Why so many features?
I continue from Wendy’s earlier post… I share the same interest in consumer behaviour.
There is a clear gap between what is offered to consumers and what they actually do with their products. I am sure 90% of the product developers know about this. At the same time, more features are developed. Why?
Mobile devices get to the market only after a complicated process with dozens of stakeholders. All these stakeholders have a say on what the product should be like. Without going into details, it is clear that marketing, product marketing, R&D (including software, hardware, mechanics, etc), industrial design, distributors, retail channel reps, and - media! - have lots to say.
In many techie magazines, products with less features do not get the praise. Sales people in shops are interested in technology as such, so they get excited about features, acronyms, etc. Manufacturers *have* to produce products that get media attention and make retailers excited. Also some (or most?) R&D people are more motivated when they get something new and preferably complicated to do. Simple products are not sexy as they are too easy to grasp.
Maybe I exaggerate a bit here, but basically, features are sexy to many stakeholders in the product development and marketing processes. Users are not the decision-makers…
> Simple products are not sexy as they are too easy to grasp
Really?
Tell it to my wife, who is unable to find a single female-oriented nice looking clam-shell device in the Nokia portfolio. And I agree with her - Nokia has nothing to compete with Samsung’s pretty clamshells (rather mediocre from the technical side).
Motorola Razrs would never earn a penny if technical features mattered.
There definitely is a market for the best-of-breed devices, but there are a lot of other niches, that manufacturer might be unable to focus on if he’s too busy with e.g. expensive high resolution video cameras. Actually Nokia knows it, its Nokia 1100 is a huge success in India with a set of India-specific features (including price) and nothing more. Heh, unfortunately, pretty clam-shells can’t get this much attention
Extra features cost extra money. For example, take the nice video clips editor in the latest devices. Great feature, but how much does it cost? Would the teenagers prefer the discount? Or PSP games support? I don’t know. Do you know, Riitta?
P.S.
It is not to discuss concrete features, costs, etc. It is to illustrate that some people might not like to pay a lot of money for the functions that are not using while their favourite features are not explored fully, because of the lack of focus.
> Great feature, but how much does it cost?
Software features, as any other information goods, are costly to produce but cheap to reproduce. To simplify, the cost of adding a feature, after R&D costs, is only the cost of memory = not much.
Even though different people have different needs and wants, it is sometimes easier and cheaper to bundle everything in the same software package.
Example of a simple device doing well is not hard, just look at the iPod.
The issue, as you quite rightly said, is all the stakeholders.
Who are the stakeholders in iPod? Apple thats who (Notice I dont mention ITMS because that has other stakeholders and its clear the influence they have)
The real issue here is the largest stakeholder (perhaps other than the manufacturer) is also the largest buyer. Namly the operators.
Ask yourself who has more clout with Nokia, consumers or operators?
We live in a strange world where the market is not driven by consumers per se but the middle men who resell the hardware.
Are you sure you are in the right team? If you are looking to optimize something more simple of which you think users really want then you should consider changing to the very entry level phones of the Nokia line. The functionality of those might be closer to what you think is necessary. You don’t need S60 for simple stuff you can easily do that with cheaper hard and software. For me, S60 is the OS of choice for users who want to use a smart phone for a variety of applications and not just a “mobile phone” to make phone calls. I am quite irritated by your posts…
As a very egoistic user (as well as most of the users) I want only the 5% of features that interest me to be perfect. The goal of all these comments is in fact to propagand my own point of view and to find enough supporters to influence Nokia
What I personally want to do with the Nokia phone is to be able to easily run the third party apps (that should be easy to create) and to get rid of the damned S60 slowness. Until these requirements are satisfied I am going to be the unhappy customer (even though I know no better phones). Unfortunately the things that interest me go the wrong way nowadays: S60 is becoming slower and slower and 3rd edition phones can run no (NO!) 2nd edition apps
Thank you all for your comments.
Martin, my point was to explain why there are more features in digital products than users think they need, not to say that S60 does something wrong in its approach to provide users with a wide selection of features. I am personally happy to notice that my N70 surprises me positively with its features and in usability issues.
Note also that we do not work in Nokia or in any other S60 device manufacturer but are User Experience specialists from an external company.
An interesting question is whether UE specialists should have “opinions” on the feature sets. We in Idean Research work also in such projects where our role includes understanding the user needs more widely, not “only” implementing usability in a given set of products (which of course is valuable as such). Maybe this notion helps you to understand us better
“You don’t need S60 for simple stuff you can easily do that with cheaper hard and software.”
That is the point of these discussions…inexperienced users may not need S60 but they are buying S60. As a user experience specialist I want to know if these users are happy with their devices, do they want to know more, how do they use the devices, when do they use them, will they buy an S60 again etc? The point is to understand not only the expereinced users who take advantage and enjoy all that S60 has to offer but to also take the time to understand those other users!
Good points Martin & Wendy.
I just bought a N70 for my wife. Not because it is S60. Not because it is a pocket-sized computer. Not because has got all those nice features. But because it looks nice, has got large screen, good camera and it works with our Mac.