Overview

Most times when we think of designing an application, we think of it in terms of designing the layout, visual hierarchy, and overall dressings of the interactions which will be available on screen.

With this approach, it can be easy to get lost in the weeds of an increasingly complex UI, but what if there was a better way?

Today, I want to share with you how starting with features can greatly improve the efficiency of your overall design.

Form follows profit

This phrase is drilled into nearly every design student from the time they start design school to the time they finish:

“Form follows function”

In the real world, however, we begin to understand that’s not always the case. Instead, we find that form really follows profitability.

Why is this so? The reason is deceptively simple: you cost money to employ, and employers need to make a profit in order to justify paying your salary.

Whether you’re a full-time employee, part-time, or freelancer, the fact remains that your designs need to help net your company money, or how are they supposed to pay you?

So how do we ensure profitability of a product? We ensure users get the outcomes they’re looking for, and we do that through the design of specific features that will help them get there.

Jobs-to-be-done and feature-based design

Instead of designing an app on the whole, it is better to start off with a specific feature that you’re trying to produce. This narrows your focus, allowing you to concentrate on exactly the solution you’re trying to design for a specific problem, instead of trying to eat the entire elephant in one bite.

This approach goes hand in hand with the “jobs-to-be-done,” framework, both of which can be used together to inform and create features that get at the heart of what your users are trying to accomplish.

Let’s say that you have an e-commerce app, and you know that your users will be shopping for various things. One feature your users will probably need is “search for a product.”

To that end, based on that job-to-be-done, your interface will need:

• A search bar
• Some standard filtration mechanisms (price, shipping, ratings, etc.)
• Auto-complete for known products
• An explicit button to run the search

Crucially, an application is just a set of features. So then instead of designing features to fit the “application,” we are designing the application in terms of its features.

The bottom line

Instead of attempting to design your entire app from the ground-up, all at once, worrying about layout, sizing, patterns, etc. start with your core features and work out from there.

Not only will it be better for you and your team in terms of communication, but it will make it exponentially easier to design your solution in a way that gets right to the point.