When does adding more features actually make a product worse?
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I keep running into this while building.
There’s always another feature that sounds useful on its own.
Another setting.
Another metric.
Another automation.
Another “smart” layer.
But at some point, the product starts asking the user to understand the system instead of the system understanding the user.
I’m starting to think one of the hardest product decisions is not what to build next, but what to deliberately leave out.
Especially with AI products, where it’s very easy to make something look more advanced without actually making it more useful.
How do you decide when a feature adds real value versus just more surface area?
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I make a small daily guessing game and my rule comes from the fact that the whole product is a 2 minute ritual. Any feature that makes the ritual longer has to earn it. The only addition that clearly worked for me was a themed week, because it changed the content, not the system. So my test is: does this change what the player sees today, or is it another thing they have to understand first?