The Features That Got Taken Out

Adding is easy and everybody writes about it. Removing is harder and nobody does, which is a shame, because what a product takes out says more about it than what it puts in.

A microphone button that did nothing

There was a beautiful animated mic on the website. Rings, a waveform, the lot. It responded to a press and then did absolutely nothing, because it was decoration. A control that reacts without acting is worse than no control, because somebody presses it and reasonably concludes the app is broken.

Several characters

The cast was larger. Some of them were not distinct enough to be worth choosing, which meant the choice itself became noise. A smaller cast where each one has a reason to exist is better than a longer list, even though the longer list looks more impressive on a marketing page.

A page of pinned scrolling

Three sections of the homepage used to hold the page still while things moved. Individually each was quite good. Back to back they meant several screens of scrolling where nothing new arrived, which is where people leave.

The rule I ended up with

If it is impressive to demonstrate and irritating to use, it goes. That has removed more work than it has kept, and the app is better for every one of them.