How to think about product features
Features are not ends in themselves, but a means to an end.
You have two tools.
One is an ordinary hammer.
Nothing fancy, just a hammer.
The other is a beautifully carved wooden mallet.
Polished with great finishing. Made from fine wood.
Which of these tools would you use to hammer these nails?
Realistically, both can get the job done. And yet when it comes to product development, we sometimes choose the fancy wooden mallet over the ordinary hammer.
This happens when we think in terms of solutions, and not problems.
When a user has a problem that they don’t know how to solve, they don’t seek specific solutions. There is no explicit preference for one potential solution over another, for what they’re really after is just a solved problem. Going back to the hammer and nail analogy, a way to hammer those nails. The means don’t matter as long as the end is met.
What sometimes however is that in product development, we sometimes confuse means and ends. We think first about the means to be used — the features to be built for our app or website — instead of first thinking of what problem it’s looking to solve or what need it’s trying to meet.
Cue the waterfall of feature ideas.
Your roadmap becomes crowded. Idea after idea comes up as you start to think of all the thousands of different ways you could potentially hammer those nails. Perhaps a copper mallet? A steel mallet? What if the mallet was made out of gold?
This is not to say that it’s a waste to think about how features are designed. The means still matter, especially if thought is given to how well the means serve as a solution to whatever problem you’re trying to solve or need you’re trying to meet with your product’s features.
It’s only a waste when you think first about what to build without understand what problem you’re trying to solve or what need you’re trying to meet.
Without the nails (the problem or need), you could design anything to do anything, but you risk designing a fancy tool to then have the vast majority of your work wasted if you eventually find your problem to be hammering nails (a job that any run of the mill hammer could do).
With the nails, you can still run into the issue of overthinking the solution to your problem and end up focusing on aspects of your solution to that have nothing to do with the problem you’re trying to solve.
In short, if a small hammer can get the job done, use it.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, simple works, but only if you recognize that features are a means to an end, not ends in themselves.
