In order to study the development of partial discharge (PD) under typical protrusion defects in gas-insulated switchgear, we applied step voltages on the defect and obtained the ${varphi}-u$ and ${varphi}-n$ spectrograms of ultra-high frequency (UHF) PD signals in various PD stages. Furthermore, we extracted seven kinds of features to characterize the degree of deterioration of insulation and analyzed their values, variation trends, and change rates. These characteristics were inconsistent with the development of PD. Hence, the differences of these features could describe the severity of PD. In addition, these characteristics could provide integrated characteristics regarding PD development and improve the reliability of PD severity assessment because these characteristics were extracted from different angles. To explain the variation laws of these seven kinds of parameters, we analyzed the relevant physical mechanism by considering the microphysical process of PD formation and development as well as the distortion effect generated by the space charges on the initial field. The relevant physical mechanism effectively allocated PD severity among these features for assessment, and the effectiveness and reliability of using these features to assess PD severity were proved by testing a large number of PD samples.