Feature Prioritization Research
Feature prioritization research measures which features your customers value most, by making them trade one thing against another instead of asking what they want. Praxia Insights runs MaxDiff, Kano, and conjoint studies so your roadmap reflects what buyers will pay for and use.
Ask customers which features they want and they'll tell you all of them. Everything sounds useful when it's free and hypothetical, so you end up with a survey where 84% said each feature was important and no way to choose between them.
The methods that work force a trade. When somebody has to give up one thing to get another, or say which of four options they'd drop first, the answers separate quickly and they predict behavior far better.
We'll design the study so the results give your product team an actual ranking, broken out by segment, since the feature your enterprise customers care most about is frequently the one your small accounts would never use.
Discuss your prioritization study
When You Need This
Your roadmap is contested: two groups inside the company want different things and neither has evidence.
You have more ideas than capacity: everything on the list is plausible and you can only build a few of them.
You're designing tiers or packages: you need to know which features belong in which tier and what people will pay for the jump.
Sales keeps promising things: requests come in from deals and your team can't tell whether they represent the market or one loud customer.
You're planning a major release: the wrong bet costs a quarter of engineering time and a launch that lands quietly.
The Methods
MaxDiff
Respondents see small sets of features and pick the most and least important from each set. Doing that repeatedly produces a clean ranking with real distance between items, and it avoids the problem where everything scores highly on a rating scale.
Kano modeling
Each feature gets classified by how customers respond to having it and to not having it, which sorts features into basic expectations, things that improve satisfaction proportionally, and delighters. It's useful because some features earn you no credit for being there and cost you the deal when they're missing, and a ranking on its own won't show you that.
Conjoint analysis
Respondents choose between whole product configurations at different prices, so the analysis can work out what each feature is worth in money. This is the method when packaging and pricing are part of the question.
Qualitative prioritization
Interviews and focus groups where customers talk through what they'd trade and why. Numbers give you the ranking and conversations tell you the reasoning, and your team needs the reasoning to design the feature well.
Segment-Level Results
The overall ranking is usually the least useful output. What matters is how the ranking differs between your customer types, because that's what tells you who a feature is for.
A feature that ranks fourth overall can be first among the segment driving your growth, and a feature that ranks second overall can be an artifact of one large group you weren't planning to serve, and averaging across everybody hides both of those.
We'll size the study so segment-level results hold up statistically, which usually means a larger sample than a single-ranking study would need, and we'll tell you what that costs before you commit.
Project Examples
A NIH-funded study examining neuropsychological predictors of adaptation after trauma.
A five-year randomized control trial (RCT), funded by the U.S. Department of Ed, to study individualized math instruction.
Led a national survey study in partnership with Berklee BEATL & Adobe to study AI use in the music industry.
How We Work
1. Initial consultation and plan
We meet to discuss your specific needs and confirm this is the right approach for the decision you're facing.
2. Project scoping and budget
You receive a custom scope of work with tasks, due dates, and budget before any work begins. Fixed scope, no hourly surprises.
3. Project execution
You receive updates on progress throughout, including recruitment status and fielding milestones.
4. A true partnership approach
We share insights with you as they come up throughout the project, so your team can start acting on what we learn long before the final report is finished.
5. Project completion
We deliver final insights in the format your team will actually use, whether that's a written report, an executive presentation, or a working session.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Because direct questions about feature importance produce almost no differentiation. Everything is important when nothing has a cost attached. Methods like MaxDiff and conjoint force respondents to give something up, and that trade-off is what separates the features people would genuinely pay for from the ones they'd merely accept.
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MaxDiff ranks features against each other and tells you the order. Conjoint puts features into whole product configurations with prices and tells you what each one is worth in money. If your question is what to build next, MaxDiff is usually enough. If it's how to package and price, you want conjoint.
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It's a method that classifies features by how customers react both to having them and to not having them. That splits features into basic expectations that only hurt you when missing, performance features where more is better, and delighters that people don't expect. It's a useful complement to a ranking because it explains why a feature matters, on top of telling you how much.
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MaxDiff works with a couple of hundred responses per segment. Conjoint needs more, often three to four hundred per segment, because respondents are evaluating many combinations. If segment-level results matter to you, and they usually should, each segment needs its own adequate sample.
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MaxDiff handles twenty to thirty comfortably, and more than that starts to fatigue respondents. Conjoint works with a smaller set of attributes, usually five to eight, because the combinations multiply quickly. If your list is long, we'll help narrow it first.
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Four to six weeks for most studies, from design through fielding to analysis. Conjoint takes longer because the design work is more involved and the sample is larger.
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It depends on the method, the sample size, how hard your customers are to recruit, and incentive levels. A single-segment MaxDiff study costs the least, and a multi-segment conjoint study costs the most. We'll give you a fixed-scope quote after an initial consultation.
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Yes, and that's the point. Features are described to respondents in words instead of demonstrated, so you can test concepts you haven't built. How you word each feature matters a great deal here, since one described vaguely will rank badly for reasons that have nothing to do with demand.
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Yes, and it's often the right call for roadmap work. Keep in mind that current customers tell you about retention and expansion while prospects tell you what would win new business, and those two lists differ more than most teams expect.
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A ranked list of features by importance, broken out by segment, with the reasoning behind the ranking and specific recommendations for the roadmap. If conjoint was part of the study, you'll also get what each feature is worth in pricing terms.
Our Experience
More than 60 studies designed, including case study, quasi-experimental, RCT, and mixed-method designs
More than 100 focus groups and in-depth interviews conducted
More than $4 million in grant-funded research managed
Clients spanning Fortune 500 companies, startups, nonprofits, universities, and federally funded programs
Our researchers hold doctorates in educational neuroscience, psychology, and related fields
Need to know what to build next?
Tell us what's on the roadmap and who your customers are, and we'll advise on the method that would settle it.