Ask HN: How do you decide features set of your product?

2 points by pknerd 13y ago ↗ HN

I am working on a side project which is not something that is new or unique or out of the world. There are many similar apps available which are being downloaded but I still want to make one by believing that I will find my market anyway.

My question from experienced entrepreneurs/product designers, how do you initiate a process to define features of your product that you think could make you different from others? Is it adding MORE or reducing some features of existing competitor's product?

Thanks in Advance.

2 comments

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mindcrime 13y ago ↗

My advice: Read The Four Steps to the Epiphany or The Startup Owner's Manual. @sgblank talk about this in detail.

At the risk of sounding flippant, you can basically reduce it to "talk to customers". Note however, that @sgblank does NOT advocate collecting the union of all requested features and implement all of them! The idea is to identify the most requested features, or, to really be more specific, the features that somebody is willing to pay for.

The principle behind this is easy to understand, although the actual process of doing this isn't necessarily easy as it takes a lot of work to go out, find potential customers, interview them, etc.

catharsis 13y ago ↗

I'm not in a place to find the link, but 37signals has a very good article about this. Start right from the core function (for example if the competitor is photoshop, make paint). The only real issue I think of with this method is bloat of code and UI, but I still think this way lends itself better to a strong product.