The features while developing a product can be categorized into three buckets:
- Gamechanger - People will want to buy your product because of this feature.
- Showstopper - People won’t buy your product if you’re missing this feature, but adding it won’t generate demand.
- Distraction - This feature will make no measurable impact on adoption.
This can be explained as follows. If you are building a phone, it has to be able to call others. Otherwise people will never buy your product (since it wouldn’t be much of a phone). But having voice call feature won’t make everybody buy your phone, because other phones already have that. Here voice call feature is a showstopper.
But suppose if your phone can project videos on to a surface, a feature which is not there in many other phones, it could be a gamechanger, which excites many people. But some people will not even care about that (and they won’t buy your phone!).
Empirically, successful products have one to three game changing features, dozens of features that neutralize showstoppers, and very few features that are distractions.
But suppose if your phone can project videos on to a surface, a feature which is not there in many other phones, it could be a gamechanger, which excites many people. But some people will not even care about that (and they won’t buy your phone!).
Empirically, successful products have one to three game changing features, dozens of features that neutralize showstoppers, and very few features that are distractions.
Read more: How to build great products
