{"id":421,"date":"2007-08-26T20:47:21","date_gmt":"2007-08-27T03:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/421\/aza-raskin-on-feature-bloat-clutter"},"modified":"2014-09-27T20:57:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T01:57:09","slug":"aza-raskin-on-feature-bloat-clutter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/aza-raskin-on-feature-bloat-clutter\/421\/","title":{"rendered":"Aza Raskin on Feature Bloat &#038; Clutter"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"a296a24fa2fc69ef5487857f02f111e8\" data-index=\"9\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Single Post readerboard -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8207522353004717\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1144967431\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>In today&#8217;s post, Aza Raskin responds to a reader&#8217;s question regarding Featuritis, Feature Bloat, and Clutter.<\/p>\n<p>Be sure to read our other <a title=\"interviews with leaders series\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/leadership-interviews-innovation-thought-leaders\/\">interviews in our leadership series<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>One of the problems I observe frequently is that web sites with otherwise intelligent product managers and designers seem to have a cumulative UI habit tending toward clutter, user confusion and stress. In other words, each great new feature added to a site requires its own breathing room and consumes space; so other elements are rearranged and shrunken down to make room for the new tenant on the page or, in an even worse accommodation, a new tab or completely separate offshoot is created in the site navigation structure to accommodate the new feature. It seems to me that a much smarter approach would be to acknowledge the value of simplicity and focus and decide that something must be removed when a new something is added (kind of like some moms who tell their children each Christmas that they need to give away some of their toys to make room for the new ones) \u201d but how do you build a culture of continual reduction and focus rather than continual expansion and bloat in building an ever-evolving web UI?<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is a constant tension between making a website that is simple; a website that does a few things, and does them well; versus making a website that attempts to pander to the long tail of all things that Internet surfers want to do.\u00a0 The later is somewhat untenable and the former ignores user&#8217;s needs.\u00a0 As is always the case, the game is in finding the right balance.<\/p>\n<p>I agree with you that it is good to perform spring cleaning on your website.\u00a0 Otherwise, you end up with a conglomerate of cruft: A modern city built on top of the remains of an medieval city, built on top of the remains of a Roman city.<\/p>\n<p>There is another way of looking at the problem.\u00a0 Instead of just adding a new feature, you can attempt to figure out a unifying mechanism by which your new feature and older features can be unified.\u00a0 For instance, when working on designing the Humanized Reader, we spent a lot of time working on how to unify the archive feature and the filtering feature. Eventually, we came up with the solution by extending the &#8220;scroll down means go back in time&#8221; metaphor to actually load new content in the first case, and through a form of structured search in the second.<\/p>\n<p>I call it the &#8220;find the hammer that makes the most features look like nails&#8221; approach.<\/p>\n<p>How do you create a culture of continual reduction?\u00a0 That&#8217;s perhaps even harder. Besides having small teams as I mention above, I might recommend having everyone on the team do at least a week of front-line customer support and user testing. We do this at Humanized.\u00a0 Being in the trenches; dealing and working with customers; really reshapes the way you think about the effect of cluttered and kludgy interfaces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Other articles in the &#8220;Ask Aza Raskin&#8221; Series:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Aza Raskin\u00a0discusses the <a title=\"aza raskin infinite scroll\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/aza-raskin-on-google-search-results\/441\/\">infinite scroll<\/a>\u009d approach to Google search results.<\/li>\n<li>Aza Raskin\u00a0shares his thoughts on\u00a0<a title=\"aza raskin on feature bloat and featuritis\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/aza-raskin-on-feature-bloat-clutter\/421\/\">Feature Bloat<\/a>\u00a0(aka, Featuritis\u009d)<\/li>\n<li>Aza Raskin\u00a0describes the concept of\u00a0<a title=\"aza raskin quasimodal design\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/aza-raskin-on-quasimodal-design-the-atm\/420\/\">Quasimodal Design<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Aza Raskin\u00a0explains the role of\u00a0<a title=\"aza raskin error proofing\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/aza-raskin-on-poka-yoke-humane-interfaces\/419\/\">Poka Yoke in the User Experience<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today&#8217;s post, Aza Raskin responds to a reader&#8217;s question regarding Featuritis, Feature Bloat, and Clutter. Be sure to read our other interviews in our leadership series. One of the problems I observe frequently is that web sites with otherwise intelligent product managers and designers seem to have a cumulative UI habit tending toward clutter, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12327,"featured_media":10987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Software Feature Bloat and Interview with Aza Raskin<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" 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