Here’s another reason to double, triple, quadruple-check yourself when you want to add a new feature. A while back Netflix added a “Profiles” feature to their service. A couple weeks ago, they decided to pull the feature because it was too confusing and it wasn’t adding value. But it was too late. People were pissed. The blog post received 1286 comments. In the face of this reaction, Netflix had to turn 180 and keep the feature. Whether Netflix Profiles are good or bad, clear or confusing, they’re here to stay.
The lesson: Once your user base has grown beyond a certain point, you cannot take features away from them. They will freak out. Whether the feature is good or bad, once you launch it you’ve married it. This changes the economics of feature additions. If you can’t destroy what you build, each addition holds the threat of clutter. Empty pixels and free space where a new feature could be added are the most valuable real estate on your app. Don’t be quick to sell it, because you can never get it back.
Pete
on 01 Jul 08I was so pissed about this I immediately called my wife and we agreed to cancel. They sent me a generic BS email a couple of days later saying “You spoke, we listened…”. But they didn’t think far enough ahead to make an offer to people like me to actually re-sign up. I sure ain’t gonna go out of my way to sign up again so they messed up twice.
David Andersen
on 01 Jul 08If a lot of customers want the feature, how can it be bad? How can it not be adding value?
I think Profiles are very useful; we use them and like them. They probably could be implemented a bit better, but the end result is good.
matt
on 01 Jul 08Where are you getting this “too confusing and it wasn’t adding value” BS? Users are not some idiotic group of brutes that just eat up whatever the kings of industry foist down on them, most of them are actually savvy enough to know when they are being fooled or not.
ML
on 01 Jul 08If a lot of customers want the feature, how can it be bad?
A feature that pleases a small segment of your customers at the expense of the overall usability of the site is a tradeoff that may not be worth it. Every new thing you add comes with a cost: future development/improvement costs, support for the feature, screen real estate that you can’t use for something else, more mental processing required for customers, etc.
Keith
on 01 Jul 08lol. I saw this elsewhere and was kind of hoping you guys would add a little story about it. :)
David Andersen
on 01 Jul 08@ML – I generally agree, but I don’t see how that general feature assessment has anything to do with the specific Profiles feature written about here. Clearly – based on the outcry – it is not a feature that only ‘pleases a small segment’ of Netflix’s customers. Generally there are always many more people who feel the same way but don’t bother to let the company know of their dissatisfaction. Like Pete (above) and I, for example.
pwb
on 01 Jul 08Where are you getting this “too confusing and it wasn’t adding value” BS?
Uh…from the Netflox blog post itself?
“Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the website.”
RIan
on 01 Jul 08There is something else Netflix screwed up beyond the feature itself.
The bulk of our families movie ratings are in my wife’s profile. 1250+ ratings. In addition there were 130+ movies in her queue.
When Netflix announced they were going to drop profiles and set a deadline they provided no tools to merge profiles, transfer queue items to the account owner or export/import ratings.
Netflix effectively said they didn’t care about helping me preserve MY data. So I took six hours of my time to figure out how to preserve that data. I found a GreaseMonkey script that would kinda-sorta export it so I had a backup. Then I manually — yes manually — re-entered my data into the account owner profile.
If your going to assert that getting rid of feature was the right decision, then you should also assert that Netflix went about it the wrong way and did a massive disservice to its customers by treating our data like trash.
David Andersen
on 01 Jul 08““Too many members found the feature difficult to understand and cumbersome, having to consistently log in and out of the website.”
Perhaps there are other lessons to be learned like:
1. Find out who’s using the feature and why. 2. Find out what users think can be done to improve the feature. 3. Improve the feature.
all before discarding it.
ML
on 01 Jul 08This post isn’t arguing that Netflix made the right/wrong decision. Nor is it passing judgement on whether Netflix handled it properly. It’s just saying that the whole thing is a good example of why you need to be extra cautious when adding new features.
David Andersen
on 01 Jul 08I understand your point ML, and while I think caution is a good approach to adding new features, I don’t think this particular example is a good one to make that case. In a sense, by using it, your saying “be careful adding new features, even ones that customers like, because you will have a hard time getting rid of them.” To which the logical reply is “Not surprising.” Perhaps another good lesson, however, is to test out new features and get good feedback before opening them up to the entire customer base, so that you have a better chance of implementing them well.
Matt Lee
on 01 Jul 08I had a friend who stopped using Backpack for this very reason.
An update removed the feature that let you write the headings of notes in HTML, adding anchors so they could be linked to directly on a page.
So, I guess everyone is guilty of this from time to time.
David Demaree
on 01 Jul 08I don’t think the lesson here is “don’t add features, ‘cos then people will bitch if you take them away.” From what I’ve seen (I’m not a Netflix customer), Netflix handled this very poorly. They didn’t give anyone any warning, and didn’t really contextualize the change beyond saying “yeah, we did this cause we wanted to, and trust us when we say it’ll make Netflix better even though it now looks worse.” (Did they even say that much?)
Contrast with:
Yahoo, who gave Yahoo Photos users tons of advance notice and several good migration/export options when that service was discontinued.
iMovie ‘08, which dropped most of iMovie’s “expert-ish” editing capabilities but brought the product closer to its core goal (helping novices make cool movies with no hassle) and offered an import tool to smooth the transition.
The upcoming Mac OS X “Snow Leopard” release, which will drop PowerPC support but take up less space and perform better. Unlike the last two OS X releases (which were at least announced in a Stevenote), Snow Leopard is being handled very stealthily. As such Apple can likely get away with making disruptive changes, because the only people who know about it will be able to make an informed decision about opting in, and no one else will be expecting an upgrade so soon anyway.
The new ‘Labs’ features/plugins for Gmail, which Google (a) requires you to opt into and (b) tells you up front may or may not still be there tomorrow.
THE POINT: You can (and sometimes must) take features away if they’re just not adding enough value to justify their existence. And you can get away with doing so if you can either offer customers some value in return (i.e., a superior iMovie experience for 85% of users) or can at least engage them in a conversation about how to deal with the change.
Christopher J
on 01 Jul 08...They didn’t give anyone any warning…
Quick note on that comment… Netflix was giving it’s customer base a roughly 3.5 month warning. The feature wasn’t scheduled to go away until September.
xxx
on 01 Jul 08David, did you never heard the phrase “vocal minority”? They probably restored the feature not because too many customers wanted it back, but because a tiny fraction of them was annoyed and extremely vocal and so this thing turned into PR disaster.
Kendall
on 01 Jul 08You make the same mistake the Netflix people did, by thinking ONLY of the size in percentage of people that use a given feature.
But what happens when that group of people are also your most ardent supporters and biggest product evangelists? Then removing a feature might only affect 2% of your users – but have a huge and disproportionate negative affect on sales because just as truly loyal and excited users are a boon to sales and marketshare, so too are the same users just as able to convince many people not to use the service offered, beyond the apparently small numbers involved.
So the lesson here is not that EVERY feature introduced is something you are wedded to. Rather, it is – understand your user base and the features they use. Understand who your most ardent supporters are and make sure to reward, not punish, them.
Jessica
on 01 Jul 08I hate to pick on Livejournal, but Netflix isn’t the only one who has made the poor customer relations move of pulling a feature without doing market research about whether this will piss off existing customers. Livejournal recently without advance notice, discontinued offering free (no advertising) account levels on new accounts “because it was confusing”. It reeked of “we want to make more money from selling advertising” and lacking market research to see if this would affect existing customers negatively. Needless to say, within a week they’d had so many complaints from existing users over not being consulted nor informed in advance of this feature removal, and suggstions about better ways they could have solved the underlying problem cited (it being confusing) and the feature was quickly added back.
“It was too confusing, so we took it out” seems to be a smoke-screen companies hide behind when it appears there might be ulterior reasons behind the change, primarily profit. For example, discontinuing profiles could cause a revenue increase by forcing family members to open up multiple accounts (at higher cost) if they want to maintain existing features such as per-family-member movie ratings and recommendations.
If the problem is its really the confusing poor implemetnation, why don’t you fix the implementation rather than throwing out the baby with the bath-water by removing the feature entirely?
For netflix they could fix the login system so you have an option not to re-enter passwords to switch back and forth between profiles. They could revamp the “create additional profile” page to be more intuitive. They could fix some of the poorly implemented aspects of profiles, like having and option to send the “your movie has shipped” emails to go to the profile owner rather than the account owner.
Jessica
on 01 Jul 08PS. For the record, I too was one of those people who was upset about Netflix’s decision to discontinue the feature, but who had not vocalized it publically. I don’t believe this was a vocal minority issue.
Casey Glass
on 01 Jul 08I’ve never used Netflix (they aren’t in Australia) but I have used a similar service that operates in Australia. I found the ability to have separate ques really handy! Maybe it wasn’t that it was a bad feature, but that it was badly implemented? From one persons response here it seems that you had to log in and out to look at separate ques on Netflix? That seems like a massive hassle. Multiple ques within the one account seems like a better way to do it.
DP
on 01 Jul 08This is completely untrue.
All it would take is a small button at the top that says, “Turn off Profiles”. I click it, it’s gone, and not confusing. For future users, don’t turn it on by default. Then it’s not confusing for them.
Done. You are way overreacting.
You may be married to the feature, but your users don’t have to be engaged.
dustin
on 01 Jul 08As a Netflix customer of over seven years, I can tell you that this is one of the few situations where you could argue it was mishandled. That said, I actually think it’s an excellent example of their customer service. They gave 3.5 months of notice and after a few days of actually listening to the customer, reversed course and made a lot of customers happy again. I agree with some of the comments that the lesson here is not about being careful of new features… I disagree that you can’t remove features too. Case in point: “Clippy must die!” Microsoft had no real problem convincing anyone to let the animated paper clip go. And sometimes new features can be just as traumatic as removing old ones… “ribbon” menu bars for instance.
It’s really all about getting the features right and what’s right can change with time as needs evolve. And the only way to know the needs of your customers is to ask. The lesson for Netflix and the rest of us is to listen to our customers and ask before doing.
If you’re apps are not evolving over time, you’re dead on the water. Isn’t that basically the 37signals mantra / business model – the argument that desktop software is bloated because you have to sell new features? I would have expected SVN to champion the cause of feature removal.
And as a company that has patterned itself after Apple, consider their own example of replacing the most popular iPod ever with an entirely new version. Apple routinely removes features with product updates. Are they better off for it? I think so, but what do I know? I’m just a customer.
Anonymous Coward
on 01 Jul 08Please show the proof that backs this statement up.
Kendall
on 01 Jul 08I totally second the notion put forth by a few users here that queues are an idea a lot of people would like to use, and that there is much room for improvement in the interface offered.
If you are getting movies for a house with more than one person, you NEED queues even if you do not know it yet. Even if you are single, there are compelling uses for the queue (like having one slot automatically devoted to getting discs from TV series as opposed to movies).
But even more than usability, I think if there has not been a greater uptake in queue use it’s more an issue of marketing than usability. My wife, very non-technical, has no issue understanding and using queues as they are today. More people need to be made aware of the existence and usefulness of this feature, and that’s where marketing steps in.
Chris
on 01 Jul 08This lesson seems uncharacteristic for Signal vs. Noise.
The tyranny of feature creep is what has driven Microsoft into a position where it can’t rewrite Windows from scratch.
If there’s a compelling reason to remove the feature in order to make your product better—i.e. to improve performance or ease-of-use, that may outweigh the disappointment or grumbling of some long-time users. (Even “important” ones.)
Responding to every complaint about a missing feature is like responding to every request for a new one.
Remove the feature thoughtfully, communicate the change with some notice, and accept that you may lose some customers for whom a non-core feature is a dealbreaker.
Anonymous Coward
on 01 Jul 08All it would take is a small button at the top that says, “Turn off Profiles”. I click it, it’s gone, and not confusing.
This is typical myopic thinking. “All it would take” in a vacuum maybe. What precedent is this setting? Everything in the future needs “a small button at the top” to turn it on or off? What about the 100 other features? Are those on/off too? It would only take a little button, right?
Mike M
on 02 Jul 08@DP You’re suggesting the classic solution for these kinds of cases: Just add a preference control so the user can decide! In this particular case, that might make sense, but realize that doing so has its own cost, as other have described.
J Lane
on 02 Jul 08@Chris
That’s a really interesting point. Shouldn’t opinionated software be able to bounce both ways: deciding what features to put in, but also being able to make the decision about pulling them out.
Let’s say hypothetically that Writeboard integration into Basecamp is a huge PITA. Every time anything changes in Basecamp, the “Writeboard bits” have to be touched. You look at the numbers and determine that only 1% of people use Writeboards in Basecamp. Do you keep it? Do you axe it?
Jesse Wilson
on 02 Jul 08The point that Ryan and ML have made is certainly a valid one from a general standpoint. The example wasn’t great because it was a decently well implemented feature that a large number of members made use of. Granted the code that drove the profiles feature may have been a mangled pile of nonsense, thus hard to maintain.
I would certainly agree that it was a vocal minority who caused the reversal, simply from comparing the various post counts and petition signatures from across the Internet to that of Netflix’s subscriber-base. Even combined the former is barely a quarter of the latter. I do, however, doubt that the feature was confusing to more people than it was useful. The requirement to login to the various profiles was annoying, but in no way detrimental to experience as a whole. Keeping in mind that one only had to relogin when attempting to switch to the primary account from one of the profiles, which makes perfect sense if you view profiles as potentially restricted sub-accounts.
I would say Netflix handled the situation suitably well save for two niggles. First, they were offering no replacement for the profile service “at this time”. Secondly, they were offering no meaningul way to retain valued data that users of the service had created (ratings, suggestions, friends, etc). All the time users had invested into building their Netflix persona was going to vanish.
Kendall
on 02 Jul 08Chris – another problem here is there is a distinction that is being ignored between simple features, and core philosophy of service or program.
Removal of Clippy removed a feature. But removing queues removed a pillar of product definition more than just a simple feature. It literally changed the meaning of what Netflix was.
Indeed there are times when a program or service developer might want to move in new directions, and willingly sacrifice some grumbling users to move in a new and better direction. But Netflix chose to simply remove a key underpinning that made the service so valuable to many – and while software can get by dropping a few core users every release, it simply will not survive long if it clearcuts and burns 100% of the most supportive users. In addition Netflix had no vision for what would replace this aspect of the service, so it didn’t do anything in terms of changing direction so much as destroy part of the definition of the service with no benefit (to the consumer) that the consumer could see. Even the Netflix email talked abot how it would improve the website not having to support it, but gave no specifics at all.
If you offer an alternative you can get a lot of loyal users to go along with change as often they are willing to take the same journey you are in development. But not only did Netflix not offer an alternative, if didn’t even offer a simple migration plan to at least hold personal losses from the loss of a queue worth of carefully chosen movies and ratings.
Alderete
on 02 Jul 08Netflix did two things wrong, and one thing right.
The first thing they did wrong was make the decision to remove the feature based on engineering issues. (In a separate article, a Netflix engineering person admitted that Profiles were poorly implemented, internally, and causing drag on adding new features, etc.) Making the decision to remove a feature that some customers are using for purely engineering reasons is almost always going to “smell” to the customers you try to spin the decision to.
In the case of Netflix Profiles, it is pretty easy even for a UI neophyte to figure out how to improve the interface to the feature, which isn’t that hard to use until you want to re-allocate who gets how many discs. So it was pretty easy for us to be able to tell that the reason publicly expressed was baloney.
The second thing they did wrong was offer no transition assistance. If they had said we’re going to merge your queues together, expand the maximum queue size to allow all of your items to fit, and offer you other ways to manage the transition, those of us affected by the loss of the feature wouldn’t have reacted so strongly.
As another person wrote above, Yahoo! Photos did a great job of this, providing excellent transition services. That’s the lesson to take from this particular incident: transitions matter. If you, like Netflix, tell your customers that you’re going to destroy the location they’ve stored half, or more, of their data, and suggest they print it out if they want to keep it, you are stupid if you think your customers are going to react well. If, on the other hand, you offer several reasonable transition strategies, including good instructions for implementing them, as Yahoo! Photos did, your customers may not be happy, but they will not be pissed in the way Netflix Profile users were.
The thing that Netflix did right was listen, and react positively. They realized that (a) they had handled things poorly, and were going to have to suck it up (on the engineering side) to pay for their mistake, and more importantly, (b) they realized that while maybe a small percentage of folks use this feature, it’s absolutely critical to the usage of Netflix for the people who use it.
Anonymous Coward
on 02 Jul 08they realized that while maybe a small percentage of folks use this feature, it’s absolutely critical to the usage of Netflix for the people who use it.
Alderete, you almost wrote a perfect comment until you labeled a feature on a DVD rental site absolutely critical. Anyone who considers a feature on a site where you rent DVDs for your entertainment to be critical needs to step back, sit down in a comfy chair, and grab a glass of wine. Relax.
one word
on 02 Jul 08iMovie 08
John
on 02 Jul 08The real lesson from the Netflix Profiles debacle is this:
“Understand your true killer features and competitive differentiators.”
Profiles is a killer feature for Netflix. Their massive selection, recommendation engine, and social networking features are really hard to use if you have more than one person adding to the queue or rating movies.
When they added profiles, they did it because it was neat and an engineer was able to throw it together and into production with a minimum of R&D. The throwing it together part really bit them in the ass, but the worse mistake was not recognizing -somewhere, anywhere, in the short move from dev to prod-that it was a kick-ass feature that no one else had.
That it was “confusing” or “hard to use” or “only a small percentage used it” (because it was hidden in the user prefs you usually don’t have to touch and never marketed) is a tribute to their failure to recognize the value of this feature.
I can only hope Netflix management has been awakened to this fact and we can look forward to some significant re-engineering of Profiles.
Matthew Brown
on 02 Jul 08AC: I think it’s pretty damn obvious that Alderete meant absolutely critical purely in the context of their use of DVD-rental sites and their preference for Netflix over its competitors, not in the sense that it would be critical for their lives as a whole.
Brian
on 02 Jul 08“Profiles is a killer feature for Netflix. Their massive selection, recommendation engine, and social networking features are really hard to use if you have more than one person adding to the queue or rating movies.”
Bingo! My sentiment exactly. When I read the email stating how “confusing” it is to people, my reaction was…. huh? Profiles actually gave me a way to have an opinion on Netflix (my wife is a rating machine). Removing it would have been bone-headed.
I would assume that what’s “confusing” is that it would be a PITA if you are sharing a single computer and have to log in/out a lot. But the same applies to things like GMail, not sure how that’s “confusing.”
Kendall
on 02 Jul 08With iMovie 08, you had multiple transition plans:
1) Simply keep using iMovie 06, which anyone could download 2) Bite the bullet and transfer to iMovie 08 3) Migrate to Final Cut Express
iMovie was simply starting to overlap too much with FCE as features got added, and needed to become simpler again for the beginning user. I really liked iMovie 08, and it really got overly negative reviews by people that did not understand the depth of what was there.
Kaleberg
on 02 Jul 08Your primary point is that if you add a feature, your users may grow to rely on it, and get upset if you remove it. This is a very valid concern. On the other hand, it cannot be an excuse for never adding features. Granted, there is a problem. You can never predict which features your users will grow to use and love.
The classic example was Betamax vs VHS. VHS won because you could fit an extra half hour of video on a cassette. Who could have predicted that would be the critical feature? Sony was betting on image quality. If the VHS team had dropped support for two hour tapes, we might have all stayed with Betamax.
Netflix added support for multiple profiles for a given account. I’d be surprised if more than 5% of their users ever bothered with this. It’s like Apple’s fast user switching. How many people even have it enabled? I use it two or three times a year, but I’ll bet that there are people who need to keep their various accounts isolated, and they cannot imagine using their computers without the ability to switch from one user to another conveniently.
When I developed software, I was often amazed at the features that people found indispensable. I probably use the audio output feature on my computer for an hour a year, and I could do just fine without it, but some people can’t imagine not being able to play music, listen to advertising or hear clever little sounds to punctuate their interactions.
Did Netflix make a mistake adding their profile feature? Look at all the trouble it caused them when they tried to remove it. It was almost as dumb as signing up the original Star Trek for that first season. I remember all the flak when they first cancelled the series. Imagine, a television show with fanatical fans! How can one run a network with that kind of nonsense.
I think Netflix made the right decision adding the feature. Netflix, like Amazon, tries to stock everything. Most people are just interested in the blockbusters and something to keep the kids quiet. The kind of people who swear by Netflix are the serious movie fanatics. They are the company’s bread and butter. They are also the kind of people who create 22 profiles including one for the family dog. Whenever Netflix decides to upsell, these are their early adopters. Whenever someone is disappointed by their local video store, they are the Netflix advocates.
It doesn’t make any sense to tick them off lightly.
David Andersen
on 02 Jul 08@xxx and others citing the so-called ‘vocal minority’ -
I’m far more willing to wager that the ‘vocal minority’ was only the tip of the iceberg of like opinion than it was an outlier of the subscriber base.
As any student of customer behavior knows, many people who are dissatisfied with a company’s action don’t often go to the effort of formally complaining about it. That so many did in this case more than likely means that many, many more were also disappointed.
And, if I were trying to run a successful business, that’s the assumption I’d start with, because it’s obviously the more conservative position. I, for one, am not in the business of making assumptions that risk losing good customers.
Steffen
on 02 Jul 08That’s THE reason why big rewrites of already good* software can give you a hard time, because every little thing that your software can do is a feature that the client will miss as soon as it’s gone.
*) for the user, not for the developer
Jack
on 02 Jul 08Not that i disagree but is this an execuse for 37singals not adding the feature that their customers is asking for.
Andy Kant
on 02 Jul 08I wouldn’t exactly say that you’re “married to the features you add.” Just look at what Microsoft did with Office 2007 – it may have took years of research, but they turned an extremely clustered and confusing app into arguably the easiest to use UI out there.
Technically, they may not have really removed features, but they did a great job in hiding the minor features and moving the more frequently used features into the spotlight.
Maxime Brusse
on 02 Jul 08Why not have a “features” section in the settings, that let’s you toggle features on and off ? The only place I have seen this is in basecamp, regarding the chat section. I wish I could choose this when for every feature I set up a project.
Let’s say I need only the messages and the milestones section for this project : one screen, a few checkboxes, and a lot less confused clients that don’t understand what the “writeboards” and “to-do’s” are. They only see what they need to see. This could be applied for any type of (web)application.
Features, Screen Real Estate and Plugins
on 02 Jul 08The plugin paradigm is a good way to deal with features which will never go away and use precious screen space. Define an area used for features which are not part of the core functionality – those are optional “plugin” features. Users can enable them or disable them according to their taste. This way you can manage clutter while allowing each user to choose how much clutter she sees and what it contains.
website design
on 02 Jul 08google’s search page has the “I’m feeling lucky” button for the same reason. they said almost nobody uses it (1%), but people feel robbed without it.
john
on 02 Jul 08“The tyranny of feature creep is what has driven Microsoft into a position where it can’t rewrite Windows from scratch.”
HAHAHAHAHAH
Because Apple certainly wrote their OS from scratch ;)
Lee
on 02 Jul 08They have had the “Profiles” feature for many years now (4 years at least), so it is not very accurate to say “A while back Netflix added a “Profiles” feature”.
Hasan Luongo
on 02 Jul 08web 2 darling twitter removed a key feature of the service a few weeks back (replys), and just added it back a few days ago. Loosing this feature pissed a lot of people off, and added to the constant frustration with the company and their feeble infrastructure. for lots of users this was a last straw and are heading over to friendfeed in droves. unlike netflix profiles this was a core feature, and it remains to be seen how it will effect the companies blistering growth.
Dan
on 02 Jul 08@Jessica LiveJournal has not brought the Basic (free accounts) back. While previous Basic account users may keep theirs new users cannot choose Basic.
Bob
on 03 Jul 08Every customer claims to be an “evangelist” who’ll bring in millions of dolalrs worth of business as long as you do whatever they demand when they demand it.
In reality, most of them have already told their friends and family, and thus their howls of outrage when a new feature gets removed is the only actual “evangelising” they’re ever going to do.
But they’re still sure they’re entitled to everything they want no matter how irritating it is for the other 98% of the users – cos they’re evangelists, really, they are.
eas
on 03 Jul 08Interestingly Facebook has been removing features over the past few months. There has been some complaint, but not a big enough outcry for any of the commenters here to think to mention it. The social timeline is gone, and they are in the process of eliminating overview pages for networks (though newer features may be a reasonable substitute).
Whitdawg
on 03 Jul 08Ha ! Another victory for the masses …
Great post, made me smile !
AdamK
on 04 Jul 08To paraphrase Guy Kawasaki, “Oh my god the wrong users are buying our software in large quantities!”
Jens Schumacher
on 05 Jul 08Features may be a one way street, but that doesn’t mean that there is not intersection along the road where you can change the direction of the feature.
As David Andersen stated above, you can always enhance the feature, even change it completely, as long as you provide a migration path. Improve the functionality rather then pull the feature. After all there is hopefully a good reason why the feature was implemented in the first place.
Shane
on 07 Jul 08this is simple human nature: you can always give but you can’t take away. Be careful what you give. Its the same as you can always raise a standard or raise the bar….but try to lower it…...
Edgar Verona
on 07 Jul 08It seems to me like you could have your cake and eat it too in this scenario. For instance, if users had the ability to choose between an “advanced” and “basic” interface (and always received basic by default), you could avoid the problem of confusing the users who just want the simple features of the program, while allowing the potential for a more confusing (yet more feature heavy) interface for advanced users.
Those basic users wouldn’t even have to see those advanced features in the interface. Like two different views on the same model.
I don’t know if this helps… but discarding potentially useful features because it could bloat the interface seems like something that can be resolved with forethought and segregation between the types of users you expect to have on the system. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?
This discussion is closed.