Kill a feature, “Fix” a feature

Dave McClure, of Startup Metrics for Pirates fame, often recommends the seemingly drastic step of killing features, just to see what happens. If users freak out, then that’s a valuable feature, put it back in. If not, well, you just made your product better, separating the chaff from the wheat.

Now most folk are going to be hesitant to take such a drastic step, and might be a hard sell to management or the rest of the team. Here’s an alternative I think might work:

Fix a Feature

What I mean by “fix” is that you take that feature and all of its buttons and inputs, as well as user flows, error messages and edge cases, and turn it into a sensible default.

• Profile picture? A link with their name is good enough.
• 20 different social networks to choose from? Add Facebook & Twitter, and be done.
• Multiple users per account? They can share 1 account.

Most times (and I know I do this a lot, being product-focused), we believe that customers won’t love us if we don’t build in 1,000 ways to customize the product. And each time we start down that road, we create a whole mess of wireframes, workflows, tests, and feedback that we need to work through.

When customers start to balk about needing more freedom — when they’re annoyed they can’t do something they really need to do — you’ve just validated a need, and learned something about how your customers work.