Creeping Featurism and Sram Red

An age-old tendency of bicycle equipment manufactures is to add more gears to bicycles. If you asked amateur cyclists why they need more gears, could they tell you? Actually, more gears divide the difference in gear ratio over more sprockets, so benefits the rider though smoother changes. But there becomes a point where this simply is not necessary. Manufacturers yet remain insistent on adding extra gears. The concept of creeping featurism simply increases the number of features offered by a product, service or brand, beyond all reason. A nice example of this is Google. The company had been adamant on providing every service imaginable, under the Google brand umbrella. The company realized they had their fingers in too many pies to be truly successful. Companies often forget what it is they do, or do well. Google realized that search was what they did well, and have now focused on doing this really, really well and have since streamlined their product offering to reflect this.

Sram recently launched their new Sram Red group set. Much anticipation led up to the event, with speculation that an extra gears or electronic shifting would be added. Some very exciting features I know. The new group set did not include either of these and had some flummoxed, including their competitors. Actually, Sram had gone back to look at the group set and what this means to cyclists. In doing this they realized that to be successful it need not have an infinite number of gears or electronic shifting, but was made to be exceedingly lightweight and smooth in operation, offering the same number of gears as had previously become standard. These are important things to racing cyclists, to go faster.

The fact is, that creeping featurism is here to stay. In my view, the reason it happens is to accommodate the beliefs and values of customers. As a design profession, it is our responsibility to understand these customers and what is expected from a product and learning how to best communicate why sometimes it is best to focus on a specific functionality, delivered with quality.

Part of my reading on this topic includes The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. This is a fascinating introduction into physical and cognitive related issues associated with familiar products.