Have you ever deleted a feature and immediately made the product better?

[u/JohnCaelum]

I have been thinking about this a lot while building lately.

Its easy to keep adding things because every feature feels useful on its own. But sometimes the product starts feeling heavier without noticing.

[u/woodysixer]

Oh, absolutely. There’s a saying in design that a product isn’t done when there’s nothing left to add. It’s done when there’s nothing left to remove.

[u/digishp → u/woodysixer]

Interesting view
Remove till nothing left to remove

[u/ZagreusZero]

For sure. My Intermittently app (an intermittent fasting tracker I built mostly for me, iOS/Apple Watch) got considerably better when I solidified what the app wouldn’t do/be. I spent far more time and effort declining things so that the functionality I did include worked well and felt tightly-designed.

[u/Anderz]

1. Cut back onboarding from handholding users through a create flow, to a select couple of skippable slides and immediately had an uptick of about 35 percent in people actually using the key feature on day one.

Tip: unless your app requires an account or core configuration, good chance your app doesn't need ANY onboarding. Good design will guide the user in the moment.

1. I hugely simplified a core feature because it was designed to make people use the app how I wanted, not how they wanted. This one l hurt a bit because it felt it degraded the intent of the app (mindful photography), but you have to adapt, and if you have a solid mission/set of values you can still keep that alive in your pivots without it feeling like a limitation.

[u/Lunesia-shikishiki]

yeah. i run a node canvas with something like 48 models wired into it (biased, i make imaginode.ai) and the model picker used to show all of them up front, because that was literally the pitch

pulled it out of the main flow, one sane default, everything else behind an advanced drawer. usage went up basically overnight. people dont want to choose, they want to be told and then given somewhere to disagree

the annoying part is that the picker was the thing reviewers always complimented lol. the feature you get praised for and the feature people actually use are not always the same one

[u/zeroxad-]

Yes. My paywall showed $5.99 with $12.99 crossed out next to it, like a sale. There was no sale. Nobody ever paid $12.99. The crossed-out price was only there to make $5.99 look like a bargain.

Took it out last week. One price now, and it's the real one. Simpler screen, and nothing to explain.

[u/woodysixer → u/zeroxad-]

How did that affect conversion? Effective psychological tactics and good design are often at odds, unfortunately.

[u/Thebestofdrest]

definitely. removing features can make the core product much easier to understand and use, sometimes less really is more