When designing a product, we're often faced with high expectations about how it should look and perform. Stakeholders gives a lot of features , expecting everything to be implemented as soon as possible. However, this approach frequently leads to delayed releases, lot of bugs, and performance issues. While having expectations is crucial, the reality is that UX designers must make tough decisions about what truly needs to be included in the initial release.

This is where we need to set some priority. Among the various metrics available, I've found the Effort-Impact Matrix to be particularly effective. This simple yet powerful tool helps visualize which features demand immediate attention and which can wait.

The matrix breaks down into four key categories:

1. High-Impact, High-Effort (Emergency): These are make-or-break features that must work flawlessly. For example, a payment gateway system falls here - it's complex to implement but absolutely essential for the product's core functionality.
2. High-Impact, Low-Effort (Quick Wins): Simple changes that significantly improve user experience, like clarifying error messages or adding key navigation elements.
3. Low-Impact, High-Effort (Thankless Tasks): Features that seem nice and might be useful, but will cost your development time or just not worth it. Custom colored tags for search filters might enhance aesthetics, but often aren't worth the development time at launch.
4. Low-Impact, Low-Effort (Fill-Ins): Minor tweaks that can be addressed later, such as subtle animation refinements.

The real value of this approach becomes clear when facing stakeholder pressure. When asked why certain features aren't included, we can point to this objective framework. That carousel slideshow might look impressive, but if it falls in the "Thankless Task" quadrant while core functionality remains unfinished, either we put it in our backlog or have to let that go.

By focusing first on high-impact features - whether they're quick wins or complex essentials - we ensure our product solves real problems for users while maintaining a realistic development timeline. The other features can wait for future updates, once we've validated the core experience and have more resources available.

This method doesn't mean compromising on quality or vision. It's about delivering a solid foundation first, then building upon it. After all, a product with fewer but functional features will always outperform one that's overstuffed but unstable.