Feature bloat - how much is too much?

Question

I'm a computer science student designing a project and I've started wondering what are good examples or software, or even hardware that are toeing the line between being feature rich with good usable features for regular users and being too intimidating for new users. Also could anyone recommend any good tips/books for designing good quality applications that are feature rich but not "bloated"?

Answer 1

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein

"Perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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I am not trying to be flippant but these quotes really are the best advice. Simplicity of design should be your goal. Not that achieving simplicity is easy! On the contrary, it is quite difficult but it is possible.

Try thinking about things a bit differently. Rather than

How many things can I add before this becomes bloated?

try

What are the fewest number of features and elements I can include while still providing a superior experience for my users?

Answer 2

Here's a good set of slides from a presentation on the topic: Rescue Princess 2.0.

The first order of business should just be keeping the application easy to use. Beyond that, all I can say is, beware of writing features for an imaginary user: make sure someone actually needs it before you start coding.

Answer 3

As a direct answer to your question: pretty much any Microsoft product. I'm showing my bias here, but Microsoft has a strong tendency to keep their codebase, and add features on top of features until the original functionality of the app is nearly lost beneath mounds of accreted crud.

Look at MS Word, for example; while you can still just open it up and start typing, god forbid if you want to renumber a section of your document while leaving the rest alone. Heaven forbid if you want to generate a Table of Contents that includes references to an Appendix. This sort of stuff is something that is de rigeur for Word Processors, and Word supports it, it just supports it in a way that you cannot get it done without a manual, several cups of coffee, and bandages to stop the bleeding from banging your head on the desk.

Microsoft isn't alone in doing this; this thing tends to happen all the time, with all sorts of products; but they are among the worst offenders, I've found.

Answer 4

1: What do your users need, and want, and

2: Which features will you have time to implement?

Your question is pretty general. Which features constitute bloat? That kind of depends on whether you're writing an antivirus scanner, an OS or a word processor.

Answer 5

There is no clear barrier between "good" and "too much". However, it depends on what you want to do.

If you're developing a SDK, I recommend splitting your implementation in several small libraries(rather than just one big SDL library, there is the SDL core, SDL_Mixer, SDL_Image, etc.)

If you're developing an application, keep a module-based system and a plug-in mechanism. That way, new features can be added more easily and bloat can be more easily detected.

You may get to a point where you'll add new features some will consider "great" and others "bloat". Otherwise, your application may reach a point that some will call it "feature-poor" and others will call it "just enough".

Answer 6

This isn't an exact quote, but the idea was something like this:

A piece of software is perfect not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.

In essence, the simpler and more to-the-point is a software, the better.

To get examples of good software design, take a look at programs that are popular today. Google applications would be a nice place to look. Skype perhaps. Heh, even StackOverflow. :)

If you want intimidating, go to the world of CAD. Check out for example Blender. That's a freeware 3D designer software. Good tool I'm told, but the UI has so many buttons/panels/menus/etc. that it makes baby bunnies cry. Unfortunately I cannot say if this would be a good example of a "bad" UI. 3D designing is a very complex process and all those tools are probably in the right place. But it's definately intimidating. :)

A bad UI design can often be found with propieritary software that comes with propieritary hardware. Unfortunately I cannot give you any examples from the top of my head.

Answer 7

I always tend to design my projects in a way that they're just skeletons which are as extensible as possible. Limiting factors are performance, complexity or Thirdparty-limitations.
This way you could add additional features after finishing the basic structure. A user could also add his needed features.

This probably does not work very good for GUI-applications which should have a good usability without much configuration, but I'm sticking good with this approach for those libs I develop. (They're used by other coders who like to have a highly modifable piece of software)

It's not very hard to develop an application/lib which is bloated with features. But it is to develop an app which could be easily extended by other developers/users to match their own needs.

Answer 8

Develop a wide-ranging plug-in system so you add and take out stuff at any time. Problem solved. If only that was as easy as writing spaghetti code. ;)