Focus On True User 'Needs'

In coming across this article today about feature creep on the Swiss Army Giant Knife, I was reminded of a great post on the Creating Passionate Users Blog entitled "Featuritus vs the Happy User Peak", that along with a great visual has some solid points about designing products for users. The following statement from that post is one that Wenger as well as many other companies should heed:

"continuing to pile on new features eventually leads to an endless downhill slide toward poor usability and maintenance. A negative spiral of incremental improvements. Fighting and clawing for market share by competing solely on features is an unhealthy, unsustainable, and unfun way to live"

Be the "I Rule" product, not the "This thing I bought does everything, but I suck!" product

Part of this is listening to your customers. Just look at some of the reader comments returned about it in the article in Outdoor life. Part of building great products is truely understanding the needs of the customer.