Skip to content
Lenny's PodcastLenny's Podcast

Nesrine Changuel: How three pillars make delight measurable

Three pillars (remove friction, anticipate needs, exceed expectations) anchor the model; Spotify and Revolut examples translate emotional jobs into features.

Lenny RachitskyhostNesrine Changuelguest
Sep 28, 20251h 24mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 4:56

    Introduction to Nesrine and product delight

    1. LR

      I feel like there's two buckets of teams. There's the product teams that are just like, "Of course we need to make our product delightful. That's how we win." And then there's just a bunch of product teams that are like, "What are you even talking about? We have features to ship. We gotta close some deals. We don't have time for this."

    2. NC

      Sometimes people think about delight as the confetti. If you shake the phone, you have snowflake falling. But that's not the delight I talk about. Delight is actually this ability to create products that serve for both emotional need and functional need.

    3. LR

      I know exactly what you mean. I never check Instagram anymore. I just don't feel good when I open it. The feeling of the product makes me not use it anymore.

    4. NC

      How can we build products where we can achieve delight goal? Recently, I booked an Uber. I was waiting for the driver. And suddenly, the driver canceled for no specific reason. But what happened is that when get to the app, there've been only two clicks to get refunded. Bingo. Your money is back. The emotion was supposed to be low. And suddenly, the solution completely removed the stress and the friction.

    5. LR

      Let's talk about how to actually approach this systematically.

    6. NC

      We need to satisfy three main pillars. The very first one is ...

    7. LR

      A big elephant in the room, when is this not worth your time? Companies like Workday, SAP, and Salesforce, that did really well, very undelightful.

    8. NC

      The hard truth is that ...

    9. LR

      Today my guest is Nesrine Shangal. Nesrine was a longtime product leader at Skype, Spotify, Google Chrome, and Google Meet. And through her experience building some of the most widely used consumer products in the world, she developed a really pragmatic framework for how to build delightful and retentive product experiences. A lot of product leaders talk about building great user experiences and making their products delightful, but I've never seen a concrete and repeatable approach to actually doing this, especially one that helps you separate low impact confetti features, as Nesrine calls them, and ones that actually drive your KPIs and keep people coming back. In our conversation, we talk about why product teams with limited resources, lots of fires and priorities should actually spend time on making their products more delightful. I found this part super interesting and surprising. We talk about what sorts of product teams and companies should invest in delight, particularly B2B versus B2C. And then we dive into her specific four-step framework for discovering the highest ROI opportunities and prioritizing across them. Nesrine shares a bunch of really cool real-world examples from her time at Google Meet and Spotify and Chrome and also examples from Apple and a bunch of other companies she's looked at. A huge thank you to Matt LeMay for suggesting topics for this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. That helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of 15 incredible products, including a year free of Lovable, Replit, Bolt, N8n, Linear, Superhuman, Descript, Whisperflow, Gamma, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, ChatPRD, and Mobben. Head on over to lennysnewsletter.com and click Product Pass. With that, I bring you Nesrine Shangal. Today's episode is brought to you by DX, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers. To thrive in the AI era, organizations need to adapt quickly. But many organization leaders struggle to answer pressing questions, like which tools are working? How are they being used? What's actually driving value? DX provides the data and insights that leaders need to navigate this shift. With DX, companies like Dropbox, Booking.com, Adyen, and Intercom get a deep understanding of how AI is providing value to their developers and what impact AI is having on engineering productivity. To learn more, visit DX's website at getdx.com/lenny. That's getdx.com/lenny. You fell in love with building products for a reason. But sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and road mapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds. And it's all built on Jira, where your engineering team's already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance, anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback, and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny.

  2. 4:56 – 9:17

    Why delight matters

    1. LR

      Nesrine, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

    2. NC

      Hi, Lenny. Thanks for having me.

    3. LR

      It's my pleasure. So you just published, uh, a book that is coming out, or just came out a couple days ago from the time this podcast is coming out. It's on a very polarizing topic, product ... it's called Product Delight. And the reason I think it's polarizing is I feel like there's two buckets of teams. There's like the teams, the product teams that are just like, "Of course we need to make our product delightful and that's how we win. That's how we differentiate. It's so important." And then there's just a bunch of product teams that are like, "What are you even talking about? We have features to ship. We gotta close some deals. We don't have time for this. We have fires constantly. We gotta rebuild our infrastructure. Why do we ... We have no time for delightful stuff." So the, my goal for this conversation is basically two parts. One is help people understand why this is worth investing in very practically, not just the warm and fuzzies of it. And then two, give them an actual framework and model for how to do this successfully and not waste time on stuff that's not useful. How does that sound?

    4. NC

      Sounds like a great goal. And, uh, uh, let's share this goal together today.

    5. LR

      Okay. This is our mutual goal. We have aligned KPIs. Okay, so let me, let me start with just this broad question and let's just see where this goes. What is your best pitch?... for why product team with limited resources, constant fires, lots of priorities, should spend time on delight and delightful features.

    6. NC

      Every time I talk about delight, whether in a conference or a workshop, I always start with this very simple question: What is your favorite product? I mean, what I love about it is the range and the variety of answer I usually get. Like some people would choose products for the productivity it get, and other may choose product because they feel joy or comfort with it, without even knowing how to explain that. And that's even more exciting because we connect with products at different levels. We might connect with products for the functionality part, or we might connect with product because it fulfill a certain emotional need that we were not even aware of. And so the best product deeply emotionally connect with users, and that's the essence of delight. So delight is actually this ability to create products that serve for both emotional need and functional need. And the hard truth is that even functioning product, very well functioning product may tend or still experience some trouble or issue getting tractions and, uh, growth and, uh, uh, and the success that is hoped for if they do not allow users to feel certain emotions. So let's take Spotify, for example. Like users do have plenty of options to stream music, but features like Wrapped or mood-based recommendation or like the Discover Weekly allow users to be seen and heard and even connected. So that's why like delight is not about sp- sprinkling joy on top of utility. It's about creating an experience where emotion is completely on the heart of the experience. So let's be clear. Delight is not a luxury nowadays. And more nowadays because the market is so crowded, it's even a differentiator. It's a strategy that we can adopt in order to grow our business, gain in loyalty and word of mouth and growth and even in revenue.

    7. LR

      I think about... As you talk, I've had some feelings recently like this actually. I never check Instagram anymore, and my wife, I was talking to my wife about it 'cause she checks it often, and I was just like, "I just don't feel good when I open it. Doesn't feel nice." And so I just don't ever go there. And so she sends me all these DMs and things in there, I'm just like, "I... Never... Nothing you send me in Instagram I will even see." And that, that actually is a recent example of just like, yeah, the feeling of the product makes me not use it anymore. So I know exactly what you mean. I also think about Linear, which is like their whole thing initially was, "We're just gonna make the most amazing basically task management system." And on the surface you'd be like, "That is not gonna work." There's like Jira and Asana and Monday and all these guys, uh, you're not gonna win just making it awesome. And they are winning. They're doing super well, uh, because they are so thoughtful about every part of the experience. And you could say it's b- it's very delightful. So I,

  3. 9:17 – 12:29

    What makes a feature “delightful”

    1. LR

      I totally hear what you're saying. When you talk about delightful features, adding a delightful feature, just like what is... What's a good way to understand what's a delightful feature, making it delightful?

    2. NC

      So when we create products, uh, it's really important that the solution that we're building is solving for both needs. And I really highlight the fact that there are functional needs, like for example, you want to book a flight or you wanna listen to music, or, and it should also solve for the emotional needs, which could be, "I wanna feel less lonely. I wanna feel comfort. I wanna feel secure." And the best product are those that create and craft solutions that blend the two. So if you can blend the two dimensions, like the functional side and the emotional side within the same solutions, then you are creating what we call emotional connection. And by the way, emotional connection is not a new topic. I mean, you probably heard that very much in the design area and the marketing area as well. I mean, you agree with me, the best design is the emotional design. The best marketing is the marketing like, uh, emotional marketing. I mean, we see the best ads coming from those emotional ads. But the reality is that... And even before I start writing the book, I realize that it's not that much mo- spoken about in business and in products. I mean, that by itself create a gap because you have designers talking about emotion, marketers talking about emotion, and then in the middle business are like, "What are you talking about? We need to ship features. We need to ship functionality." So we cannot achieve that so much needed goal. So in product, I call it delight. You might ask, "Why delight?" Because every time I talk to founder or CPO or any product leader, they all start by saying, "We need to delight our users." I mean, this sentence by itself is very much repeated. The truth is that they don't know how to delight. I mean, we agree that we should delight, but we don't necessarily know how to delight. So, so I started from this concept and I tried to come up with a concrete, of course framework, but also an actionable way to put that into practice. And in order to get even deeper into the definition, I wanna highlight that there are two definition for delight. Uh, I promise, I'm not gonna spend too much time on the theory, but the first definition is a theoretic definition. So delight is an emotion, and there's a professor called Professor Plutchik who actually created what we call the wheel of emotion. Uh, and he actually conceptualized delight as a combination of two emotions. Could you guess what are these two emotions?

    3. LR

      Uh, the combination... Well, I, I've seen your stuff, so I think I know what you're gonna say. (laughs) Uh, there's gonna be exceeding expectations is a part of it, and then I forget the other piece, but I think that's an important element.

    4. NC

      So, so delight is an emotion and it's a combination of two emotions.

    5. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. NC

      So these two emotions are joy and surprise.

    7. LR

      Hmm. Okay, there we go. I started it right. I started to write it that second.

    8. NC

      (laughs)

    9. LR

      I'll, I'll take it.Okay, joy and, joy and surprise.

    10. NC

      Just, just try to feel it now. Like imagine yourself in a moment or a situation where you are experiencing at the same time joy and surprise. In that case, you are delighted.

  4. 12:29 – 13:03

    The three pillars of delight

    1. NC

      So that's the theory behind delight. Now, let's go to the practical side. The practical side, where, how can we put delight into practice? How can we build products where we can achieve this delight goal? And in order to do that, you, we need to satisfy three main pillars. The very first one is like removing friction. The second one is anticipating need. And the third one is exceeding expectation. I'm gonna explain these one by one, maybe through examples so that people can get exactly what I talk about.

  5. 13:03 – 15:07

    Pillar 1: Removing friction (Uber refund example)

    1. NC

      So the first one I said by removing friction. It's really important when you're building product to identify what we call this valley moment, these moments where the emotion is at the, at the bottom. And maybe the user is experiencing some anxiety, some stress, and how can we leverage o- the experience so we can reduce this valley moment? The best example I could share with you is actually something that did happen to me recently. I was actually about to take a train from Paris to London, so I booked an Uber and Uber assigned me a driver. I was waiting for the driver and suddenly the driver canceled for no specific reason and I was so stressed. I, I really had to catch my train. I was like late already. So I jumped into the first taxi that just passed in front of my building and I forgot about my, about my Uber application. What happened is that actually when your driver cancel, Uber do their best in order to assign you a new driver, of course. And I didn't pay attention to that. So the driver came to my place, he waited for me, and then I ended up being charged for the waiting time, charged for the trip that I didn't took. And I was so angry when I realized that on my app. So I was psychologically prepared. I need to write an entire essay about what happened and how I want and I need to be refunded. But what happened is that when I get to the app, there have been only two clicks to get refunded, like select the trip you want to be refunded and bingo, your money is back. Wow. Like, you know, I mean, I've been into these moments where the emotion was supposed to be low and suddenly the, like the- the solution that they provided is something that completely removed the stress and the friction. And of course now I can take more trips without the stress that might come out of that. So that's removing friction.

    2. LR

      That's a really good example just to double down on how awesome this is. Like just making it easy to do something that you expect to be really hard is delightful. Like canceling a subscription, unsubscribing from something, uh, awesome example. Okay, keep going.

  6. 15:07 – 17:21

    Pillar 2: Anticipating needs (Revolut eSIM example)

    1. LR

    2. NC

      So the second pillar is about anticipating need, meaning that remember in delight you have surprise and if you have to wait for your users to tell you exactly what they need from you, then you are just honoring their need. You're not exceeding or you're not even anticipating what they are already, uh, you wanna offer them. So another example probably is, uh, actually I, my husband for many, many years, he's trying to convince me to move to Revolut, you know, Revolut app, that, uh, banking app. And honestly, I was comfortable enough with my traditional banking app and I didn't want to add more, uh, check and et cetera. So I did resist not, uh, getting into the temptation of trying, but that was until one specific moment. Actually a couple of months ago we went on a family trip to Singapore and when we landed there we actually realized that our French operator or like, uh, do not allow us to have like international calls for free, meaning that we had to pay extreme high fees for roaming and for data. So what are the choices? Like either you have to buy a local eSIM or you need to accept these fees, which are very high. And that was the moment where I looked at my husband, he opened his Revolut app, he went to a tab called eSIM, buy eSIM, seven euro, it's done. It's like how the hell did Revolut thought about putting an eSIM for a bank app? I mean it's really insane. But then when you think about it, like most of Revolut users are international or expats, so they travel a lot and in that case they anticipated the need that people will travel and they will probably need a certain destination, that kind of feature. So that's the anticipating need part, creating surprise by giving them something before even people ask you for. And by the way, Rahul Vohra, I mean the CEO of, uh, Superhuman who've been on the show by the way, and I love his show. He said something very similar. He said like, "For, in order for a product to be loved, you need to set the bar higher than your users themselves." Like that's about exceeding

  7. 17:21 – 18:35

    Pillar 3: Exceeding expectations (Edge coupon example)

    1. NC

      expectation. And now we're getting to the third pillar, which is uh, exceeding expectation. So once you anticipated their need, it's really important to exceed expectation, which mean that okay, how can I surprise them by giving them more than they ask? And here again, I have an example maybe that everyone is familiar with. I mean I use Chrome, I love Chrome, but my husband is a- a Microsoft corporate user, like heavy Microsoft user and he uses like Edge all the time. I mean the other day I've seen him doing something that really surprises me, like he was about to buy a coffee machine and he went through the entire journey. He put the coffee machine on like a for payment he was about to pay and suddenly actually Edge suggested him for a complete auto fill feature, a coupon. Like he was about to pay something like 120 euro and suddenly you get 15% discount because Edge found out that there is a coupon you can apply and...And it just gets 15% discount. That's for me exceeding expectation because I was not even asking for a coupon. I was about to pay the 20... or 120 euro anyway. So that also by itself create a kind of surprise.

  8. 18:35 – 22:02

    The “confetti effect” and when it actually works

    1. NC

      So these are the three pillar. We need to play with them. It... we don't have to do them all at the same time, but every time we bring the product, we need to think about, how can we reduce friction? How can we anticipate our users' need? And how can we like, uh, create that, uh, exceed expectation part of the project? And, and, and I really wanted to make this clear because sometime people think about delight as the confetti or... I mean, the other day I was giving a workshop and someone showed me like, "Hey, if you shake the phone, you have snowflake falling." Yes. W- yeah. I mean, why not? But that's not the delight I talk about. It has to come with a value. It has to come, uh, with, with a concrete reason. And I call this like the confetti effect, like, uh, people think about confetti as way of delighting their users but if it doesn't bring any value, then don't do it. And by the way, I'm not here to say don't do confetti. I mean, why not? Confetti could come with value and could bring some joy. And the best example is on Airbnb, maybe the one that you're most familiar with. Like, I'm an Airbnb user, both as a host but also as a guest. And as a host, I have a goal which is to make sure they always keep my Superhost badge, like I love that, and of course, it allows me to provide the best experience for my guests. And you know how it works, like every three months Airbnb reassess whether you wanna... you can remain a Superhost or not. But it... you know what happen like every three months, if you're renewed as a Superhost and when you open the app, it... the app turns into confetti, like just to celebrate that moment with you. And that kind of moment is like, why not? Because I feel like Airbnb is recognizing my effort and celebrating that small moment with me. So it's about making sure you understand the value of your users and making sure that you're providing a solution that just bring them joy and surprise.

    2. LR

      The Superhost example is actually, uh, really interesting 'cause I built a Superhost program. That was one of my projects at Airbnb, uh, me and my team. Uh, and interestingly it came from... not from like, "Here's a metric we need to move. Let's build Superhost." It instead came from this guy Chip Conley who was just on the podcast, who's a longtime hotelier and he's just like, "You need a way to differentiate status and levels of quality," and this is one way to do it. And there's a lot of actually fear on the product team that this is gonna tank search conversion, people will be distracted by this thing. Interestingly, it made hosts really happy, like you, just like, "I wanna be a Superhost. I don't know why but I wanna be a Superhost." Uh, it didn't actually move any metrics which is interesting. May- might have changed over the years but it was an interesting, interesting contrarian project that feels like how could you not have it, but it didn't really move any metrics which always surprised us, but maybe it did later. Anyway, uh, I really love this very simple way of thinking about delight and I think, I think you're most underselling what this framework is helping people with, which is just how to build great product experiences. So there's this joy plus surprise piece which is just the emotional component. You'll feel delighted if you're... there's joy and surprise. And then this three piece more, I don't know, even practical way of thinking about it, removing friction, anticipating needs, exceeding expectations. Like this is how to build great experiences and part of that is being delighted by it, part of it is just this is a great experience.

  9. 22:02 – 29:52

    B2B vs. B2C: Why all products need emotional connection

    1. LR

      I think a big elephant in the room with this question is B2B versus B2C and just like when does this not worth your time? I imagine companies like Workday and SAP and ServiceNow and all these... Salesforce, that did really well, very undelightful. The way I think about this is when it's like a greenfield market and there's nothing amazing yet, it... you don't need to make it as great of an experience as long as it's solving a real big pain point. But as the market gets more competitive, Linear is a good example here, the way you can stand out is make it a much better experience, make it much more delightful. Um, thoughts?

    2. NC

      Yeah. Thanks for bringing this B2B versus B2C thing 'cause it comes a lot and every time we talk about delight, people might connect that to the B2C world. And honestly for me like, uh, as long as there are human using the product at the end of the day then they need their emotion to be honored. So, um, so for example when I actually started this project of delight, I realized that most of my career has been mostly closed to the B2C world. Yes, like I've been working for Skype, Spotify, Google Meet, Google Chrome. So I quickly realized that I needed to interview people from the B2B space so that I get the sense of what's delight in their space. So I interviewed people from like GitHub or Atlassian or Snowflake. I mean, I really wanted to get the variety of industry and type of industries. And what I realized which is probably not a surprise is that they do value emotional connection in a way or another. I mean, it's not something new. They just do it in a different way. So for example for Dropbox they do have a product principle called Cupcake, for Snowflake they have something called, um, Superhero. I mean, the names could vary but the meaning is exactly the same, I mean, it's all about bringing joy to the customers. So I came up with this concept of B2H which is business to human. For me, it's really important to take into consideration human emotion while building the product whether in a B2B space or a B2C space. And by the way, exactly as you said like since people are so much exposed to B2C examples, I mean, the expectation are getting higher. We are expecting also from B2B products to become more human and to feel more human. So actually when I wrote this book I defined what I call humanization as a type of delighter. I mean I listed couple of delighters and humanization is one of them and I even said it's my favorite. It's about asking the following question. If my product was a human, how would... the experience would be better? Just think about it that way.So for example, when I work for Google Meet, and I actually joined B- Google Meet right when pandemic happened, like 2020, and we had to first work on those challenges of, like, how people are taking, eh, these new ways of working from home. So instead of comparing Google Meet to Zoom or Teams, or whatever other video conferencing tool, do you know what did we compare Google Meet to as-

    3. LR

      Hmm.

    4. NC

      ... the best, do you think?

    5. LR

      Maybe just a, like, an actual conversation?

    6. NC

      Exactly. I mean-

    7. LR

      Hmm.

    8. NC

      ... that's the bar that we are setting ourself. Like, comparing Google Meet to how this experience of meeting could be better if we were all having this conversation in a room. 'Cause if you get this as a goal, you set a higher bar of expectation and you start to think in a human way. And by the way, there is another example that really stick to me, which, uh, when I was, uh, preparing for this project, I spoke with a head of product from Dyson and he said a very similar thing. Actually, when I spoke with Andy, he said, um, "We don't compare our Dyson vacuum cleaner to other vacuum cleaner. We compare them to, what if I hire a, a real person, and how would that real person would be better than the robot that we are building?" Actually, if you hire a certain person to clean your house, you'd probably tell that person to start with a certain room or to clean in certain way, which the robot was not ready at that time. So they added recommendation into their robot to get closer to what a re- a real human, like a space could happen. So tha- that's the concept of humanization. It's all about making sure that your product... Or it's actually about reminding users that there are real human behind the product, and we wanna achieve that.

    9. LR

      If you wanna see a really delightful humanlike, uh, vacuum cleaner, the, the Maddog, I don't know if you've seen the Maddog. Uh, I just got one, and yeah, that is a pure delight. S- they, they nailed... They don't... (laughs) They didn't need to read your book. They nailed it. Um, so coming back to this B2B piece, I think it's an important piece to just make sure we help people see. Do you feel like what I said is true, that if it's, like, a new market without a ton of competition and you're solving a big pain point there, like, "This is a hair-on-fire problem, I just need... I need a CRM that works," or, "I need a customer service thing for C- Service Now." Uh, there's less need to get this right to, or exceed expectations, to anticipate needs if you're just, like, solving the problem they have and there's nothing else, uh, that's probably gonna be okay?

    10. NC

      Honestly, maybe the product will work. And of course it has to work, but the problem is that if you do not integrate that part into the way how you're building the solution, you're probably just building a product, but not the product that will stand out. I mean, if there is another competitors who's addressing the emotional needs, then the other product will win. I mean, that's how the market is today. So of course you will make a product that works, but, uh, do you want it to just work or do you want it to stand out? And, and by the way, since we're talking about this B2B and B2C space, just a couple of days ago, I was pinged in a post, a LinkedIn post that I really loved so I'm sharing it here. Actually, it was from a product leader from Buffer, and actually, he said something really interesting. He actually said that, "We realize that, um, there are about 2% of our users who are not using Buffer. They are clearly inactive. They are not using our product for many months. So we decided to send them an email and say, 'Hey, we noticed that you're not using our product. Are we gonna refund you? Meaning that we're gonna lose money, yes, but it's about trust and integrity." So this is a B2B space. This is about creating trust. This is about creating, like, this connection. And the reaction is really funny, 'cause you might remind people to, like, resign or, or, uh, close your contract with a certain, uh, product, but the... That even create a deeper connection that might even a- like, drive you to not cancel at all. Like, "Okay, you're inviting me to cancel, but thanks s- so much for your honesty so I'm gonna remain." I mean, this kind of thing build trust over time and build emotional connection over time, so it might not, as you said, like, create, like, a big impact on metrics, but over time, as you're building personality or building a br- a brand for your product, it will definitely have impact over time.

    11. LR

      Slack, I think, is a good example of that.

    12. NC

      Yeah.

    13. LR

      I remember using Slack for the first time, the little delightful animations and these little funny quotes, and they ended up being a $30 billion company. It feels like what I'm hearing in... is just, like, the more competition there is, the more you need to stand out, the more this is something you need to get right. Because if there's a problem you're solving and no one else is, you don't... The experience doesn't have to be incredible. Like, Revolut, another example. There's a lot of banking products. But the way they stood out, incredible experience, a lot of delight. Okay. Let's get to how to actually do this. We've been... So far we've just, like, here's why it's worth thinking about and doing.

  10. 29:52 – 30:57

    The Delight Model: A 4-step framework

    1. LR

      Now, let's talk about how to actually approach this. You have a really simple and, uh, clear way of approaching this so you're not spending time on the wrong stuff, uh, and not just investing in confetti. W- you know, it's called the delight model. Talk about that.

    2. NC

      Yes. So the things that we did not really spoke about is the fact that over my product career, I've been, like, a regular PM, but during my time at Google, I've been the delight PM. So there is even an entire product team who actually work on making sure that the product is delightful. I mean, we do have such a thing for Chrome. We have that for Google Meet. I mean, that's a real thing. And of course I understand that not every company could allow themself having the luxury of having a delight PM, so that's why I came with this concept of, how can I make this actionable? And I created the delight model. It's very simple. And by the way, what I wanna really highlight is that you do not have to change any ways of working or any, uh, any strategic, um-... steps that you're already taking in your company. So what is the delight, uh, model? It happens in four steps,

  11. 30:57 – 33:55

    Step 1: Identifying user motivators (functional and emotional)

    1. NC

      so we're gonna work them one by one, and the very first step is about identifying users' motivators. What I mean is that actually users are using products for complete different reasons, and that's the very first thing that you need to get aware of. I mean, we do segmentation. That's usually something that most of product people do, but we usually segment based on demographic or behavioral, meaning that who they are or what do they really do with the product? And the third type of segmentation that I believe is very powerful is the motivational segmentations, which mean that you need to segment your users based on why do they use the products. Like for example, like when I worked at Spotify, we know that there are people who use Spotify to search for a specific track, or there are people who use Spotify because they wanna get inspired, and others will listen to Spotify because they wanna feel less lonely or they wanna feel productive or they wanna feel connected. I mean, these are motivators. And the very first step of the model is to make sure that we have a list of what we call, like, functional motivators and the emotional motivators. I'm pretty sure like most of the listeners are familiar with the functional motivators, but the emotional motivators is an extremely important part of the process because we're gonna use it later. That's the first step.

    2. LR

      So just to be, just to be clear, so functional motivators are like, all right, I need to find a song, I need to get inspired, I need to find something for my kid to listen to.

    3. NC

      Yeah.

    4. LR

      What are s- what are some examples of emotional motivators?

    5. NC

      So emotional motivator, motivator for the Spotify example could be I wanna feel less lonely-

    6. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. NC

      ... or I want to, uh, change my mood. That's something that sometime you go to Spotify without specific, uh, thing in your head to listen to, but the, the need is to change your mood or to feel nostalgic or something like that. I mean, this could be example. For example, in the case of Uber, I know that they have been working heavily on allowing users to feel secure and they build a lot of feature for security ............................

    8. LR

      That's interesting. It's like a nuanced version of jobs to be done. There's the functional jobs to be done and then there's the, the how you wanna feel.

    9. NC

      Yeah.

    10. LR

      Super interesting. Okay, great.

    11. NC

      A- and even when the, when we talk about emotional motivators, we have the personal emotional motivators and the social emotional motivators. The personal emotional motivators is how user want to feel while using the product. That's exactly is. The social emotional motivators is how users want others to feel about them while using the product. I mean, think about Wrapped, for example. A lot of people share their Wrapped because they want to share how cool they are and, you know, to be perceived cool and to feel connected. I mean, these are different areas of emotional connection. So these are the, this is the first step, identifying emotional motivators also as well as functional motivators.

  12. 33:55 – 34:46

    Step 2: Converting motivators into product opportunities

    1. NC

      Now, the second step is to convert those motivators. I mean, as soon as you have this list, how can I convert this into an opportunity or product opportunity? So you have the basis. I mean, the hardest job is to identify these motivators and then you can identify product opportunities related to that. And by the way, we see the shift that we are not too much talking about product space but rather opportunity space, because solutions are not only about solving problems but also about honoring needs and making sure that we are solving for those needs. So we can use things like how might we or whatever I, um ... By the way, I'm not very religious or strict about whatever framework could be used here. It's all about starting thing from these motivators and define them and put them in the strategy as opportunities to be solved. So this is second step.

  13. 34:46 – 36:46

    Step 3: Identifying solutions with the delight grid

    1. NC

      The third step where we get to more concrete things here is to try to identify solutions but that solve for those motivators. So remember, we actually identified functional motivators and emotional motivators, and I defined what I call the delight grade. So the delight grade is a matrix where we place functional motivators and emotional motivators, and then you will select among all of the identified solutions and you place them in the grade based on what motivators is this solution solving for? I mean, is it solving for one particular functional motivator? Is it solving for one particular emotional motivator or both? Why are we doing this? Because we are categorizing features into three types. There's the surface delight when a feature is only solving for an emotional motivator. I mean, think about Wrapped. We used Wrapped couple of times here, but Wrapped has nothing functional into it. It's all about allowing people to feel cool and, and share that with their friends. That's surface delight. The, another example of surface delight, the other day I was using my Apple Watch and it was my birthday. So on my birthday I had this balloon, I don't know if you experienced that, like it's saying happy birthday in the screen. I mean, why not? This is all about creating this emotional connection on the emotional level only. The second type of delight is what I call low delight. It's when the feature is only solving for one of those functional motivators. And of course, the third type, which is the most powerful for me is the deep delight. Actually, this happens when you have a feature where you are at the same time solving for a functional need and also solving for an emotional need. For example, in the case of Spotify, Discover Weekly or Spotify Jam could be a good example of deep delight where we actually can, of course, learn or get inspired with the new music but in a personalized way so it allows us to feel heard and seen and understood by the end.

  14. 36:46 – 40:22

    Step 4: Validating ideas with the delight checklist

    1. NC

      And that's the third step, which is about identifying solutions and make sure that they are delightful and c- categorize them here. The s- the fourth step, which is the last step of the model, is validating 'cause-How can we make sure that we are not just creating only surface delight, or we are just doing it in the wrong way? So I created something that I call the delight checklist. It's actually just a checklist that anyone can go through to make sure that the feature that we're building is making user impact, is making, uh, business impact, because like delight is not an excuse to just add like a aesthetic and- and fun part in the product. It really has to be aligned with the business. But also there are other couple of things, like feasibility, uh, familiarity. Uh, and very important part for me is inclusion. Like inclusion really has to be taken into consideration here, because, uh, when we talk about emotion, what makes me happy is not necessarily what make you happy, right? I mean, even myself, I might be happy with something that is not necessarily what's gonna make me happy tomorrow. So inclusion is really important when we talk about delight, 'cause we've seen a lot of example where it's done wrong, and I can sham- can share some example here as well. So f- the example that come to my mind is, uh, actually something that happened last year here in Paris or in France in general. It was Deliveroo, you know, this, uh, uh, company that, uh, deliver, and actually it was Mother's Day, and on Mother's Day, they came up with the idea of sending notification to Deliveroo users, and the notification look exactly as a missed call from your mom.

    2. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. NC

      I mean, if you look at it from the screen, it says like, "Missed call from your mom." You click on it. You get like, "Hey, it's Mother's Day."

    4. LR

      Oh.

    5. NC

      "Think about your mother."

    6. LR

      That's clever, that's clever.

    7. NC

      It- it was supposed to be delightful. The problem is that this feature had the worst press ever in France, like people really started to complain about it, because yes, the- the intention was positive. Yes, it was joyful for some people, but not everyone has the luxury of enjoying such notification. For some it means joy. For others it means grief or sorrow or whatever. So it was not inclusive enough. So that's why I'm highlighting the inclusion part for delight, because it might be undertaken sometime.

    8. LR

      Okay, incredible. And that was a really good example of why you have this checklist at the end of making sure this is actually not gonna upset people, well, accidentally. This episode is brought to you by Lucidlink, the storage collaboration platform. You've built a great product, but how you show it through video, design, and storytelling is what brings it to life. If your team works with large media files, videos, design assets, layered project files, you know how painful it can be to stay organized across locations. Files live in different places, you're constantly asking, "Is this the latest version?" Creative work slows down while people wait for files to transfer. Lucidlink fixes this. It gives your team a shared space in the cloud that works like a local drive. Files are instantly accessible from anywhere, no downloading, no syncing, and always up to date. That means producers, editors, designers, and marketers can open massive files in their native apps, work directly from the cloud, and stay aligned wherever they are. Teams at Adobe, Shopify, and top creative agencies use Lucidlink to keep their content engine running fast and smooth. Try it for free at lucidlink.com/lenny. That's L-U-C-I-D-L-I-N-K dot com slash lenny.

  15. 40:22 – 42:18

    The Delight Model summarized

    1. LR

      So let me just mirror back these four steps, and then I'm curious if there's another example of something you built that followed this model that had a really good impact. But let me, um, let me share. So basically, what this is is to help you figure out what is worth investing in under this umbrella of delight, which hopefully now you're convinced is worth your time, especially if you're trying to stand out amongst a bunch of competitors. So step one is identify user motivators, like what are people- what are the jobs to be done, both very tan- practically, functionally you call them, functional needs, and then also emotional needs. Are people trying to feel happy, sad? What are- within that bucket, actually, I'm gonna take a quick tangent. When you think about emotional needs, what's like the taxonomy of them? 'Cause I know there's a lot of emotion, anger, uh, sad. Like what are the most common emotional needs in your experience to think about when you're like, "Okay, here's when- here's how to think about what the options might be"?

    2. NC

      It depend on the area, but for some product it could be security. For other it might be, uh, like a, "I want to feel a better version of myself." Like for example, when I spoke with some leaders from Miro, uh, they might consider this as an emotional need. Like they are using the product, of course for the functionality that is allowing them to achieve, but also to showcase that they are a better facilitator or they are a better leader or just feel a better version of themself. This could be a potential emotional motivator. So it can range depending on the type of the product or the industry, but actually emotions could be like a- we can use, for example, the wheel of emotion as a basis where we can select from it, but, uh, not all emotion could apply to all type of products. It has to be specific.

    3. LR

      Cool. That's a really good example, uh, uh, of feeling security. It feels like that's something that more and more people want. Uh, all these AI companions, like they're gonna have all kinds of emotional needs.

  16. 42:18 – 45:21

    The importance of familiarity (Spotify Discover Weekly story)

    1. LR

      So identify user motivators, functional and emotional, turn those m- motivators into delightful product opportunities, figure out where you have opportunities to achieve that sort of delight, identify potential solutions, like actually ideate on solutions, and then validate the ideas through this checklist which you have in your book. Are there a few you want to share? There are just like here's a checklist of stuff you want to think through.

    2. NC

      Yeah, so we spoke about, uh, inclusion as a really important one, and then the delight checklist. Another area could be familiarity as well, because of course we love innovation but we want to make sure that we are not surprising too much. I mean, we, uh, think that we love surprise, but we don't want to be very much surprisive. And I have a maybe interesting story, uh, to share here which is, uh, something that, um, actually created the success of Discover Weekly. So I'm not sure if you know about that, but I'm gonna go ahead and share it.

    3. LR

      Yeah, let's do it.

    4. NC

      Uh- uh-

    5. LR

      I- I- I use Discover Weekly all the time.

    6. NC

      So when Discover Wiki was first, uh, thought of, or like created-

    7. LR

      And it's in Spotify, by the way.

    8. NC

      Yes. So (laughs) Discover Wiki, uh, how it was created was the fact that it was supposed to be a complete discovery, meaning that it was supposed to be complete new for the users. So that's the idea behind it. It was like, we are not... the user is not supposed to find or listen tracks that has been listened to or liked before. So it was shipped. And when it was shipped, like of course we have... we started to see, uh, big success in the metrics. But you know what? Two weeks later, people like the engineers realized that there've been a bug in the feature. Actually, the bug was that sometimes the algorithm was injecting some of the liked song. So the playlist was not completely new to the users. It had some, uh, familiar feature I would say. So of course, the engineers fixed the bug. And you know what happened?

    9. LR

      Metrics tanked.

    10. NC

      All the metrics. Exactly. Like all the metrics, all the success metrics of the feature was going down. So they quickly realized that actually what users really liked in the Discover Wiki was not the fact that it was completely new, but this familiarity that has been injected randomly in the app just made it even more better and, and even more appreciated by the users. So they fixed the bug. And now with Discover Wiki that you're enjoying is a buggy version, if we can say. (laughs) So, uh, I mean, that's why I, I added familiarity as a, as a, as an element that needs to be checked. 'Cause we don't want to just inject complete new surprising feature to the user that might be shocking.

    11. LR

      That's an amazing story. That was your team that worked on that?

    12. NC

      Yeah, I've been very close working with them.

    13. LR

      That's so cool.

    14. NC

      'Cause I've been working on the, uh, transcoding part, and we had to transcode these tracks for them.

    15. LR

      That's so funny. (laughs) How many other products are we missing out on by not making these mistakes by accident? Uh, that makes so much sense. Just like people want a little bit of like, oh yeah, I love that song. Oh, let's go. And then, okay, there's something new. Uh, that is

  17. 45:21 – 51:32

    Real examples: Chrome’s tab management solution

    1. LR

      so funny. Okay, so, so these are the four steps, and again, what you're trying to do here, I'll just go back to what makes something delightful is you remove friction, make something that you expect to be hard really easy, like canceling an Uber ride, getting a refund on an Uber ride, anticipating needs, which I think was the eSIM example you gave in, in the Revolut app. And Revolut, by the way, very delightful experience from what I hear. I've never used it myself, being in the US. And then exceeding expectations, giving someone an, an... yeah, giving them something they never expected and like, wow. What was the example there again, just to make that really concrete of anticipating, of exceeding expectations?

    2. NC

      So for exceeding expectation, we spoke about, for example, the shopping. Uh, it's called a cashback feature-

    3. LR

      Oh yeah, the-

    4. NC

      ... on Edge.

    5. LR

      ... coupon code.

    6. NC

      But there are plenty of them. Yeah.

    7. LR

      Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. Is that something... is that something Microsoft does, or that's like an extension that your has been installed?

    8. NC

      No, it's, it's completely a part of the product.

    9. LR

      What?

    10. NC

      And it's even autofill. Like it's-

    11. LR

      Oh my god.

    12. NC

      ... autofill. You don't even... I mean, same like a password-

    13. LR

      That's wow.

    14. NC

      ... autofill.

    15. LR

      Yeah.

    16. NC

      And I know Chrome is working on it, so it's coming if you are a Chrome user.

    17. LR

      Wow. What a, what a, what a weird thing. Like I, I, I love it, but it's funny that that happens. Like all these poor businesses are going to lose out on all this revenue. Anyway, we don't have to get into that. Uh, okay, is there an example, like a broader example of something you worked on following this model that was really successful or impactful?

    18. NC

      When I worked at Google, particularly for Google Meet, I told you like I've been a PM for delight. So we had that mission that we really needed to delight our users, and that's how I actually learned that it's actually a discipline. It's not the buzzword. It's something that we can really put in place. So I do have two examples I can share with you.

    19. LR

      Awesome.

    20. NC

      One is from Google Meet and one from Google Chrome. Which one do you want to listen to?

    21. LR

      Let's go with Chrome since we've shat- chatted about Meet, but I want to hear them both. Let's start with Chrome.

    22. NC

      (laughs) .

    23. LR

      I love Chrome.

    24. NC

      Let's start with Chrome. So when I work for Chrome, I had to work on the most challenging issue. What do you think it is?

    25. LR

      Most challenging issue of Chrome. Uh, memory. Memory management? No.

    26. NC

      There is even worse. It's tab management.

    27. LR

      Tab management. (laughs)

    28. NC

      How people-

    29. LR

      Okay. Okay.

    30. NC

      No, it's the... it is the hardest one, because actually when I worked at tab management, I realized that people are working with tabs for complete different way. It's like people are leaving tabs open as reminders or as, as to-do-

  18. 51:32 – 55:02

    Google Meet’s solution for “Zoom fatigue”

    1. LR

      What's the Google Meet story?

    2. NC

      So I told you when I joined Google Meet, it was maybe one month before COVID hit Europe. Like, the worst, uh, period you can join Google Meet (laughs) 'cause, I mean, the usage just gets skyrocket. Like, we all found ourself moving from having meetings in rooms and clinics to 100% remote. So the very first couple of months, and it was about three to four months, I had to understand the behavioral e- the impact or the emotional impact of this new behavior, the fact that people are staying home and having these back to back. What's the emotional impact of this new experience? And of course, what we did was to interview a lot of people and with the help of user researcher, we collected a lot of informations. And when we tried to synthesize these, uh, informations, we actually realized that there are three main patterns. Like, people are saying, "I'm feeling bored." People are saying there is a low interaction, and there was even a new term that was born during COVID time, which is called the Zoom fatigue.

    3. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    4. NC

      You probably heard about that. I was-

    5. LR

      That's funny that it was Zoom fatigue and not Google Meet fatigue.

    6. NC

      I was really happy it was called Zoom fatigue.

    7. LR

      Oh, that's a good point. (laughs)

    8. NC

      It's always better to put it on the competitor when it's negative. Anyway, uh...

    9. LR

      It's bittersweet. Bittersweet.

    10. NC

      So we had to work... I mean, in that case, if you can see, we did not really identify motivators. We did identify demotivators 'cause sometimes it's even easier... Actually, sometimes it's easier to let you know what frustrates me or stress me than tell you what makes me happy. So if identifying emotional motivators turns, turns out to be complicated, so you can try to identify those emotional demotivators. And in that case, we had to work on these three demotivators and come up with solutions that could help leverage that or at least reduce in one way or another. So when we worked on Zoom fatigue, we actually realized and we, uh, got help from a study that was published from Stanford, by the way, that one of the causes for Zoom fatigue was the fact of seeing your self-view.

    11. LR

      Hmm.

    12. NC

      It's not about seeing others. It's the fact that you see yourself. Why? I mean, just imagine yourself walking on the street and someone is holding a mirror next to you. I mean, even if you avoid, your brain will try always to check how you look. So the fact that there was self-view was a big risk, and it was even listed as among the most significant risk of Zoom fatigue or causes of Zoom fatigue. So we worked on minimizing self-view. It's as simple as you can minimize your self-view, meaning that you can still broadcast or share your video, but you don't have to see yourself. That's one example that we worked on. The second one, which was related to low interaction and boredom, we tried to understand how can we bring in a little bit more of joy, but at the same time allow people to feel heard and seen and active. And that's how we actually brought reaction, emoji reaction, you know, that waving hand or thumb up, because sometime it feels invasive to unmute yourself and say, "I agree," or, like, cut the speaker for saying, "Yes, uh, I don't agree," or some... I mean, these emojis can help you stay alive, stay connected and present and somehow improve the interactivity part. So these are the two features that we introduced back then.

    13. LR

      That is such a cool example. I find myself using Google Meet all the time now instead of Zoom, so great job Google Meet team. I know Zoom was winning for a long time, and I feel like Google Meet's really turned it around. Good job.

  19. 55:02 – 59:39

    Getting buy-in from skeptical leaders

    1. LR

      Let me ask a couple questions to keep digging into this question. It feels like some COs, founders, leaders are like, "Yes, this is worth investing in. Let's definitely do it." There's a lot that are just like, "No, stop. Wait, this... Like, we got other stuff to do." What's your best advice for trying to get buy-in from a CEO or just some kind of leader that's shutting this kind of stuff down?

    2. NC

      The very first advice is to try not to convince. (laughs) I mean, honestly, if you try to convince, it's a lost battle. I feel like, uh, we live in a world where there's truth, there's a false. If you come to your CEO and leader and say like, "I heard Nesrine talk about delight. We should absolutely do that," it, uh, it might seem like a threat for, for the organization, for the ways of working, 'cause it's something new. Instead, have you heard about this concept of, uh, perception versus, uh, perspective?

    3. LR

      Hm, no. I don't think so.

    4. NC

      So perception is our way of seeing things. This is exactly how we understand things. This is how we are convinced. For example, you listen to a podcast talking about delight, then you are, you have your own view about what this is about. Perspective, though, is the other view, is the worldview, how other perceive delight. So there's very likely, it's very likely that others, like leaders and CEO, the reason why they're saying no is because their view is that delight is about this nice to have or the cherry on the top. So instead of trying to convince, and that's why I said don't even try to convince, is to try to align and put yourself into the leader's and the CEO's shoe and try what do they value most? Once you understand that, try to see how can delight align or help achieve that goal? And let me share an example with you, 'cause um, when I left Google and I started coaching founders and CPO, I had one founder, actually, who, uh, has been running a se- uh, a startup for helping musicians and artists to find curators. I mean, that's the core value and mission of the startup. And the, when we initiated the coaching side, we actually started talking about strategy, OKR. I mean, that's exactly what he was, he had in mind. He wanted to get help into creating product strategies and OKRs. And over time, as we started like coaching, we ended up talking about delight. The reason is, I actually asked him this very simple question. I asked him, "Do you think your users are proud to use your product? Are they proud enough to tell others, artists and musician, to use your product?" And I think that was a really hard question for him, 'cause after reflection, he said, "No, they are not proud because they feel like they are little. I mean, they are getting our help, so they are not able to get to curator by themself. So who's gonna tell others that they are little, like artist, and they are having help from, from us?" That was the beginning of the conversation, and I think after two weeks, he kept coming back, saying, "Hey, Nesrine, I think we need to shift our entire strategy discussion into how can we make our users proud of using the product. We need to find ways to turn our product into ... like our users into proud users, and so they can tell others, tell other musician. They will play the word of mouth game, and they will allow our product to succeed." And that's exactly what we did, by the way. So in the beginning, this founder was completely opposite to the fact that we introduced delight into the product, but as soon as he realized that the fact that he invest into allowing the user to feel proud is so important for the growth and the word of mouth and the success of the business, that became the number one strategy. And by the way, they've been growing. They are now available in the US. So things are going super well for them. But just to show that the fact that you're saying no does not necessarily mean that it's the wrong thing, it's just, it's not aligned enough. You need to find way to align them with what they value.

    5. LR

      Uh, that's awesome advice. It's good advice for just anything you're trying to get buy-in from is understand their goals, connect what you're proposing to what they wanna achieve, and it's almost like don't even use the word delight. Just like think about, okay, here's what they believe we need to do. How might removing friction, antici- anticipating needs and exceeding expectations get us there?

    6. NC

      Yeah.

    7. LR

      And then later be like, "Ha ha, it's delight."

    8. NC

      (laughs)

    9. LR

      (laughs) I'm just kidding. Okay, that was an awesome example.

  20. 59:39 – 1:02:41

    Prioritizing delight: The 50-40-10 rule

    1. LR

      So along those lines, just when you have all these ideas, we talked about this a bit, but just like you have a bunch of ideas, a bunch of ways to do, uh, add delight, ma- make it a better experience, what's your advice for prioritizing amongst all of the ways that you can remove friction, anticipate needs, exceed expectations? How do you pick the things that are actually worth investing in?

    2. NC

      The very first thing that I really wanna highlight here is that we need to shift from the mindset that tells us balancing or like a how can I balance between delight and functionality? Because we need to move away from delight versus functionality into delight in functionality. So that's the biggest move that I really, uh, wanna share here, because we should really get away from idea that should I prioritize delight or should I prioritize functionality? And remember, like deep delight it, is that concept of trying to solve problems and create solutions in a way that emotion is taken into consideration, into that, and by the way, I created this model called 50/40/10, and 50/40/10 is actually a guidance or a recommendation so that if you have done your delight grid and you categorized your solutions or your roadmap or your backlog into low delight, surface delight, and deep delight, 50/40/10 will tell you that 50% of your features should be for low delight. Yes, 50% should be for functionality only because like a product has to function. I'm not saying that you should only work on delight. 40% for deep delight where actually functionality is there, it's just that we are building it a little bit different so that people will feel valued, and only 10% for surface delight. I mean, you can-... bring a little bit of surface delight throughout the year, maybe two features a year, that may just bring that joy that people will create, of course, the brand and the personality that we are working on. And when I worked at Spotify for example, we had some times where we, of course, blended all that into the same roadmap. Like for example, we had a time where we were working on improving search, 'cause at some time, uh, maybe you don't remember that, but at some point of time, like search was not functioning that well, so that was impro- improved, and that's of course functionality only. And also, we work on introducing video podcast on, on Spotify, and we worked on Canvas. So Canvas are these small video, looping video, you know the small clip when you open Spotify and you have like a small clip, uh, showing up?

    3. LR

      Oh, my s- my, my, uh, son is addicted to that. He's like, he likes to play music and then he found this thing that is like TikTok for Spotify where he's just listening to the music in these little clips, and I'm like...

    4. NC

      Yeah.

    5. LR

      ... "How do I..." Yeah, it's... I don't want him to be watching that. It's like little iPad almost, but, but it is delightful for my adults.

    6. NC

      So for me, the success comes from the, the blending or the balancing or you... How can you create a roadmap where you have a bouquet of deep delight, surface delight-

    7. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. NC

      ... and low delight all

  21. 1:02:41 – 1:06:45

    Creating a culture of delight in your organization

    1. NC

      together?

    2. LR

      These are awesome examples. Say someone listening is super bought in. How do we do this at our company? And they're... and say they're a manager. Say they're like a manager of PMs or even just a PM. Is there something more they can do to create kind of this culture of delight being important?

    3. NC

      To start, it's a mindset, and I call this the delight culture. I mean, uh, of course, it's really important to talk about it so that we understand what it is, but it has to be part of the culture of the organization. I mean, that's how I see it. So for example, at Google, I've seen that, uh, for... during a long time, we had, uh, like a product pillar called Delight. And the fact that it was a permanent place in the strategy, and we see it all the time, that's actually a kind of reminder that we need to build features and create opportunities that map and align with that pillars. I mean, just the fact as a director, having this as a pillar is a first step. And the second thing is to make it part of the routine. I mean, the routine of your... and rituals of your company. So here an example. When I worked at Spotify, we used to have something called a Squad Health Check. Maybe you heard about that at some point. I mean, it's something about checking how, how good is the team is functioning, and it was happening every quarter. And actually, the leaders used to be extremely religious about making sure that the team is actually doing it. And the fact that they show that they care made it happen every quarter. So the leaders actually, if they are bo- bought in, as you said, and they are convinced, they have a, a big role to play into putting that in place by giving it a chance. And again, when I worked at Spotify, we had something amazing called Hack Days. I mean, I've seen it with other company, but it's never as good as at Spotify. So we used to have Hack Days every month, and we used to have Hack Week toward the end of the, um, the year. And again, the fact that it's happening on a regular days make the thinking and the mindset completely adopted, like the mindset of innovation and going completely out of box, et cetera. So now I'm advocating for Delight Days, and I actually, uh, help organizations setting up Delight Days. And I recently did this with a company called Migros. It's, uh, actually the largest supermarket chain in Switzerland, and we had Hack Days or like a Delight Days in that case, where we actually of course spoke about delight, and then we allowed all the teams to go crazy and innovate and think about delightful features. It was very playful, the team loves it, and we ended the day by giving them the chance to demo, and we select the best or the winning delight feature that the f- the, the company will end up implementing. So it's about putting it as a routine in a continuous way so that it become like part of the culture, not just a topic that is brought in once in a while.

    4. LR

      That sounds so fun, a Delight Day. And again, when people s- hear this word, it could sound like the confetti example, but it's... you keep coming back to this point. Delight is not just that surface level low type of delight. There's deep delight that solves anticipated needs, exceed expectations, or removes friction. So deep delight is, is still a type of delight, but it's actually one that also happens to solve a functional need. Okay. It's interesting. So as you talk, I've been thinking about like what are the fastest growing companies in the world, the top product teams? And it's interesting how delight, they're so delightful, and I don't think it's a coincidence. I think about Cursor, maybe the fastest... Is it maybe the second-fastest growing company behind ChatGPT. Like speaking of exceeding expectations, you just like click tab and it codes for you. Anticipating needs, that's like the ultimate example of anticipating your need, it's writing your code for you. Okay. Delight, amazing. Uh, lovable, like it's called Lovable. (laughs)

  22. 1:06:45 – 1:08:15

    The habituation effect

    1. LR

    2. NC

      Yes.

    3. LR

      Amazing example. ChatGPT, if you can imagine exceeding expectations and blowing your mind, incredible example of delight. Uh, I think about Linear as we're talking just like they are winning in, in a very crowded space because they invested in making it much more delightful. Uh, I think about Suno if you know the music AI app, where it just like creates magical music for you, just telling it what you want to hear. So there's so much here of just like, yes, there's a lot of power to making... especially in a crowded market, in AI especially just make... It's almost like table stakes now, it needs to blow your mind for anyone to pay attention.

    4. NC

      We just need to be careful because the surprise has an effect that vanish over time. So there's this thing that is called habituation effect. How can you make sure that you're not just surprising your user once when they use it the first time and then they become like normal use case? So you mentioned like couple of example. Of course, I do agree, they are all delightful, but one of the element that i- that is part of the delight checklist is are you or do you at least have a plan to maintain that delight or that surprise over time? Like for example, when we introduced background replace in Google Meet, we first introduced like a blur, then we added static image, then we allowed for video background, then we added like a immersive background where it's like a moving slowly as if it's very real, and now they even have like AI generated background. So it's about creating that surprise over time in a complete continuous way to avoid that habituation effect.

  23. 1:08:15 – 1:10:21

    When delight goes wrong: Apple reactions example

    1. NC

    2. LR

      Such a good point. Makes me think about Snapchat who their only like strategy was just keep out-innovating everybody else with new lenses and maps and all. Like that was their whole thing, just use the newest thing, keep doing it, keep doing new stuff to keep people excited. Uh, such a good example. Hard to do. Okay, uh, I know you also have a story around Apple reactions, uh, a- as an example of good or bad delight. Can you share that?

    3. NC

      It's actually a feature that very much known nowadays, but, uh, maybe people don't know exactly what's wrong or what's, what's good or what's bad about it. So it actually happened a couple of years ago now that actually Apple introduced updates, uh, into their operating systems, and that update, of course, enabled the fact that if you, uh, use gesture, you initiate like fireworks or whatever, any type of reaction to this.

    4. LR

      I hate, hate that shit.

    5. NC

      Yes, it's just your reaction. And it happens actually during the time where I worked at Google Meet. And the reason why I remember it very well is because we had a lot of complaint from our Meet users saying, "Hey, what this feature is about? I wanna disable it." And we're like, "You need to disable it on your like, uh, operating system if you're using a Mac." And why it's not, uh, like, uh, inclusive by the way? I mean, this is one of the example I use for the non e- ex- uh, inclusiveness of a, of a delightful feature because it did happen, and that's a real story by the way, being a person having a call with a therapist, having a hurt finger, and he was trying to show his finger to the therapist and what happens, like fireworks happening. I mean, what an appropriate time for w- fireworks. And of course, bad press. I mean, you wanna avoid this bad press, and, and that's why like delight is great, but do it in a conscious way and make sure that it's adapted for all situation and c- call cases.

    6. LR

      Wow, such a good example of (laughs) delight gone wrong. I, I had so many podcast episodes where the guest is like thumbs up and then just this thing shows up, and I did stuff like, "What is going on here? What is..." Like no one told you it was turned on. How do you even turn this thing off? Oh my God. Uh, that's such a good example.

  24. 1:10:21 – 1:12:24

    How delight motivates product teams

    1. LR

      Okay, I've covered everything I was wanting to cover. Is there anything that we haven't covered? Anything else you wanted to share that, uh, you wanna share before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

    2. NC

      We spoke about some of the benefits of delight, like driving loyalties and retentions and word of mouth, and that's very much clear. But there is one overlooked benefit that even myself I was not aware of, and I wanna share that with you because it's an interesting conversation I had a couple of months ago. I was actually giving a delight workshop in one of the largest health tech, uh, company here in France. It's called Doctolib. And we had an amazing day, we spoke about a lot of ideas of delight, but then toward the end of the day, I was approached by the product director called Suzanne, and she actually told me something that stick. I think it's worth mentioning here. She actually said, "Uh, Nasrin you spoken about a lot of benefits of delight, but there is one benefit that I did not mention at all." And I was curious like, "What is it?" And she said like, "I've seen all the PMs today super motivated, excited like crazy." The fact that PMs are working on delight brings them very high level of motivation. We're not talking about user motivation here, but like the employee motivation, and it's so real. I mean, of course we have some time to work on upgrades and migrations and non-fun stuff, but when you work on delightful features, PMs are super excited because they see reaction of users, they see the love of the users, and they get even more happier and more productive. And for me that's actually a real benefit that of course I was not mentioning during the day, but I think it's something that all leaders can take into consideration because we wanna make light work life more exciting and more, more energizing.

    3. LR

      That's a, that's a really good point. Like ideally you find a thing that you're very excited to build because it's so fun and drives functional needs and is just delightful, makes people joyous and, uh, surprised. Uh, that's the Venn diagram we're shooting for.

  25. 1:12:24 – 1:21:14

    Lightning round and final thoughts

    1. LR

      Amazing. Okay. Well with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

    2. NC

      Ooh, I'm ready.

    3. LR

      What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

    4. NC

      Uh, the first book is called Factfulness. Uh, maybe you heard about it. It comes from Ola Rosling and Hans Rosling and Anna Rosling. The three are Swedish. It got... It's been a bestseller for years. It's still a bestseller, by the way, New York Times. And here's the story. Actually, I have a story about this book. Uh, I was living in Sweden back then. I've been living in Sweden for about seven years, by the way, and it was 2019, and I had two kids, three and two at the time. And as every Scandinavian, we've been dreaming about having a cargo bike. So, uh, we started looking for a cargo bike, and it happens that we found a cargo bike.... parked it exactly on our building yard, and so it had a for-sale, uh, like a sign. So we contacted the owner. It ended up to be the bike belongs to Ola Rosling, which is actually the author of Factfulness. And so, uh, by the way, uh, Ola used to be the data PM at Google because he sold his, uh, statistic software to Google at that time. And the interesting part is that actually it's a book that is about how can we drive our thinking more using facts than using bias, and this book was recommended by Barack Obama and Bill Gates and everyone. So the fun story is that I get to read this book before anyone else because it was released that day, and I met that guy. He's awesome. So that's my first book.

    5. LR

      Wow, great story. (laughs)

    6. NC

      And the second book is actually very close to my heart. It's called A Strong Product Community by Petra Miller, who's been on the show by the way. And the reason why I recommend this book is because actually I started my career in research. I've been a researcher after having my PhD for a long time, and when I moved from research to product, I noticed that there is a huge difference in the fact how researcher contribute to community versus product con- contributing to community. And I quickly, really quickly felt lonely when I became a PM, 'cause as a researcher you go to conferences, you review each other's work, and when you become a PM, you have nobody really to review work or to collaborate closely with. So for me, it was really essential from day one to become a speaker or to contribute to some community, whether inside the company or outside the company. For example, at Google, I was initiating something like PM Speaker Series, where we invited people from the outside to share their insights and perspective. So with that, I actually get, uh, we invited Petra at that time, and then we, she got, uh, uh, she interviewed me, and the interview was featured in the book. So if someone want to stay sane and contribute and learn in a product community, that's a great book I recommend.

    7. LR

      Awesome. Okay. Is there a favorite movie or TV show you recently watched that you really enjoyed?

    8. NC

      I have a TV h- show and a movie. Which one do you want to listen to?

    9. LR

      Let's do TV show first.

    10. NC

      TV show. Okay, so the TV show has nothing to do with business or product. It's call- it's the equivalent of, um, the American Greatest Baking, by the way. It's called Le Meilleur Pâtissier. And here's why I love it. I mean, of course I love baking. We did not spoke about that. But the reason why I love it is because the candidates are not professionals. Of course they are good bakers, but they are not professional, meaning that they make good cakes but they fail a lot of cakes as well, and this failure is the most exciting part of the show. It makes it relatable. I mean, I succeed as many as I fail, and the fact that I can see these failures allow the show to be relatable. And that's why, for example, I don't like shows like Top Chef or whatever where the candidates are super, super, uh, professionals. A- and by the way, I mean, I also participate a lot into cooking classes, and I love doing that, and I realized that most of the chefs during those classes talk about emotion. And they talk about we need to feel when we taste and when we eat, and maybe, or just maybe that's why I'm talking about delight and emotional today with you.

    11. LR

      Okay. Uh, you said there's a movie too. Let's hear that.

    12. NC

      The movie I have in mind is called Intouchables. Again, it's a French movie, but it was so successful that there've been a remake. The remake is called, uh, The Upside. Maybe you've watched this movie. So this is based on a real story, and the reason why I love this movie, I mean, it's my favorite by far, is because you go through all emotion throughout the entire movie. I mean, you go through joy, through sorrow, sadness, all in the same, uh, period, and you even laugh for complete and appropriate, uh, situations. And, uh, there's one moment, one particular element that made this movie very unforgettable and very special. It's actually the soundtrack. The soundtrack is something that is so special in the movie and goes so well with the movie that makes it completely unforgettable. And so when I watched the remake, I was completely disappointed because that soundtrack was not part of the movie. So I was completely disappointed as I said, and that's exactly what I call the anti-delight. So I was anti-delighted at that time.

    13. LR

      Un- under-exceeded expectations.

    14. NC

      Yes.

    15. LR

      Okay. Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?

    16. NC

      So we spoke about Revolut. It turns out to be one of my favorite product these days, 'cause, uh, it's actually surprising me almost every time. I mean, this is one of these rare products that every time I use it, there's a new surprise, and, uh, they are really applying this concept of continuous surprise. It's not just like one off and then they, they, they move to something else. So I really like the fact that they are continuously, um, surprising users. But there's another one actually that I might probably share here where when I was interviewed for Google, they asked me this question, "What's your favorite product?" And that was back like six or seven years ago, and I, uh, I actually answered with a complete non-tech products. I actually said at that time the Yoyo stroller. So the Yoyo stroller, it was a surprise, yes, for the interviewer at the time, but it turns out to be the most successful interview I had because the Yoyo stroller has something special that really served one of my very much need at the time. It's a stroller that is completely foldable, there was no one at that time, that you can travel with it in a plane.And at that time one of my biggest stress and fear was taking plane with small kids and how am I gonna manage those in lines and in queues. And that stroller surveyed exactly my emotional needs by allowing me to travel and take the stroller with me on the plane. So just sharing this story because that was my answer for my Google interview.

    17. LR

      That's a really good example of an emotional need of just, like, uh, confidence this can work on a plane when I'm all stressed out with my baby. Uh, I went with the UPPAbaby stroller, for whatever it's worth. It doesn't fold as well. (laughs) Okay, two more questions. Is there a life motto that you find yourself coming back to sharing with friends and family and work or in life?

    18. NC

      It might sound cliché but my life motto would be shoot for the star or even higher if you can. And I've been really following this almost for my entire career. Uh, I told you that I started my career in research and during my PhD I realized that most of my degree are coming from France, so I really had to introduce some international element into it. So I wanted to apply for an exchange program and, uh, when I applied do you know who did I apply first? Like, who did I went s- straight with?

    19. LR

      Hm. No.

    20. NC

      Stanford. Like, I applied for Stanford.

    21. LR

      Nice.

    22. NC

      Like, "Let's see how it goes." I mean the guy answered and he said, "Yes, but you have to pay a lot of fees. I mean that's the policy." Okay, I didn't really manage to get that sponsored so I didn't also want to reduce the prestige of the university so I applied for UCLA and it did work. I mean for me, that was something that I really wanted from the beginning, have something extra or, or not. And I kept doing that throughout my career. Like, I wanted to work for the best tech company and I worked for Google. I wanted to be featured in the best podcast and I'm with you.

Episode duration: 1:24:49

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode tX6nwT1Bsuo

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome