This link has been bookmarked by 18 people . It was first bookmarked on 24 May 2007, by Jeremy Price.
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28 Jan 08
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You might think, then, that companies could avoid feature creep by just paying attention to what customers really want. But that’s where the trouble begins, because although consumers find overloaded gadgets unmanageable, they also find them attractive. It turns out that when we look at a new product in a store we tend to think that the more features there are, the better. It’s only once we get the product home and try to use it that we realize the virtues of simplicity. A recent study by a trio of marketing academics—Debora Viana Thompson, Rebecca W. Hamilton, and Roland T. Rust—found that when consumers were given a choice of three models, of varying complexity, of a digital device, more than sixty per cent chose the one with the most features. Then, when the subjects were given the chance to customize their product, choosing from twenty-five features, they behaved like kids in a candy store. (Twenty features was the average.) But, when they were asked to use the digital device, so-called “feature fatigue” set in. They became frustrated with the plethora of options they had created, and ended up happier with a simpler product.
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18 Jun 07
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11 Jun 07
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10 Jun 07
justin hardmanThe fact that buyers want bells and whistles but users want something clear and simple creates a peculiar problem for companies. A product that doesn’t have enough features may fail to catch our eye in the store. (A cell phone that doesn’t offer a Blu
Usability design simplicity marketing product technology features
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08 Jun 07
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01 Jun 07
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found that at least half of returned products have nothing wrong with them. Consumers just couldn’t figure out how to use them.
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although consumers find overloaded gadgets unmanageable, they also find them attractive
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In theory, the best strategy would be to make the complex simple, packaging all the power and the options consumers think they want into a design that they’ll find easy to use.
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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.
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29 May 07
David Burnsteinmoney quote: "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."
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It seems odd that we don’t anticipate feature fatigue and thus avoid it. But, as numerous studies have shown, people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As a result, we will pay more for more features because we systematically overestimate how often we’ll use them. We also overestimate our ability to figure out how a complicated product works. ... The fact that buyers want bells and whistles but users want something clear and simple creates a peculiar problem for companies. A product that doesn’t have enough features may fail to catch our eye in the store. (A cell phone that doesn’t offer a Bluetooth connection, for instance, may be dismissed as underpowered, even though relatively few Americans use Bluetooth headsets.) But a product with too many features is likely to annoy consumers and generate bad word of mouth.
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It seems odd that we don’t anticipate feature fatigue and thus avoid it. But, as numerous studies have shown, people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As a result, we will pay more for more features because we systematically overestimate how often we’ll use them. We also overestimate our ability to figure out how a complicated product works. ... The fact that buyers want bells and whistles but users want something clear and simple creates a peculiar problem for companies. A product that doesn’t have enough features may fail to catch our eye in the store. (A cell phone that doesn’t offer a Bluetooth connection, for instance, may be dismissed as underpowered, even though relatively few Americans use Bluetooth headsets.) But a product with too many features is likely to annoy consumers and generate bad word of mouth.
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28 May 07
webmink"a recent study ... found that at least half of returned products have nothing wrong with them. ... Americans who returned a product that was too complicated for them had spent, on average, just twenty minutes with it before giving up."
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Andre MalheiroYou might think, then, that companies could avoid feature creep by just paying attention to what customers really want. But that’s where the trouble begins, because although consumers find overloaded gadgets unmanageable, they also find them attractive.
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25 May 07
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24 May 07
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23 May 07
Jonathan Key"As numerous studies have shown, people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As a result, we will pay more for more features because we systematically overestimate how often we’ll use them." James Surowiecki.
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