Your users want results, not compromises.Photo by Andre Frueh onUnsplashYour design team is pushing for simplification to make users lives easier. Your sales team is advocating for power features to close deals. Your customer success team is demanding botha clearly impossible feat.Youre stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. The next step is for you to choose which flavor of pain you want thisquarter.If this sounds familiar, youre notalone.The whole scenario exemplifies the casualties of the usability vs. utilitywar.But the problem isnt what you think it iswhich is why you keep getting surprised when deals dont close and customers churn, often for contradictory reasons.The reality isthis:The battle between usability and utility is a futile war thats destroying product value on both sides. While most companies choose between power and simplicity at every turn, the best understand that the right answer, as always, lies somewhere in betweenand they find a way to maximize both utility and usability.Its not a zero-sumgame.The high cost of the false dichotomyProduct teams the world over are bleeding value trying to pick sides in a war they shouldnt be fighting.Treating usability and utility as opposing forces has created a generation of products that either overwhelm users with power they cant access, or underwhelm them with simplicity they cantscale.The cost isnt just in lost dealsits in the very soul of product development.Death by perfectionOn the one side, you have designers on a quest for the perfect user experience. When you fight this fight, unintended consequences ripple through the entire product lifecycle.Beautiful interfaces temporarily (and only temporarily) mask missing functionalityeventually new users realize that their needs are not being met, and *poof* theyregoneSimplification efforts accidentally remove critical power user features (or they do so not-so-accidentally) (you tell me how important those power users are or arent to your business)User testing focuses on ease metrics while missing capability gapsEngineers, what with their logical brains and all, dont react well when told to remove useful complexity (which by the way, they spent a lot of time thinking about and building)When you sacrifice utility at the altar of usability, you dont just lose featuresyou lose your products reason for existing (i.e., its value to users). If its pretty but doesnt do anything useful, then its prettyuseless.Death by featurefactoryThe opposite approachpiling on features in the name of powercreates a devastating spiral of complexity.Feature bloat makes simple tasks unnecessarily complicated (where do I even go to do thatthing?)Training costs skyrocket as complexity compoundsboth when onboarding new users, and when onboarding newhiresSupport tickets keep rising and rising and risingusers cant keep it up with it all, theyve only got so much brain cache and muscle memory to goaroundTech debt accumulates as features interact in unexpected (read: should-have-been-expected-but-remained-unplanned-for) waysUser satisfaction paradoxically drops as capabilities increaseAdding features without considering their accessibility isnt building valueits building barriers to success. The more friction you add, the slower users moveand when they hit a critical slowness threshold, theybail.A path to powerful simplicityAs always, the answer isnt one or the otherits somewhere in themiddle.But its a bit more nuanced than that aswell.Its not a matter of reducing complexity in favor of some extra usability, or trading a feature or two on the roadmap for sorely-needed UX-improvement time, or deciding that the team should sacrifice usability and/or user testing so you can move faster and/or break more things, respectively.Those are just compromises.What you need is a mindsetshift.Dont sacrifice one for the other. Build a product that is both usable and useful, all at once, together.Step 1: Focus onvalueThe ever-important first step is to acknowledge, understand, and agree that success comes from focusing on user outcomes rather than feature lists or design principles.Each feature must tie directly to measurable uservalueEnd of list. If not value, you have gifted your usersnothing.True product value isnt about features or designits about enabling user success throughboth.Step 2: Iteratively build value naturallyComplexity doesnt have to be overwhelming. You just need to introduce it at the right time, at the rightpace.Interfaces should prioritize frequent tasks while making power accessible (albeit not via minimalclicks)Complex workflows should be broken down into digestible steps (and take advantage of the SparkEffect)Learning curves should feel naturalgradual, not exponential or step functionsAdvanced capabilities should be introduced contextually, not haphazardly strewn about theproductFeatures should follow consistent, familiar patternsusers shouldnt need to learn new paradigms on everypageGreat products dont just contain powerthey reveal it at exactly the right moment, allowing users to seize it when they can most benefit fromit.Step 3: Ensure users feel empowered to attainvalueNone of this focus on value can work if users themselves dont feel like its possible to achieve what they want to achieve (or, feel like its too hard, or not worth the time oreffort).Advanced capabilities should feel like rewards, not obstaclesHints in the UI should guide users toward greater masterythey should nudge, not force (said another way, those power user features arent hidden, theyre just tucked away in a sensical manner, waiting to be revealed)Power user paths shouldnt obstruct casual users (or users on the path to power userstatus)Features that dont add value should be deprecated (or at least pushed aside that much more)the complication for the 99% isnt worth it just to satisfy the edge case needs of the1%Products win when they grow with their users instead of forcing users to adapt to them. And more importantly, the users win when they can do what they need to do without being confused by what theydont.How to know itsworkingUnderstanding whether youre succeeding requires zeroing in on metrics thatmatter.And those metrics are the ones that are directly tied toyou guessed itvalue.So watch for signs that users are attaining that value.E.g.:Time-to-value decreases for new users (note: this is not onboarding time, it is the time it takes for a user to realize actual value and experience their first Aha!moment)Cumulative value (however that is measured for your users) continuously increases over time (put serious thought into what value truly means for your usersit can be revenue earned, time saved, users acquired, customer satisfaction achieved, anythingjust make sure it matters to your users, notyou)Support tickets decrease and shift from basics to advanced topics (if the easy stuff isnt buried amongst a mountain of complicatedness, users will need to ask less questions aboutit)Feature adoption increases with product tenure (note: feature adoption in and of itself is not a value metric, but rather an indicator; still, especially for products that offer a large amount of features, this should generally increase overtime)Power features see organic discovery and adoption (but only by the users who actually need it, allowing the rest to go on their merryway)Success isnt measured by what your product can doits measured by what users actually accomplish withit.In closingStop fighting a senseless war of usability vs.utility.Learn from all the products-that-could-have-been.Choose value. Focus on helping your users accomplish their goals, instead of providing them endless actions to take or over-simplifying capabilities in the name of cleanUI/UX.Its not that usability and utility dont matterthey do. Its that their balance will come naturally when you focus on helping your userswin.So the next time someone asks you whether the team should be prioritizing power or simplicity, remember this: the wrong answer is choosing between them. The right answer is making them work together to create products that both delight and empower users at every step of theirjourney.Speaking of usability and utility Are you tired of fighting Jiras interface? I get it. Thats why were building Momentumits Jira on the backend, but with a UX that actually helps you do agile. No migration necessary. Curious? Join the waitlist.Great products transcend the Usability vs. Utility debate was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.