Product Managers Must Decide: Features or User Design
The bifurcation of markets into two extremes seems to be a common theme across many applications. Whether it is the right vs. left in journalism, the demand for data scientists, or the divide between discount vs. luxury retail; the stable state often settles at the extremes. When it comes to building software, the two extremes I have noticed are optimizing for feature development vs. optimizing for user design. If your product gets caught in the middle, you likely won’t make it.
Why can you only choose one?
The convergence to the extremes occurs because the two development goals have orthogonal paths. With the constraints inherent to project management (see below), there are limitations in developing a quality software product. A team can only prioritize a limited number of tasks in a given timeframe. These constraints, coupled with the your pricing and sales strategy, will force development to choose between the two extremes.
Let’s imagine an early-stage tech startup is deciding on the optimal development path for building a B2B project management software. They have 10 employees tasked with releasing the beta version of the software in 12 months time. One of the earliest decisions for this software product is choosing whether it will be a web app, mobile app, one of each, or both (i.e. desktop vs. phone). This one decision impacts the tech stack, thus having huge cascading effects. If you pursue only the web app, but want to incorporate several external software integrations, this will require a more complex engineering effort. This would reduce time available to optimize for user design. Alternatively, if you desire a web app and a native mobile IOS app, this typically requires two different front-end frameworks. Because the amount of front-end work is essentially doubled, this reduces time availability for adding features.
In a separate workstream, there are discussions on the optimal pricing and sales strategy. The complexity of the software product, often correlated with the number of features, has a direct impact on the optimal sales strategy. The more complex the product, the harder it will be to push a product-led growth strategy, which often emphasizes a self-service model for acquiring users. Complex software products typically require demos for customers, have higher pricing points, and might benefit from 3rd party deployment partners. Simpler products that optimize for user design over features have the option to pursue the product-led growth strategy because users will learn how to use the products quickly. While some of these decisions could potentially be delayed, the further you progress in the development journey, the more your decisions will push you towards the trade-off between feature development vs. user design.
Why does the market reward the extremes?
In Startup=Growth Paul Graham states, “If you have such an idea and don’t grow fast enough, competitors will. Growing too slowly is particularly dangerous in a business with network effects, which the best startups usually have to some degree.”
I believe the market for software products converges to the two extremes because of network effects and exponential growth. Optimizing for features or user design will lead to faster growth rates than settling for a combination of the two because growth is not linear.
The features optimized product will satisfy the requirements of a more diverse set of teams because it has more capabilities than competitors. While simple products might only work for a specific niche, complex products likely satisfy requirements across multiple department types or industries. Additionally, developing more features often requires reliance on external software integrations. The diversity of teams, in combination with the external software integrations will expose the product to a larger addressable market of potential customers. Each additional user becoming exposed to the product is free advertising feeding the growth loop.
The user design optimized product has several innate advantages. When combined with the self-service freemium model (i.e. product-led growth), simplicity will convert more potential customers because the product is easier to learn. Simplicity reduces friction in the user acquisition process. Within organizations that already use the product, intuitive products will benefit from increased user adoption. Users love products that are easy to use. With simplicity at the core, the pool of users will grow because it includes less technical users as well. Back when my tech-challenged parents were ready for their first smart phone, I immediately recommended the IPhone because Steven Jobs was obsessed with optimizing for user design.
When should you focus on features vs. user design?
The development strategy should remain flexible and preserve optionality wherever possible. When the time comes to choose a path, there are a number of factors that I would consider.
Talent
Which technologies are your employees most skilled in? If you want to build a native mobile app, it often requires using specific languages that certain folks specialize in. If you desire a web app with a limitless set of external integrations, then you likely need more full stack or backend engineers. The talent within your organization and/or the talent that you can afford might dictate your strategy.
Target Consumer
Who is your target consumer? Are you targeting the tech savvy millennial consumer or are your users technically challenged? If you are building a consumer-facing brand, then aesthetics and simplicity will matter more than it does for a B2B product.
Competition
Are you a first mover in this industry or are there already several direct and indirect competitors? Less competition gives you more options, while increased competition will push you to become the antithesis of the leader in order to achieve growth.
Sales and Pricing Strategy
How do you plan on acquiring and converting users? How much do you plan on charging users? A product-led growth strategy will be more challenging for more complex software products; however it is not out of the question. Hila Qu, former Director of Growth at Gitlab, delves into the tradeoffs between the two strategies in a recent article.
When does it not matter?
There is at least one key exception to this optimization theory — Microsoft. When Microsoft enters your industry, you can throw features and user design out the window. Just take a look at Teams vs. Slack. Slack is objectively the better software product in almost every possible way. However, none of that mattered because Microsoft Office/365 is so embedded in organizations that Teams became the budget-conscience choice for most organizations. Distribution power allows organizations to open up the playbook and choose their own development journey.
Conclusion
While there are some exceptions, I have noticed that the market tends to reward software products that are optimized for features or user design — not both. If growth is the primary objective, then identifying which path to optimize should be the priority. Aiming for both will only push user adoption to competitors who optimize correctly. After all, unicorns don’t exist for a reason.
~ The Data Generalist
Data Science Career Advisor
Sources: Featured image is by Austin Distel on Unsplash