Re: Draining the Swamp: A Technical User's Experience

[linas linas org (Linas Vepstas)]

On Wed, May 08, 2002 at 01:17:24AM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak was heard to remark:
> On 07May2002 04:39PM (-0500), Linas Vepstas wrote:
> > 
> > The "MacIntosh" solution is "make nothing configurable".  That makes
> > configuration real easy: you can't, and you don't. 
> 
> I think this is a parody of the Macintosh approach. My System

Sorry, yes it was.  Trying to make a point with a blunt object.

> > Unfortunately, this philosphy is contradicted by the common
> > knowledge of application developers: its the sum total of obscure,
> > rarely used features that make an application popular.  That is, if
> > you remove 1% of the features, you loose 10% of the users.  It
> > doesn't take much to loose all of your users.
> 
> I don't really buy the 1% ==> 10% mapping. 

I should be more careful, the actual numbers are not accurate, its a
'figure of speach'.  But there are semi-documented, semi-apocryphal 
stories of commercial software that 'cleaned up' interfaces by 
removing 'rarely used' features, only to discover, unhappily, that
most users depend on some 'rarely used' feature (although never the 
same feature, which is why they're 'rarely used').  

There's one case, I beleive, that is actually documented.  From memory,
it goes something like this: an app with, say, 100 features.  They put
it through usability testing, and determined that 80 features are
commonly used, and the remaining 20 are used by less than 1/2 of
one percent of thier customers, and so they removed them from the new
version.  They lost half thier customers.  During a post-mortem, they 
discovered that it was more like 2.5% of the customers used an
obscure feature; but it was a *different* set that used each obscure 
feature, and that's what added up. (ergo 20 * 2.5% = 50% of customers). 

The numbers aren't accurate, and I forget the product, but the above
is the general drift of the argument.  I think maybe even this was 
a story on slashdot, or one-off. 

It doesn't matter. Anyone who has ever been involved in a product
where features have been removed can attest to the pain and screaming 
coming from the sales force when they find they're loosing customers.


--linas


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