Make Features Successful

Amidst the furore of scoping, specing and developing features, the very often forgotten aspect of building products is making those features successful.

In my experience, I’ve seen the builders be usually preoccupied with detailing out the feature and the execution of it, but seldom with the concerns of how they’ll make the feature successful. This is natural though – it’s difficult to see an issue here because the people who’re mired with the details of the feature do not think from the point of view of the unassuming user – the user who has no idea what you’re working on.

But when the feature you worked so hard on launches, it’s often met with indifference – the worst potential outcome.

Having seen enough of these cycles, I have arrived at a 4-part framework to combat this:

The feature success framework

I call this framework ADORE: Awareness, Discovery, Onboarding, and Recall.


Feature adoption and ensuring its successful usage are often ignored, but are critical parts of the builders’ job. They need to be actively addressed once the core of the feature is complete.

This easy to remember framework has been helpful in thinking through exactly that.

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