Feature creep
The Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers reading gave a lot of interesting perspectives on human behavior and its impact on product adoption. During my time at Stanford, especially after I started taking HCI classes, I began thinking about this idea of “feature creep” but didn’t know there was a term for it. Especially during needfinding processes I always thought about how we literally have everything we could possibly need, so creating new features will never be as good as improving features that are currently suboptimal.
Feature creep in product development
Feature creep and product development have conflicting goals. I would argue that product development is centered around the introduction of new features, whereas feature creep criticizes the addition of new unnecessary features. There is a delicate balance that PMs have to find.
The reading emphasizes that when we make products we need to identify the kind of change they are demanding for customers. In particular, it’s best to create products that minimize behavior change. Product adoption is inherently psychological, so we can’t just assume that people will want to adopt features/stay on new features just because they are cool.
Case study: Apple
Apple is always an interesting example where “feature creep” doesn’t actually seem to matter. This is because Apple has such an integrated ecosystem, strong brand loyalty, and its product releases still manage user expectations and maintain a high perceived value.
There are a number of criticisms of Apple that exactly match the readings narrative on feature creep and giving up existing features [1, 2], but there has been little real backlash
[1] https://www.macworld.com/article/701590/apple-breakfast-may-21-2022.html
Finding a balance
Apple, of course, is an extreme case, and it’s not really realistic to say that PMs should just try to replicate Apple. However, we can try to employ some similar tactics, like building brand loyalty, having strategic releasse of feature, and listening to customers/analyzing their behavior change.
The reading mentions how “while consumers may obtain highly desirable new features by buying an innovation, they often must give up some of the benefits of the incumbent product.” This feels like something product managers should hone in on: new features are often desirable, but how can we keep as many benefits of the original product as we can? Or, if the original feature was that good, is there really a high desire for a new feature or is it just a shiny new object? I think oftentimes reframing the way we think about new products and features will help us to make the most rational decisions. Ultimately, there’s no way to just point blank avoid feature creep, we just need to be flexible, willing to iterate, and accept criticism well.
