Features don't matter anymore, Welcome to the Age of User Experience Options

[Ruud]

Interesting look outside of the box.

The author argues that features are easily copied -- and therefore don't matter anymore. What does matter is the way we can use the "thing". How the features don't get in our face and the "thing" just lets us do what at the most basic level we want to do.

Among the examples: the iPod which doesn't sell on features at all.

Forget about the killer feature. Welcome to the age of the killer user-experience.

When technology achieves something desirable without being in your face, when it know how to integrate itself into you wishes and desires without distracting from them, that's when technology lives up to its potential.

Food for thought, especially when you look at web apps like Basecamp.

[AbleReach]

Link?

This sounds like something I'd like to read.

[bragadocchio]

Looks like it might be this one:

http://pfeifferreport.com/trends/trend_userexperience.html

[DCrx]

Customer Experience presents the same opportunities for mishchief as the word branding does. No two people have the same idea and hey, I can't seem to locate a test or much of a design methodology. Maybe it's what engageability evolved into. You can strip out functionality and call anything "simple." Only user feedback can tell you which few features are important. And three different applications can have the same technical function, but it can be implemented noticeable differently. This means, several features which work together can be percieved by users as one, simple, unit. Where the same functions, implemented badly, can create a different 'customer experience.'

Secondly, there is the programming community. The favorite objection to simplicity is to imagine -- and it really has no test data to back it I'm aware of -- that every user "wants" a different subset of features. It would be far better to refute various myths like this.

It all comes down to "how." What makes up customer experience, and how to you change this "something" to improve a customer experience? Usability has detractors, but it also has some kind of methodology. Also the basic user 'unit' is identified -- the task.

Nussbaum is already onto the Next Big Thing, Are You Sick of The Notion of "Experience? What Comes Next? Try The Notion of "Identity." Strangely enough, identity is one of the components I've argued is part of desirability. This explains the odd (to me) behavior of the "need state." What's happening is users are choosing one brand when out with friends, a different one at home. What these users are doing is using brands to design different identities for different situations.

And that is one insight more than you'll get from the engageability-customer experience-identity bandwagon. Branding has devolved so much that every graphic designer who can knock out a logo can get away with calling it branding. What we're headed for could be similar, "Oh, the UX guy is going to tell us what colors to make the interface."

This post has been edited by DCrx: May 29 2006, 06:47 AM

[Ruud]

Oops, sorry for omitting the link. Bill is right; that is the relevant link.

Maybe it's what engageability evolved into. You can strip out functionality and call anything "simple."

True - but I think this goes beyond that idea. It is almost a back to basics approach: identify the need and fulfill it.

[url=http://www.basecamphq.com[/url] is project communication - it identified a few basic things one always wants and needs to do, and gives you a tool to do it. No charts, no MS Project - but now among the world's most popular project tools.

The iPod sucks as a player -- unless your need is "I want to easily play music on the go, be able to jump to another song and that's it".

A fine example of feature-bloat, to me, is the otherwise excellent InfoSelect. My need: I need to store random snippets, notes, some ticklers. 8 versions later I have a built-in wordprocessor, calendar, email and NNTP client, 3 states to put the program in (ranging from Simple to Advanced). It can even run another program at a specified time.

EverNote on the other hand stores random pieces of info, notes, and let's you search for them with instant result feedback. Many people request the program to do also this or also that -- but is that really what they want? A note taker with also XYZ?

Almost every point-and-click digital camera has a manual mode. How many people use it? In my circle of family & friends I know several people who have specifically shopped for a simple cell phone with which you can make and receive telephone calls - dot.

Way I see it we all have different needs, even for the same program or website. Instead of Advanced Mode vs. Simple Mode (which always makes you feel you might miss out on something very good) and even instead of an Options or Preferences menu, we should have a Personalize entry. Make the app you want.

[cre8pc]

I'm finding that "how we use the thing" is as important as "how we react emotionally to the thing".

If we get confused using an application, that creates the potential for a variety of negative responses, reactions, and behaviors.

Something as seemingly simple as a form, like a sales lead form, are copied and basically reborn in the same form, or close version of it, somewhere else.

But, some form fields are laid out flush left. Some differentiate between required fields and non-required, and even set off non-required away from the required for better recognition. Some have logical, descriptive labels while others create questions due to their brevity. Some have buttons put in places where they create confusion.

Usabilitymeisters are saying, more and more, that the user experience is the goal. Functionality is closely related. Real close. If an error message is vague and not helpful, the user experience is already threatened, even if the error is fixed or the user spends a few moments fiddling with the form to make it work.

End user behavior is different depending on whether the error message not only told them what they did wrong, but offers a quick way to fix the problem with an example. Give them what they need, when they need it.

Create a desire (they didn't know they had until you created it).

It's not easy being a developer

[RonZ]

Is it just me, or does some form of this article appear every other year or so?