

Ask HN: How do you decide features set of your product? - pknerd

I am working on a <i>side project</i> which is not something that is new or unique or out of the world. There are many similar apps available which are being downloaded but I still want to make one by believing that I will find my market anyway.<p>My question from experienced entrepreneurs/product designers, how do you initiate a process to define features of your product that you think could make you different from others? Is it adding MORE or reducing some features of existing competitor's product?<p>Thanks in Advance.
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mindcrime
My advice: Read _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ or _The Startup Owner's
Manual_. @sgblank talk about this in detail.

At the risk of sounding flippant, you can basically reduce it to "talk to
customers". _Note_ however, that @sgblank does NOT advocate collecting the
union of all requested features and implement all of them! The idea is to
identify the most requested features, or, to really be more specific, the
_features that somebody is willing to pay for_.

The principle behind this is easy to understand, although the actual process
of doing this isn't necessarily _easy_ as it takes a lot of work to go out,
find potential customers, interview them, etc.

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catharsis
I'm not in a place to find the link, but 37signals has a very good article
about this. Start right from the core function (for example if the competitor
is photoshop, make paint). The only real issue I think of with this method is
bloat of code and UI, but I still think this way lends itself better to a
strong product.

