Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Chapter 27 Avoiding Features

Product design is a never-ending race. To avoid being overtaken by competitors, you need to keep running and running—or, in our case, designing and designing. But this race has no clear finish line; your product is never really “done.” At most, it simply becomes a bit less unfinished with each new release. This is the best we can hope for.

Like a species of shark that needs to keep moving in order to supply its gills with oxygenated water, if your product remains stagnant for too long, it dies. This is a problem, because it means you must constantly add new things. As a result, most products are forever acquiring ...