A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)
Nesrine Changuel, a former product leader at Spotify and Google, presents a pragmatic framework for building delightful products. She argues that delight is not a superficial add-on but a core business strategy that drives retention and differentiation by creating products that serve both functional and emotional needs. The summary covers her three pillars of delight, a four-step model for implementation, the 50-40-10 rule for prioritization, and real-world examples from her time at Chrome, Google Meet, and Spotify.
Product delight is the ability to create products that serve both functional and emotional needs, forging a deep connection with users. In a crowded market, this is not a luxury or “sprinkling confetti” on top of a product; it is a core business strategy that acts as a key differentiator, driving loyalty, word-of-mouth growth, and revenue. Even well-functioning products can struggle to gain traction if they fail to make users feel certain emotions. Features like Spotify’s “Wrapped” or “Discover Weekly” succeed because they make users feel seen, heard, and connected.
The Three Pillars of Building Delightful Products
The theoretical definition of delight is the combination of two core emotions: joy and surprise. To put this into practice and build products that evoke this feeling, three pillars must be satisfied.
1. Removing Friction
This involves identifying “valley moments” where a user’s emotions are at their lowest—experiencing stress, anxiety, or frustration—and designing solutions to alleviate that pain.
- Example: After an Uber driver cancels a trip, a user might be incorrectly charged for a ride they never took. The user anticipates a stressful, lengthy process to get a refund. However, Uber’s app resolves this in just two clicks, instantly returning the money. This transforms a moment of high friction and negative emotion into a seamless, positive experience.
2. Anticipating Needs
True delight comes from giving users something valuable before they even know to ask for it. This creates a powerful element of surprise. As Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra said, “you need to set the bar higher than your users themselves.”
- Example: The banking app Revolut primarily serves international users and expats who travel frequently. Anticipating their need for affordable data abroad, Revolut integrated an eSIM purchasing feature directly into the app. A user landing in a new country can buy a data plan in seconds, a surprising and highly useful feature for a banking application.
3. Exceeding Expectations
This pillar focuses on surprising users by giving them more than they asked for or expected.
- Example: While shopping online using the Microsoft Edge browser, a user proceeds to checkout, fully prepared to pay the list price for an item. At the payment step, Edge automatically finds and applies a valid coupon, giving the user an unexpected 15% discount. This exceeds the user’s expectations for what a browser should do and creates a moment of joy.
A Note on the “Confetti Effect”
Superficial elements like animations or celebratory effects can be delightful, but only when they are tied to a genuine user value. Otherwise, they are just noise.
- Example: Airbnb celebrates hosts who maintain their “Superhost” status. When a host renews their status, the app displays a confetti animation. This works because it’s not random; it’s a celebration of a meaningful achievement, making the host feel recognized for their efforts.
Delight in B2B: The “Business to Human” (B2H) Approach
Delight is not exclusive to B2C products. As long as a human is using the product, their emotions need to be honored. B2B user expectations are rising as they become accustomed to polished B2C experiences. The key is humanization: asking, “If my product were a human, how would the experience be better?”
- Google Meet Example: When improving the video conferencing experience, the team didn’t compare Google Meet to Zoom or Teams. They compared it to the gold standard: an actual in-person conversation. This set a much higher bar for quality and human connection.
- Dyson Example: Dyson compares its robotic vacuums not to other vacuums, but to a professional human cleaner. This perspective leads to features that better mimic how a person would approach the task, such as cleaning specific rooms first.
The 4-Step Delight Model
This framework provides a systematic way to integrate delight into the product development process.
Step 1: Identify User Motivators
Go beyond demographics to understand why users engage with your product. Segment users based on their motivations, which fall into two categories:
- Functional Motivators: The practical tasks users want to accomplish (e.g., “I use Spotify to find a specific song”).
- Emotional Motivators: How users want to feel while using the product (e.g., “I use Spotify to feel less lonely” or “to change my mood”). This can be further broken down into personal feelings and social perceptions (e.g., sharing Spotify Wrapped to feel cool and connected).
Step 2: Convert Motivators into Product Opportunities
Frame the identified motivators as opportunities. This shifts the team’s mindset from simply solving problems to actively honoring user needs and creating value.
Step 3: Identify Solutions with the Delight Grid
Use a matrix to categorize potential features based on the motivators they address. This reveals three types of features:
- Low Delight: Solves only a functional motivator.
- Surface Delight: Solves only an emotional motivator (e.g., birthday balloons on an Apple Watch).
- Deep Delight: Solves for both functional and emotional needs simultaneously. This is the most powerful category. For example, Spotify’s Discover Weekly serves a functional need (finding new music) while also serving an emotional one (feeling seen and understood by the app).
Step 4: Validate Ideas with the Delight Checklist
Before shipping, validate ideas against a checklist to ensure they have a positive impact. Key criteria include:
- Business and User Impact: The feature must align with business goals.
- Inclusion: A feature that is delightful for one person can be painful for another. For example, a “missed call from Mom” notification from a delivery app on Mother’s Day was clever for some but caused grief for others who had lost their mothers.
- Familiarity: Users love surprise, but not too much. The original version of Spotify’s Discover Weekly was designed to feature only brand-new music. A bug accidentally injected some of the user’s already-liked songs into the playlist. When the bug was “fixed” to remove familiar songs, engagement metrics dropped. Users preferred the buggy version because the mix of new and familiar felt better.
Putting Delight into Practice
Getting Buy-In and Prioritizing
Instead of trying to convince skeptical leaders, align delight initiatives with their existing goals, such as word-of-mouth growth or user loyalty. Don’t frame it as “delight vs. functionality” but as “delight in functionality.”
Use the 50-40-10 Rule for roadmap allocation:
- 50% for Low Delight (core functional work).
- 40% for Deep Delight (features that blend function and emotion).
- 10% for Surface Delight (purely joyful features that build brand personality).
Creating a Culture of Delight
Delight should be a mindset, not a one-off project. Make it a permanent strategic pillar and integrate it into company rituals. For example, host regular “Delight Days”—similar to hack days—to give teams the space to innovate on delightful experiences. This not only improves the product but also boosts team motivation, as engineers and PMs are energized by seeing users love the features they build.