Features vs. User Experience

Technology marketing has long used the mantra of, "features and benefits" to sell products and applications to users.  Users start with requirement, features meet those requirements, which in turn provide measurable business benefits. 

Pretty simple.  The more features you can provide the more benefit to the customer. Products become bundled "suites,"  applications become "platforms" as more and more user requirements are addressed with more and more features.  Some vendors, like IBM and Microsoft even position themselves as the only software company you need ever deal with, having software or solutions for every possible thing you might ever do.

Users, however, aren't buying this.  Whether it is an application built internally, or a retail product such as the iPod, pundits are starting to discover that more is actually less.  Furthermore, this is NOT simply driven by "usability" but by "style" -- color, feel, emotional response of the user.

One of the most common areas of feedback we get from customers is the desire to do LESS:

• Does everyone have to see all that check-in and out stuff?
• Can we make it so that these people only see their own folder and nothing else?
• Can we allow designers to ONLY work with templates and page design when using the Workbench? 

It is an area Percussion has focused on aggressively in our product roadmap.  Enabling customers to create cohesive user experiences, not just simpler versions of the standard user interfaces.  More on that later.

For now, however, paying attention to what your users really want to do must remain paramount in your implementation decisions.  Users may ask for more and more capabilities, but often, understanding the job they are expected to do, and then offering them just the capabilities they need is a better way to listen to what they want.