More on usability or features

In my recent post, What’s more important? Usability or features?, I made the statement, “Give users hypothetical questions and they chose one answer. Give them a real choice and the decision isn’t as easy.” I wanted to clarify my point a little more.

I do believe that users/customers will always chose the feature over usability if given a real choice, but I don’t necessarily think they’re right to do so. Nor do I think they will be happy with their decision later on. So, it is our job, as designers, engineers, and developers, to give our users usability-whether they say they want it or not. Good usability will make the experience of using any new feature feel more rewarding.

We don’t have to sacrifice functionality for usability, but never let functionality exempt us from balancing functionality with good usability.