Is that a Swiss Army Knife in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Oh, it’s a knife? OK then.

Title: Swiss Army Knives
Context: When you try and do everything, you rarely have time to do everything right.
Synopsis: Your project manager wants it all. Your marketing and sales teams want it all. And of course your customers certainly want it all! Or do they? What people really want is for the features that they use the most to work really, really well. If the core functions give them goosebumps then will they really care that any remaining marginal features are missing? Probably not. The problem we designers face is that very often we are asked to produce products that are far too complex because feature gluttony trumps rational scoping even when everyone intuitively knows that most of those features will almost never get used. Everybody screams about bloatware clogging up their lives, yet how often have we ruthlessly pruned features so that we can focus on what matters instead of trying to satisfy every last customer request? Successful products deliver quality and value in the core before carrying excellence to the periphery. Invariably, the products that fail try and take on the world in one fell swoop and deliver mediocrity across the board.
Best Bit: “When you’ve a wish-list full of features that ‘sound like a good idea’, simply ask Who’ll use it, and how often?”

via contrast.ie