μblog: engineering from the trenches

It is important to know when to enough is enough while working on an engineering design. It is possible to keep delaying a project delivery because more and more features are added. Some may argue that adding features generally makes a product better, however, the extra features start to take away from the products over-all usability at a certain point. This is the problem of feature creep. See this nice review of the issue.

The authors of the above review make an excellent point when they point out that adding new features to an existing design often simply means putting more buttons on the front panel. They demonstrated this with a Samsung printer, however, we can see this with other ubiquitous technologies such as mobile phones. I really enjoy my Motorola Q, but my father would probably not use 95% of the features on the phone as they offer limited utility to him and require a high level of technical proficiency.

It could be a matter of adding another button on the front panel or another menu option, the result is that many products are becoming overwhelming for non-specialists. This post is not a rant, it is merely a reminder to myself that sometimes more is less. Sometimes it is better to have less features in a product and to avoid building a Christmas tree (unusable mess of wires) in the process. I guess that it could also be a reminder for the people who are trying to design the next Sony Walkman, Nokia Phone, iPod or any other gadget that will sell millions, It might be better to consolidate the user interface and offer less options rather than tacking on an another bullet point to the features list.

The image above (and below) could qualify as a Christmas tree type of circuit, but it is an ugly looking prototype where the second-generation features have been clobbered onto the first generation hardware to make sure that everything works properly.

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