Feature creep and user experience

The "feature creep" is a tendency for product requirements to increase during development beyond those originally foreseen. The feature creep is often considered as the risk for schedule, but it is also a major problem for the user experience.

Many product designers often fall into the trap of feature creep by incorrectly assuming:

1. It is better to have more features than fewer features, because the user can always choose not to use extra features.
2. It is important to pay attention to all user scenarios, not just common scenarios.
3. It is important to satisfy all users, not only majority of users.
4. It is better to add one more "nice to have" features as long as the development resources are available.
5. Their contribution to the project will be measured by the number of features they added.

In order to avoid the feature creep, we need to have clear design principles, which encourage designers to create simpler and easier-to-use products, than feature-rich but hard-to-use products. Here are the design principles I always keep in my mind.

1. Many users will struggle if we present too many features. The most of users would appreciate smaller number of choices.
2. It is important to optimize the user interface for common user scenarios (even if we have to sacrifice less common scenarios).
3. It is important to optimize the user interface for majority of users (even if it means it becomes less optimal for some users).
4. Nice-to-have features can be added only if it does not add any complexity to common user scenarios.
5. Their contribution to the product will be measured by the total user experience - not by the number of features. It is their job to say "no" to non-critical features and make it absolutely sure that the product is very easy to use.