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You won’t be using that cool feature

    So why do companies keep adding features that are useful to a small number of people and ignored by the rest? And is there a better way to design products?

    Cliff Kuang, a designer in the tech industry and author of a book on the history of product design, named three culprits behind its ever-expanding features. First, companies add options because it helps them market their products as new and exciting. Second, products with many millions of users must appeal to people with very different needs. And — this one sticks — we’re in love with options that look great, but we can’t or don’t want to use.

    Kuang described this third factor as “users’ inability to distinguish between ‘Hey, that looks good’ and ‘Hey, I need that’.”

    If it makes you feel better, Kuang said he’s guilty of this too. He was impressed by a feature in his Tesla to automate parallel parking. “The first time I used it, it was cool,” he said. “And I never used it again.”

    Technologists often grumble that they have no win situation in product design. Dedicated fans are demanding more and more options that often make no sense to normal people. (This phenomenon is often derided as “bloatware,” as in bloated software.) This is one of the reasons technology often feels like it was made for the 1 percent of digital die-hards and not the rest of us. .

    But if companies try to reduce under-used options or change something that people have become accustomed to, some users will hate it. Everyone has an opinion. Steven Sinofsky, a former Microsoft executive, used to joke that overhauling common software like Windows and Microsoft Office was like ordering pizza for a billion people.

    In April, technology writer Clive Thompson made a provocative suggestion to resist the temptation to cram more features into existing technology: Just say no.

    Thompson, who is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, said companies should decide ahead of time what set of positions they want to work for and stop when they get there.

    “Feature creep is real and destroys software every year,” he told me, citing Instagram as a product that he thinks will get worse the more options it adds.

    Products cannot, of course, remain frozen in the past. And some features, such as automatically notifying emergency services after car accidents, can be worthwhile, even if they’re infrequently used. It’s also unpredictable which add-ons might be useful to the masses.

    Kuang said the best tech products are changing little by little to push users toward a future the creators had envisioned. He said Airbnb did that by evolving its website and app into a major recent change that pushes people to explore different types of homes without having a destination or travel dates in mind.

    To get out of the bloatware trap, Kuang said, “you work backwards from the future you’re trying to create.”

    Tip of the week

    Whether all the features are useful or not, you will soon be using updated software for your phone. Brian X. Chenothe consumer technology columnist for The New York Times tells us how we can prepare for this change.

    In this week’s column, I discussed the changes coming to smartphones this fall in the next operating system updates from Apple and Google.

    How should you prepare? First, I don’t recommend installing an early trial, or beta, of the software that’s available now. Those unfinished versions of the operating systems are still being checked for flaws.

    But here’s how to get your phone ready for new operating systems when they’re ready:

    • Backup your phone data to another device, such as your computer, or to a cloud storage service if you subscribe to it. That prevents disaster in the unlikely event that something goes wrong when you update your phone software.

    • Turn off automatic updates. In your phone settings there is an option to install software updates automatically after bedtime. I recommend turning this off. When the OS arrives in the fall, take a wait and see approach to review what others are saying online about any major bugs that may have surfaced. New products are usually imperfect on the first day. Install the new OS manually if you are sure that it will not pollute your phone.

    • Take the opportunity to do a digital spring cleaning† Delete apps you no longer use and files you no longer need. Occasionally new operating systems take up more space than their predecessors, so it’s a good idea to clean up a bit beforehand to make sure you get a fresh start.

    • A controversial plan to revive US chip production: An unlikely group of billionaires, including a longtime Democratic donor and a Trump supporter, are seeking $1 billion from Congress for a nonprofit investment fund to expand computer chip production in the United States. My colleague Ephrat Livni wrote that the group’s unusual proposal is divisive in Washington.

    • His TikTok posts claimed he was a juror in the recent trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. He wasn’t, CNN explains, and it was another example of the often misogynistic online mania about the case.

    • Apps for kids do WHAT? A Washington Post columnist wrote that more than two-thirds of the top 1,000 apps for children send personal information to the advertising industry. (A subscription may be required.)

    Meet a goose named Duck-Duck and the man who became the adopted parent of the goose.