling that simplicity shine through … with the very strong support of the VPs of Marketing).

What VPs of Marketing have you seen who can make the simplicity over complexity argument win?

Thanks for your thoughtful comment Glenn. It may not necessarily be complex vs simplicity, but what consumers want or don't want in a product. In focus groups, people will say they want everything, but then in real life, they may take simplicity over ever last feature.

Part of product development needs to be more than the technical aspects. Marketing has to be mixed into the product blend at some point -- better it should be as a product is being created.

David - Thought you'd like to see this quote from Bill Gates (from the Jobs/Gates joint interview):

Bill: Yeah. I mean, I believe in the tablet form factor. I think you’ll have voice. I think you’ll have ink. You’ll have some way of having a hardware keyboard and some settings for that. And then you’ll have the device that fits in your pocket, which the whole notion of how much function should you combine in there, you know, there’s navigation computers, there’s media, there’s phone. Technology is letting us put more things in there, but then again, you really want to tune it so people know what they expect. So there’s quite a bit of experimentation in that pocket-size device. But I think those are natural form factors and that we’ll have the evolution of the portable machine. And the evolution of the phone will both be extremely high volume, complementary–that is, if you own one, you’re more likely to own the other.

Cam, reading this quote from Gates, I can understand why everything is so complex. I had to read through the quote a few times to figure out what he's saying, and I'm still not sure.

My take on that quote is, Gates is talking about the evolution of devices and user's desire for more options - after he has mastered those he needed, he finds he could use more, therefore he will buy the next version. He is saying the introduction of technology must be paced with users comfort levels. Apple does this well - coupling sleek design with user friendly technology. I often find that their products are too simple but there's a huge audience that demands smart simplicity. It's about targeting too.

Thanks for the translation Tammy. That sounds about right.

As someone said up above, it could probably be too costly to have various versions of basically the same product, except with different levels of features. I think I've seen some items where the features are all there, but you can opt to turn them on or off, depending on your comfort level.

David,

I'd pay more for the option of getting less on most purchases these days.

David,

I'd pay more for the option of getting less on most purchases these days.

Jeanne, that's an interesting twist. But I suppose we already have precedennt for paying more for less, as in "light" foods.

What I love about Surowieki's article is also what I love about The New Yorker in general: it presents the complexities of an issue... well, simply. So on the one hand we are attracted to the bells and whistles, but on the other hand confused and frustrated by them. So why not just make "stuff" simpler? Because people won't buy it.

I love the last line of the article: "The strange truth about feature creep is that even when you give consumers what they want they can still end up hating you for it."

Priceless.

It would seem, then, that there's no way to win. But I think you can win in degrees, carving out pieces of a larger audience that wants varying degrees of gadgets and/or simplicity. It's tricky, though, and won't work in every case.

Have to agree with you w/much of the post! Consumers generally use certain items, such as a digital camera, to take snapshots only (most are not professionals). I use my cell phone to make/receive calls and text messages; I don't use it to access the internet, play games, take pictures (crappy camera), or watch video.

I think the feature deluge occurs because manufacturers want to differentiate their product in some manner. "Our product has abc+xyz, whereas the competition only has abc..."

Thanks Damon. I wonder if too many features might really scare some people off. Does this balance what manufacturers might gain by having products overloaded with features, for those buyers who have to have it all -- even if they never use it all?