I was contemplating feature fatigue the other day (See Gene Smith’s posting on this: http://tinyurl.com/ywrbum) while looking at images of a Swiss Army knife. Advertisements of the knives almost always have every blade expanded to show product capability. That’s good for sales. But in the long run it’s the fact that you can collapse them all that makes it value and usable to us. Most products don’t have that kind of balance, and instead stuggle between adding features for sales appeal versus long-term usability.

That said, as an interface designer I also feel that it should be possible to communicate information or present features in such a way that doesn’t overwhelm people. But that depends on the level of control given to the designer (often short-term business needs trump design decisions) as well as how the product is developed (“dripping” features in over years can make it hard to end up with a consistent, clean design).

Still, there’s a point when feature creep becomes ridiculous. Like the comedian Steven Wright says, “You can’t have everything–where would you put it?”

Reminds me of the old joke as to why it only took god six days to create the world….because he didn’t have an installed base to deal with….

What you outline in point #2 is a bit trickier. Taking away something that the consumer has gotten used to, even if it isn’t a critical component, opens you up to questions of why they even buy or use your product in the first place.

Your advice on how to mitigate this danger is very sound , though.

Obviously, it is always easier if the product manager has a clear product strategy to begin with. Then they know what features truly add value and can sell products at the best possible cost to the consumer, without having to do the risky job of removing benefits later on.