A Product's Impact Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Features

A Product’s Impact Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Features

There can be quite a gap between the intended effect of product features and the actual impact on their users.

I’ve recently had three experiences that drove the point home.

1. Gift card

In Canada, gift cards don’t expire, by law. This should benefit both givers and receivers.

Five years ago, I won a $25 card to a major mall in another city. Soon Covid hit, and I didn’t get a chance to visit the city again until last month. The card was declined at a mall store, but they couldn’t tell me why. A visit to Guest Services revealed that the money had run out. How come? Annual maintenance fees!

Card issuers might love making money on “maintenance” fees, but what about card holders? The typical gift card user journey probably doesn’t span 5 years, but it may well span months or a year. This is not the first time I’ve used a card that had fewer funds than it was supposed to.

2. WhatsApp Web

On the rare occasion I use WhatsApp, I use it on my phone. Yesterday, my “job to be done” was to write a long message, so I wanted to use a proper keyboard. I went to WhatsApp Web for the first time ever, expecting a bothersome setup process (where’s my password, two-factor authentication, all that joy). Instead, all it took was scanning a QR code from my phone’s app, and I was in. That was so surprising, I blurted out “That was easy!”

3. Document certification

I have government-issued documents from both the UK and Canada that I need to use in a third country. That requires the British and Canadian governments to issue apostilles, which attest to the documents’ authenticity. Both countries have the kind of website you’d expect for this service, but the systems diverge after check-out.

In the Canadian case, I mailed the documents, expecting to wait a while (government service, after all). After a few weeks of silence, the documents and the apostilles arrived in the mail.

In the British case, there was no silence. Instead, their system sent me many notifications. That was helpful — except at the beginning. Several notifications said, “If you have not sent your documents, please send them now. If you have sent your documents, please ignore this email reminder.” They made me progressively more nervous that the documents I’d sent overseas were lost.

In the product world, we talk a lot about achieving customer outcomes, understanding user journeys, and providing value. This is important, but perfect solutions are rare, not easy to produce, and sometimes not even feasible. Does your organization’s way of deconstructing them into features and processes lose something along the way?