How to create happy users?

Ram Shriram said in a interview

So, the first part of building that virtuous cycle is having happy users. From happy users come happy advertisers and from happy advertisers come revenue streams. Then, if you have good execution, there comes profit.

So how do we create happy users? When is the user happy?

Kathy Sierra explains this very well by a nice picture in a blog post:

Featuritis is feature bloat.

Why does feature bloat occur?

• Because the competitor does it, we should do it. We look at our software as a upgrade to what is already there in the market.
• Doing what your competitor does results in sameness. Instead of focusing on users and doing what they want, we focus on what the competition does.
• Focus on features that are used the most, make them easily accessible, simplify them, add intelligence to them, instead of making a feature bloat.

Some more quotes from Kathy in another post:

How much control should users have?

Obviously this is a big “it depends”, but the main point is to focus on the relationship between user control and user capability. As user capability (knowledge, skill, expertise) increases, so should control. Let the user transition slowly from basic to advanced.

The amount of pain and effort should match the user’s perceived payoff.

Putting users first does not necessarily mean putting users in charge.

we should be trying to give users more capability and control…and encouraging them to take it. But we must balance that with the learning they need to take that responsibility without being overwhelmed.