Pod Insights Lenny's Podcast A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype) About this episode Nesrine Changuel helped build Spotify, Google Chrome, and Google Meet. Her work has helped her discover the importance of emotional connection in building successful products. At Google, she served as a dedicated “delight PM,” a role specifically focused on making products more delightful. She recently published Product Delight, a book that provides a practical framework for creating products that serve both functional and emotional needs. Based in Paris, she now coaches founders and CPOs on implementing delight strategies in their organizations.
*What you’ll learn:*
1. Why delight is a business strategy, not just “sprinkling confetti” on top of functionality
2. How to identify emotional motivators that drive product retention
3. The 50-40-10 rule for balancing delight in your roadmap
4. The 4-step delight model
5. The origin story of Spotify’s Discover Weekly
6. Why B2B products need delight just as much as B2C products
7. How to get buy-in from skeptical leaders who think delight is a luxury
*Brought to you by:*
DX—The developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers: https://getdx.com/lenny
Jira Product Discovery—Confidence to build the right thing: https://atlassian.com/lenny
LucidLink—Real-time cloud storage for teams: https://www.lucidlink.com/lenny
*Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-4-step-framework-for-building-delightful-products
*My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/174199489/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation
*Where to find Nesrine Changuel:*
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nesrinechanguel/
• Newsletter: https://nesrinechanguel.substack.com/
• Website: https://nesrine-changuel.com/
*Where to find Lenny:*
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
*In this episode, we cover:*
(00:00) Introduction to Nesrine and product delight
(04:56) Why delight matters
(09:17) What makes a feature “delightful”
(12:29) The three pillars of delight
(13:03) Pillar 1: Removing friction (Uber refund example)
(15:07) Pillar 2: Anticipating needs (Revolut eSIM example)
(17:21) Pillar 3: Exceeding expectations (Edge coupon example)
(18:35) The “confetti effect” and when it actually works
(22:02) B2B vs. B2C: Why all products need emotional connection
(29:52) The Delight Model: A 4-step framework
(30:57) Step 1: Identifying user motivators (functional and emotional)
(33:55) Step 2: Converting motivators into product opportunities
(34:46) Step 3: Identifying solutions with the delight grid
(36:46) Step 4: Validating ideas with the delight checklist
(40:22) The Delight Model summarized
(42:18) The importance of familiarity (Spotify Discover Weekly story)
(45:21) Real examples: Chrome’s tab management solution
(51:32) Google Meet’s solution for “Zoom fatigue”
(55:02) Getting buy-in from skeptical leaders
(59:39) Prioritizing delight: The 50-40-10 rule
(1:02:41) Creating a culture of delight in your organization
(1:06:45) The habituation effect
(1:08:15) When delight goes wrong: Apple reactions example
(1:10:21) How delight motivates product teams
(1:12:24) Lightning round and final thoughts
*Referenced:*
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/
• Linear: https://linear.app/
• How Linear builds product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-linear-builds-product
• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• Asana: https://asana.com/
• Monday: https://monday.com/
• The Product Delight Model: https://nesrinechanguel.substack.com/p/the-product-delight-model
• Revolut: https://www.revolut.com/
• How Revolut trains world-class product managers: The “local CEO” model, raw intellect over experience, and a cultural obsession with building wow products | Dmitry Zlokazov (Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-revolut-trains-world-class-product-managers
• Microsoft Cashback: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/features/shopping-cashback
• Superhuman’s secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed | Rahul Vohra (CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/superhumans-secret-to-success-rahul-vohra
• Brian Chesky’s secret mentor who died 9 times, started the Burning Man board, and built the world’s first midlife wisdom school | Chip Conley (founder of MEA): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/chip-conley
• Workday: https://www.workday.com/
• SAP: https://www.sap.com/
• ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com/
... References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-4-step-framework-for-building-delightful-products
_Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._
_For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected] ._
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Transcript 15,381 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lenny Rachitsky? 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.
0:12 Speaker 01 Sometime people think about delight as the confetti. If you shake the phone, you have snowflake falling, but that's not the light I talk about. Delight is actually this ability to create products that serve for both emotional need and functional need.
0:26 Lenny Rachitsky? 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.
0:32 Speaker 01 How can we build products where we can achieve the light 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 I 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.
0:54 Lenny Rachitsky? Let's talk about how to actually approach this systematically.
0:57 Speaker 01 We need to satisfy three main pillars. The very first one is.
1:02 Lenny Rachitsky? 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.
1:10 Speaker 01 The hard truth is that.
1:13 Lenny Rachitsky? Today, my guest is Nasreen Shengel. Nasreen 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 Nasreen 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.
1:59 Lenny Rachitsky? 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. Nasrin 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,
2:43 Lenny Rachitsky? Granola Magic Patterns, Raycast, Chapier D, and Mobbin. Head on over to lennysnewsletter.com and click Product Pass. With that, I bring you Nasrin Shankar. 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.
3:27 Lenny Rachitsky? To learn more, visit DX's website at getdx.com/leni. That's getdx.com/leni. This episode is brought to you by Jira Product Discovery. The hardest part of building products isn't actually building products. It's everything else. It's proving that the work matters, managing stakeholders, trying to plan ahead. Most teams spend more time reacting than learning, chasing updates, justifying roadmaps, and constantly unblocking work to keep things moving. Jira Product Discovery puts you back in control. With Jira Product Discovery, you can capture insights and prioritize high-impact ideas. It's flexible, so it adapts to the way your team works. It helps you build a roadmap that drives alignment, not questions.
4:11 Lenny Rachitsky? And because it's built on Jira, you can track ideas from strategy to delivery, all in one place. Less chasing, more time to think, learn, and build the right thing. Get Jira Product Discovery for free at atlassian.com/leni. That's atlassian.com/leni.
4:31 Lenny Rachitsky? Nasrin, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
4:35 Speaker 01 Hi, Lenny. Thanks for having me.
4:37 Lenny Rachitsky? It's my pleasure. So you just published a book that is coming out, or just came out a couple of 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 got to close some deals. We don't have time for this. We have fires constantly. We got to rebuild our infrastructure. 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
5:19 Lenny Rachitsky? 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?
5:31 Speaker 01 Sounds like a great goal. And let's share this goal together today.
5:34 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 a product team with limited resources, constant fires, lots of priorities, should spend time on delight and delightful features?
5:52 Speaker 01 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 others 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 fulfills a certain emotional need that we were not even aware of. And so the best product deeply emotionally connect with users.
6:37 Speaker 01 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 growth 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.
7:22 Speaker 01 So that's why like delight is not about 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.
7:52 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 because she checks it often. 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 didn't never, nothing you send me in Instagram, I will even see. And 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 going to make the most amazing. Basically, task management system. And on the surface, you'd be like, that is not going to work.
8:34 Lenny Rachitsky? There's like Jira and Asana and Monday and all these guys. You're not going to win just making it awesome. And they are winning. They're doing super well because they are so thoughtful about every part of the experience. And you could say it's very delightful. So 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?
9:00 Speaker 01 So when we create products, 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, you want to listen to music. And it should also solve for the emotional needs, which could be, I want to feel less lonely. I want to feel comfort. I want to 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've probably heard that very much in the design area and the marketing area as well.
9:45 Speaker 01 I mean, you agree with me, the best design is the emotional design. The best marketing is the marketing, like 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 realized that it's not that much spoken about in business and in products. I mean, that by itself creates 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?
10:25 Speaker 01 Because every time I talk to a founder or a 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 want to highlight that there are two definitions for delight. I promise I'm not going to spend too much time on the theory, but the first definition is the theoretic definition. So delight is an emotion. And there's a professor called Professor Prichik,
11:10 Speaker 01 who actually created what we call the wheel of emotion. And he actually conceptualized delight as a combination of two emotions. Could you guess what are these two emotions?
11:23 Lenny Rachitsky? The combination, well, I've seen your stuff, so I think I know what you're gonna say. 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.
11:35 Speaker 01 So delight is an emotion and it's a combination of two emotions. So these two emotions are joy and surprise.
11:44 Lenny Rachitsky? Okay, there we go. I sort of right, I sort of right that second. I'll take it. Okay, joy and surprise.
11:50 Speaker 01 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. 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, 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.
12:35 Speaker 01 The first one I said by removing friction. It's really important when you're building product to identify what we call this valet moment. These moments where the emotion is at the bottom. And maybe the user is experiencing some anxiety, some stress, and how can we leverage our experience so we can reduce this valet 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 cancelled for no specific reason. And I was so stressed. I really had to catch my train. I was like late already.
13:17 Speaker 01 So I jumped into the first taxi that just passed in front of my building. And I forgot about my Uber application. What happened is that actually when your driver cancelled, 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 that 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've been only two clicks to get refunded.
14:00 Speaker 01 It's 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 solution that they provided is something that completely removes the stress and the friction. And of course, now I can take more trips without the stress that may come out of that. So that's removing friction.
14:26 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 cancelling a subscription, unsubscribing from something. Awesome example. Okay, keep going.
14:39 Speaker 01 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, you want to offer them. So another example probably is a Actually, I, my husband, for many, many years, he's trying to convince me to move to Revolut, you know, Revolut app, that banking app. And honestly, I was comfortable enough with my traditional banking app and I didn't want to add more check and etcetera, so I did resist not getting into the temptation of trying.
15:24 Speaker 01 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 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 E C M 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 E C M. Buy E C M, seven euro, it's done.
16:06 Speaker 01 It's like, how the hell did Revolut thought about putting an E C M 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 at 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 Wora, I mean, the CEO of Superhuman, who've been on the show, by the way, and I loved 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 and stuff.
16:51 Speaker 01 Like, that's about exceeding expectation. And now we're getting to the third pillar, which is exceeding expectation. So once you anticipated their need, it's really important to exceed expectation. What's new 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 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 surprised me. Like he was about to buy a coffee machine. And he went through the entire journey. He put the coffee machine on like for payment. He was about to pay.
17:35 Speaker 01 And suddenly, actually Edge suggested him for a complete workflow field feature, a coupon. Like he was about to pay something like one hundred twenty euro. And suddenly you get fifteen percent discount because Edge found out that there is a coupon. You can apply and and you just get fifteen percent discount. That's for me exceeding expectation because I was not even asking for a coupon. I was about to pay the twenty or one hundred twenty euro anyway. So that also by itself create a kind of surprise. So these are the three pillar. We need to play with them. 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?
18:19 Speaker 01 And how can we like create that exceed expectation part of the products? And and and I really wanted to make this clear because sometimes people think about the light 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, yeah, I mean, why not? But that's not the light I talk about. It has to come with a value. It has to come with with a concrete reason. And I call this like the confetti effect, like people think about confetti as a 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?
19:02 Speaker 01 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 that I always keep my super host 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 super host or not. But you know what happened? Like every three months, if you're renewed as a super host 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?
19:44 Speaker 01 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 brings them joy and surprise.
20:00 Lenny Rachitsky? The super host example is actually really interesting because I built a super host program. That was one of my projects at Airbnb, me and my team. And interestingly, it came from not from like, here's a metric we need to move. Let's build super host. It instead came from this guy, Chip Connolly, who was just on the podcast, who was a long time 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 was going to tank, search conversion, people be distracted by this thing. Interestingly, it made hosts really happy, like you, just like, I want to be super host. I don't know why, but I want to be a super host. It didn't actually move any metrics, which is interesting.
20:45 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 did later. Anyway, 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, was 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,
21:25 Lenny Rachitsky? 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. I think a big elephant in the room with this question is B to B versus B to C. And just like, when is this not worth your time? I imagine companies like Workday, and SAP, and ServiceNow, and all these, Salesforce, that did really well, very undelightful.
21:51 Lenny Rachitsky? The way I think about this is when it's like a greenfield market and there's nothing amazing yet, 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. Thoughts?
22:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, thanks for bringing this B two B versus B two C thing because it comes a lot. And every time I talk about the light, people might connect that to the B two C world. And honestly, for me, like 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 the light, I realized that most of my career has been mostly closed to the B two C world. Yes, like I've been working for Skype, Spotify, Google Me, Google Chrome. So I quickly realized that I needed to interview people from the B two B space so that I get the sense of what's delight in their space.
22:56 Speaker 01 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 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 principal called Cupcake. For Snowflake, they have something called 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 B two H, which is business to human. For me, it's really important to take into consideration human emotion
23:40 Speaker 01 while building the product, whether in a B two B space or a B two C space. And by the way, exactly as you said, like since people are so much exposed to B two C examples, I mean, the expectation are getting higher. And we are expecting also from B two B 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 the lighter. I mean, I listed a couple of the lighters 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,
24:23 Speaker 01 and I actually joined Google Meet right when pandemic happened, like 2020. And we had, of course, to work on those challenges of like how people are taking 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 the best, do you think?
24:47 Lenny Rachitsky? Maybe just like an actual conversation?
24:50 Speaker 01 Exactly. I mean, that's the bar that we're setting ourselves. Like comparing Google Meet to how this experience of meeting could be better if we were all having this conversation in a row. Because 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 when I was 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 real person? And how would that real person would be better than the robot that we are building?
25:36 Speaker 01 Actually, if you hire a certain person to clean your house, you probably tell that person to start with a certain room or to clean in a certain way, which the robot was not ready at that time. So they added recommendation into their robot to get closer to what a real human like a space could happen. So 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 want to achieve that.
26:05 Lenny Rachitsky? If you want to see a really delightful, human-like uh, vacuum cleaner, the the Matic, I don't know if you've seen the Matic. Uh, I just got one and yeah, that is a pure delight. They nailed, they don't, they didn't need to read your book, they nailed it. 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, they're 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 Sisir. So there's now, uh, there's less need to get this right, to exceed expectations, to anticipate needs.
26:49 Lenny Rachitsky? If you're just like solving the problem they have and there's nothing else, uh, that's probably going to be okay.
26:54 Speaker 01 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 do you want it to just work? Or do you want it to stand out? And by the way, since we're talking about this B2B and B2C space, just a couple of days ago, I was thinking 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.
27:38 Speaker 01 And actually he said something really interesting. He actually said that we realized that, um, 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 this connection. And the reaction is really funny because you might remind people to like resign or that close your contract with a certain product.
28:22 Speaker 01 But the, that even create a deeper connection that might even add like. Drive you to not cancel at all like, okay, you're inviting me to cancel, but thanks 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 brand for your product, it will definitely have impact over time.
28:50 Lenny Rachitsky? Slack, I think, is a good example that I remember using Slack for the first time, the little delightful animations and these little funny quotes. And they ended up being a thirty billion dollar company. It feels like what I'm hearing 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, no one else is, you know, 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're just like, here's why it's worth thinking about and doing now. Let's talk about how to actually approach this. You have a really simple and clear way of approaching this, so you're not spending time in the wrong stuff and not just investing in confetti.
29:36 Lenny Rachitsky? Well, you know, it's called the delight model. Talk about that.
29:38 Speaker 01 Yes, so the thing 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's 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 themselves 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 want to really highlight here is that you do not have to change any ways of working
30:19 Speaker 01 or any, any strategic steps that you already take in your company. So what is the delight model? It happens in four steps, 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 completely 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 segmentation.
31:01 Speaker 01 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 functional motivators and the emotional motivators. I'm pretty sure like most of the listeners are familiar with the functional motivators.
31:42 Speaker 01 But the emotional motivators is an extremely important part of the process. Because we're gonna use it later. That's the first step.
31:51 Lenny Rachitsky? So just to be, just to be clear, so functional motivators are like, I, I need to find a song, I need to get inspired, I need to find some for my kid to listen to. What are, what are some examples of emotional motivators?
32:02 Speaker 01 So emotional motivator for the Spotify example could be, I wanna feel less lonely. Or I want to 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, these could be examples. 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 reasons.
32:33 Lenny Rachitsky? 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.
32:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:41 Lenny Rachitsky? Super interesting. Okay, great.
32:43 Speaker 01 And, 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 it is. The social emotional motivators is how users want others to feel about them while using the product.
33:05 Speaker 01 I mean, think about Rapt, for example. A lot of people share their Rapt because they want to share how cool they are and in order 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. 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,
33:50 Speaker 01 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, I, by the way, I'm not very religious or strict about whatever framework could be used here. It's all about starting from these motivators and define them and put them in the strategy as opportunities to be solved. So this is second step. The third step, where we get to more concrete things here, is to try to identify solutions, but that's all for those motivators. So remember, we actually identified functional motivators and emotional motivators, and I defined what I call the delight grade.
34:34 Speaker 01 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 is the surface delight, when a feature is only solving for an emotional motivator. I mean, think about Rapt. We used Rapt a couple of times here, but Rapt has nothing functional into it. It's all about allowing people to feel cool and, and share that with their friends.
35:19 Speaker 01 That's surface delight. Yeah, 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.
36:01 Speaker 01 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 a new music, but in a personalized way. So it allows us to feel heard and seen and understood by the app. And that's the third step, which is about identifying solutions and make sure that they are delightful and categorize them here. The fourth step, which is the last step of the model, is validating. Because 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.
36:42 Speaker 01 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 business impact. Because like delight is not an excuse to just add like a aesthetic 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, familiarity. A very important part for me is inclusion. Like inclusion really has to be taken into consideration here. Because 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.
37:26 Speaker 01 So inclusion is really important when we talk about delight because we've seen a lot of example where it's done wrong. And I can share some example here as well. So the example that comes to my mind is actually something that happened last year here in Paris or in France in general. It was Deliveral, you know, this company that deliver. And actually, it was Mother's Day. And on Mother's Day, they came up with the idea of sending notification to Deliveral users. And the notification look exactly as a missed call from your mom. 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.
38:09 Lenny Rachitsky? Wow, that's clever, that's clever.
38:12 Speaker 01 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 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.
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39:54 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 tangible, 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 going to take a quick tangent.
40:38 Lenny Rachitsky? When you think about emotional needs, what's like the taxonomy of them? Is, I know there's a lot of emotion, anger, 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?
40:53 Speaker 01 It depends on the area, but for some product, it could be security. For other, it might be like, I want to feel a better version of myself. Like, for example, when I spoke with some leaders from Miro, 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 better facilitator, or they are a better leader, or just feel a better version of themselves. 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, we can use, for example, the wheel of emotion as a basis where we can select from it, but not all emotion could apply to all type of
41:38 Speaker 01 products. It has to be specific.
41:40 Lenny Rachitsky? Cool. That's a really good example of feeling security. It feels like that's something that more and more people want. All these AI companions, like they're gonna have all kinds of emotional needs. So identify user motivators, functional and emotional. Turn those 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, just like here's checklist of stuff you want to think through?
42:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, so we spoke about inclusion as a really important one in 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 think that we love surprise, but we don't want to be very much surprised. And I have a maybe interesting story to share here, which is something that 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.
42:47 Lenny Rachitsky? Yeah, let's do it. I use Discover Weekly all the time.
42:50 Speaker 01 So when Discover Weekly was first thought of or like
42:54 Lenny Rachitsky? And this is on Spotify, by the way.
42:56 Speaker 01 Yes, so Discover Weekly. 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're 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 had, we started to see a big success in the metrics. But you know what? Two weeks later, people, like the engineers, realized that there's been a bug in the feature. Actually, the bug was that sometimes the algorithm was injecting some of the like it song.
43:38 Speaker 01 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?
43:50 Lenny Rachitsky? Metrics tanked.
43:51 Speaker 01 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 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. So uh I mean, that's why I I added familiarity as as a as an element that need to be checked. Because we don't want to just inject complete new surprising feature to the user that might be shocking.
44:31 Lenny Rachitsky? That's an amazing story. That was your team that worked on that?
44:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've been very close working with them because I've been working on the uh transcoding part and we had to transcode these tracks for them.
44:40 Lenny Rachitsky? That's so funny. 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 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 or getting a refund on 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.
45:20 Lenny Rachitsky? And then exceeding expectations, giving someone and and then, yeah, giving something you never expected and like, wow. What was the example there again, just to make that really concrete of anticipating of exceeding expectations?
45:32 Speaker 01 So for exceeding expectation, we spoke about, for example, the shopping. Uh it's called like cash back feature for Edge, but there are plenty of them, yeah.
45:40 Lenny Rachitsky? Yeah, that's amazing. Is that something, is that something Microsoft does? Or that's like an extension that your husband installed?
45:45 Speaker 01 It's completely a part of the product.
45:47 Lenny Rachitsky? What?
45:48 Speaker 01 And it's even autofill, like it's autofill. You don't even, I mean, same like a password autofill. And I know Chrome is working on it, so it's coming if you are a Chrome user.
45:56 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 gonna lose out on all this revenue. Anyway, we don't have to get into that. Okay, is there an example, like a broader example of something you worked on following this model? That was really successful, really impactful?
46:14 Speaker 01 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. One is from Google Meet and one from Google Chrome. Which one do you wanna listen to?
46:37 Lenny Rachitsky? Let's go with Chrome, since we've chat, chatted about Meet, but I wanna hear them both. Let's start with Chrome. I love Chrome.
46:42 Speaker 01 Let's start with Chrome. So when I worked for Chrome, I had to work on the most challenging issue. What do you think is?
46:50 Lenny Rachitsky? Most challenging issue of Chrome?
46:54 Lenny Rachitsky? Memory, memory management? No.
46:57 Speaker 01 There is even worse. It's tab management.
46:59 Lenny Rachitsky? Tab management. Okay, okay.
47:02 Speaker 01 No, it's the, it is the hardest one. Cause actually, when I worked at tab management, I realized that people are working with tabs for a completely different way. It's like people are leaving tabs open as reminders or as to do, or just because they forget about it.
47:18 Lenny Rachitsky? Very guilty of that.
47:19 Speaker 01 Yes. And I had to work on the iOS part, like the mobile part. And believe me, like, if you look at data, you see so many people having so many tabs open. I mean, the numbers is just amazing.
47:32 Lenny Rachitsky? Ninety-nine plus is all I ever see.
47:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, because we, we do not put three digits. Anyway.
47:37 Lenny Rachitsky? Yeah, yeah, yeah, smart, smart.
47:38 Speaker 01 The real number could be really high.
47:40 Lenny Rachitsky? Oh, man.
47:41 Speaker 01 And so we had to address this problem. I mean, from a functional perspective, this is, is a problem. I mean, from a, from a memory, from a performance, from a space. I mean, we don't want users to have, to have like 500 open tabs for, without even realizing, by the way, that they have 500 open tabs. So we had to work on that. And how did we do that? The way we did that is actually, we interviewed a lot of users, trying to ask them, hey, what if you navigate through your open tabs? Let me know how you are like you can find an open tabs or that that was for me a very important phase because that's how you realize that there is a relationship between people and their tabs. And I really say relationship because for some people
48:26 Speaker 01 the their tabs are really, really important things. I mean, for them, there is absolutely no choice for Chrome to close tabs on their behalf. Like it's it's a it's a really important thing. So we had to understand that relationship first. And then we asked some people to navigate us through how they can find the specific tab in their tab grid. And a lot of people got like a bit frustrated or like they found that a bit hard. Or some of them had like they found that there is a need to apologize. Not for the content, of course, of the tab they had, but just something like, hey, I'm I'm sorry, I usually don't have that many tabs open. And and that's not the point. The point is to see if you get frustrated from the experience itself or not.
49:11 Speaker 01 So that phase by itself, trying to understand not only the functional part, but also that emotional part, like the frustration part, the ashamed part sometimes, was really key in order to build a feature that can align with these values and these motivators or these emotional parts. So what we built actually was a feature that exists today on iOS, uh, which is called inactive tabs. So inactive tabs is that ability where you can actually, this this happened automatically where all tabs um, longer than twenty one day, that was not that should actually or opened for more than twenty one day are placed in this folder of inactive tabs. So the results is that you're getting like a cleaner
49:53 Speaker 01 tab grid and people are feeling less stressed about the amount of tabs they have. But also they keep that trust of Chrome because they know that we did not close their tabs. Their tabs are actually there in that inactive tab group. So that was one of the features we built. It was supposed to be functional only. I mean, we could just maybe compress the thumbnail or just do a performance way, but also that's an example of deep delight where at the same time you're solving for a functional need and at the same time, including the emotional dimension into it.
50:25 Lenny Rachitsky? That's a super cool example. That's actually the reason I switched up. I started using Arc. I don't know if you've used Arc before, which is built on Chromium. It's its own startup, the browser company. Josh Miller was on the podcast. They actually delete your tabs after some number of hour, like days. And once you get used to that, it's actually great. I'm like, okay, please go away. And then you can save them if you want. You can pin them. I have been used Chrome in probably long enough where I remember just the tabs deactivate, like they just have to reload when you go back to their old. It's cool that now they move to a different folder to kind of get them out of the way and clean up your whole thing. Very cool. Okay. What's the Google Meet story?
51:06 Speaker 01 So I told you when I joined Google Meet, it was maybe one month before COVID hit Europe, like the worst period you can join Google Meet because, I mean, the usage just gets skyrocketed. Like, we all found ourselves 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, 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 information.
51:50 Speaker 01 And when we tried to synthesize these 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. You've probably heard about that.
52:10 Lenny Rachitsky? It's funny that it was Zoom fatigue and not Google Meet fatigue.
52:13 Speaker 01 I was really happy it was called Zoom fatigue. It's always better to put it on the competitor where it's negative. Anyway.
52:19 Lenny Rachitsky? Bittersweet, bittersweet.
52:20 Speaker 01 So we had to work, I mean, in that case, if you can see, we did not really identify motivators. We did identify demotivators. Because sometimes it's even easier, actually, sometimes it's easier to let you know what frustrates me or stressed me than tell you what makes me happy. So if identifying emotional motivators 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 a way or another. So when we worked on Zoom fatigue, we actually realized, and we get help from a study that was published from Stanford, by the way,
53:03 Speaker 01 that one of the causes for Zoom fatigue was the fact of seeing your self-view. It's not about seeing others. It's the fact that you see yourself. Why? I mean, just imagining yourself walking on the street and someone is holding a mirror next to you. I mean, even if you avoid, you really 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.
53:45 Speaker 01 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 sometimes it feels invasive to unmute yourself and say, I agree, or like cut the speaker for saying, yes, I don't agree or something. I mean, these images 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.
54:23 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 waiting for a long time and I feel like Google Meet's really turned it around. Good job. Let me ask a couple of questions to keep digging into this question. It feels like some CEOs, 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?
54:58 Speaker 01 The very first advice is to try not to convince. I mean, honestly, if you try to convince, it's a lost bottle. I feel like we live in a world where there is a true, there is a false. If you come to your CEO or leader, say like, I heard this ring talking about the light. We should absolutely do that. It, it might seem like a threat for, for the organization, for the ways of working, because it's something new. Instead, have you heard about this concept of perception versus perspective?
55:29 Lenny Rachitsky? Hmm, no, I don't think so.
55:31 Speaker 01 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 the light, then you are, you have your own view about what this is about. Perspective, though, is the other view, is the worldview, how others perceive the light. So there is 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 the light 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?
56:14 Speaker 01 Once you understand that, try to see how can the light align or help achieve that goal? And let me share an example with you, because when I left Google and I started coaching founders and CPO, I had one founder, actually, who has been running 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 the light. The reason is, I actually asked him this very simple question.
57:00 Speaker 01 I asked him, do you think your users are proud to use your product? Are they proud enough to tell others, artists and musicians, to use your product? And I think that was a really hard question for him. Because 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 curated by themselves. So who's gonna tell others that they are little, like artists, and they are having help from us? That was the beginning of the conversation.
57:38 Speaker 01 And I think after two weeks, he kept coming back, saying, hey, Miss Rine, 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 musicians, 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 a light into the product. But as soon as he realized that the fact that he invests into allowing their users to feel proud is so important for the growth
58:20 Speaker 01 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 a way to align them with what they value.
58:41 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 want to 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, anticipating needs and exceeding expectations get us there?
59:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
59:04 Lenny Rachitsky? And then later be like, haha, it's delight.
59:08 Lenny Rachitsky? Just kidding. Okay, that was an awesome example. 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, add delight, 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?
59:29 Speaker 01 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, 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 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 is that concept of trying to solve problems and create solutions in a way that emotion is taken into consideration into that.
1:00:12 Speaker 01 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 grade 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.
1:00:55 Speaker 01 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 will 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. Because at some time, maybe you don't remember that, but at some point of time, like a search was not functioning that well, so that was improved. And that's, of course, functionality only. And also, we work on introducing video podcasts on Spotify.
1:01:37 Speaker 01 And we worked on Canvas. So Canvas, about this small video, looping video, you know, the small clip? When you open Spotify and you have like the small clip showing up.
1:01:45 Lenny Rachitsky? My 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. He's just listening to the music and these little clips. I'm like, how do I, I don't want to be watching that. It's like little iPad almost, but it is delightful for my dogs.
1:02:02 Speaker 01 So for me, the success comes from the blending or the balancing. Or how can you create a roadmap where you have a bouquet of deep delight, surface delight and low delight all together?
1:02:14 Lenny Rachitsky? These are awesome examples. Say someone listening is super bought in. How do we do this at our company? And then say they're a manager, say they're like a manager, PMs, or even just a PM. Is there something more they can do to create kind of this culture of delight being important?
1:02:29 Speaker 01 To start, it's a mindset. And I call this the delight culture. I mean, 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 for during a long time, we had like a product pillar called delight. And the fact that it was a permanent place in the strategy, I always 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.
1:03:12 Speaker 01 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 Squad Health Check. Maybe you heard about that at some point. I mean, something about checking 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 bought in, as you said, and they are convinced, they have a big role to play into putting that in place by giving it a chance.
1:03:55 Speaker 01 And again, when I worked at Spotify, we had something amazing called Hack Days. I mean, I've seen it at other companies, 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 year. And again, the fact that it's happening on a regular basis 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 help organizations setting up the Delight Days. And I recently did this with a company called Migros. It's actually the largest supermarket chain in Switzerland.
1:04:39 Speaker 01 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 company will end up implementing. So it's about putting it as a routine in a continuous way so that it becomes like part of the culture, not just a topic that is brought in once in a while.
1:05:14 Lenny Rachitsky? That sounds so fun, a delight day. And again, when people 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, exceeds expectations, or roofs friction. So deep delight 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, maybe the second fastest growing company behind ChatGPT.
1:05:59 Lenny Rachitsky? 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.
1:06:17 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 is a lot of power to making, especially in a crowded market, in AI especially, just make, it's almost like cable stakes now. It needs to blow your mind for anyone to pay attention.
1:06:50 Speaker 01 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 the only use case. So you mentioned like a couple of examples. Of course, I do agree, they are all delightful. But one of the element that, you know, 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 replacing Google Meet, we first introduced like a blur, then we added static image, then we allowed for video background,
1:07:30 Speaker 01 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.
1:07:47 Lenny Rachitsky? 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. Such a good example. Hard to do. Okay. I know you also have a story about Apple reactions as an example of good or bad delight. Can you share that?
1:08:13 Speaker 01 It's actually a feature that very much known nowadays, but maybe people don't know exactly what's wrong or what's good or what's bad about it. So it actually happened a couple of years ago now that actually Apple introduced updates into their operating systems. And that update, of course, enabled the fact that if you use gesture, you initiate like fireworks or whatever, any type of reaction.
1:08:38 Lenny Rachitsky? Hate that shit.
1:08:40 Speaker 01 Yes, it's just a 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 picture is about? I want to disable it. And we're like, you need to disable it on your like operating system if you're using a Mac. And why it's not like inclusive, by the way? I mean, this is one of the example I use for the non-inclusiveness of a delightful feature because it did happen. And that's a real story, by the way. I've been 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 fireworks. And of course,
1:09:25 Speaker 01 bad press. I mean, you want to avoid this bad press. And that's why like delight is great, but do it in a cautious way and make sure that it's adapted for all situations and for all pieces.
1:09:36 Lenny Rachitsky? Wow. Such a good example of delight gone wrong. I had so many podcast episodes where the guests was 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's turned on. How do you even turn this thing off? Oh my God. That's such a good example. 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 you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round?
1:10:02 Speaker 01 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 want to share that with you because it's an interesting conversation I had a couple of months ago. I was actually giving the Delight workshop in one of the largest health tech company here in France. It's called Dr. Leap. 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's thick. I think it's worth mentioning here. She actually said, Ms. Rin, you spoke about a lot of benefits of Delight,
1:10:47 Speaker 01 but there is one benefit that 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 a reaction of users. They see the love of the users and they get even more happy and more productive. And for me, that's actually a real benefit that of course I was not mentioning during the day.
1:11:30 Speaker 01 But I think it's something that all leaders can take into consideration because we want to make light work, life more exciting and more, more energizing.
1:11:40 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 surprised. That's the Venn diagram we're shooting for. Amazing. Okay. Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?
1:12:02 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm ready.
1:12:04 Lenny Rachitsky? What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
1:12:09 Speaker 01 The first book is called Factfulness. Maybe you heard about it. It comes from Ulla 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. 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.
1:12:46 Speaker 01 So we started looking for a cargo bike and it happens that we found a cargo bike parked exactly on our building yard. And so it had a for sale, like a sign. So we contacted the owner. It ended up to be the bike belongs to Ulla Rosling, which is actually the author of Factfulness. And so, by the way, Ulla used to be the data PM at Google because he sold his 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?
1:13:30 Speaker 01 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 who's awesome. So that's my first book.
1:13:44 Lenny Rachitsky? Wow, great story.
1:13:46 Speaker 01 And the second book is actually very close to my heart. It's called A Strong Product Community by Petra Milla, 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 contributing to community. And I quickly, really quickly felt lonely when I became a PM. Because 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.
1:14:30 Speaker 01 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 Siri, where we invited people from the outside to share their insights and perspective. So with that, I actually get, we invited Petra at that time, and then she got, she interviewed me, and the interview was featured in the book. So if someone wants to stay sane and contribute and learn in a product community, that's a great book. I recommend.
1:15:05 Lenny Rachitsky? Awesome. Okay. Is there a favorite movie or TV show you recently watched that you really enjoyed?
1:15:10 Speaker 01 I have a TV show and a movie. Which one do you want to listen to?
1:15:14 Lenny Rachitsky? Let's do TV show first.
1:15:16 Speaker 01 TV show. Okay, so the TV show has nothing to do with business or product. It's the equivalent of the American greatest baking, by the way. It's called Le Meilleur Pâtissier. And here is why I love it. I mean, of course, I love baking. We've not spoken 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,
1:15:59 Speaker 01 where the candidates are super, super professionals. 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.
1:16:24 Lenny Rachitsky? Okay, you said there's a movie too. Let's share that.
1:16:27 Speaker 01 The movie I have in mind is called Antes Chablis. Again, it's a French movie, but it was so successful that there've been a remake. The remake is called 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 period. And you even laugh for complete and appropriate situations. And there is one moment, one particular element that made this movie very unforgettable and very special. It's actually the soundtrack.
1:17:11 Speaker 01 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.
1:17:34 Lenny Rachitsky? Under exceeded expectations?
1:17:37 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:17:37 Lenny Rachitsky? Okay. Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?
1:17:42 Speaker 01 So we spoke about Revolut. It turns out to be one of my favorite product these days because it's actually surprising me almost every time. I mean, this is one of these rare products that every time I use it, there is a new surprise. And they are really applying this concept of continuous surprise. It's not just like one off and then they move to something else. So I really like the fact that they are continuously surprising users. But there is 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 actually answered with a complete non-tech products.
1:18:25 Speaker 01 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 served exactly my emotional needs by allowing me to travel and take the stroller with me on the plane.
1:19:09 Speaker 01 So just sharing this story because that was my answer for my Google interview.
1:19:13 Lenny Rachitsky? It's a really good example of an emotional need of just like confidence this can work on a plane when I'm all stressed out with my baby. I went with the upper baby stroller, for whatever it's worth. It doesn't fold as well. Okay, two more questions. Is there a life motto that you find yourself coming back to sharing with friends and family and worker and life?
1:19:33 Speaker 01 It might sound kishy, 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. 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 when I applied, do you know who did I apply first? Like who did I went straight with? Stanford, like I applied for Stanford. Like, let's see how it goes.
1:20:15 Speaker 01 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 sponsor. 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 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.
1:20:46 Lenny Rachitsky? Nailed it.
1:20:46 Speaker 01 Just have one goal to go, which is to be on one of the best stage. And I'm working on being on a TEDx, why not?
1:20:55 Lenny Rachitsky? There we go. No, you need TED, not TEDx. That's the goal.
1:21:00 Speaker 01 Let's go for TED.
1:21:01 Lenny Rachitsky? The original, okay. I love this. Okay, final question. Say someone's coming to Paris where you're based, where do they get the best croissant?
1:21:09 Speaker 01 Actually, the best croissants are not necessarily in the very fancy bakeries. They are in those small bakeries that you find on the corners. And you have to smell the butter.
1:21:20 Lenny Rachitsky? Smell the butter?
1:21:21 Speaker 01 Yes, from the outside. If you don't get it, it's all a good sign.
1:21:26 Lenny Rachitsky? Wow, so okay, so if you can't smell butter standing outside of this bakery, it's not where you want to get your croissant. Wow, I've never heard that tip. Okay, I need to know what butter smells like, but I think I can, I think I get it.
1:21:39 Speaker 01 It smell like caramel with hazelnuts. I mean, it smells really good. You need to train your, your ability to face that.
1:21:47 Lenny Rachitsky? I love this answer isn't like, this is like teach a person to fish kind of answer. Like you can find them if you just go smell. Nastri, this was awesome. It's everything I hoped it would be. We covered a ton of ground. Let's tell people where to find your book called Product Delight, the how to make your products stand out with emotional connection. Where do they find it? Where do people find you? And how can listeners be useful to you?
1:22:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, so people can reach out on my website, nestri-mashangal.com. They can, of course, reach out. There is a contact form. I'm happy to get their inquiry or question or whatever. They can also learn more about the book. There is a website for it, like a productdelightbook.com. I also started recently a newsletter where it's called Delight Tips, where I actually share stories, delightful stories that I find useful for people to get inspired with. And something actually very recently started happening. Like as soon as I started talking about delight, people started spontaneously to share their delightful stories, like either personal or professional, and I love those. So if anyone listening want to share delightful story, I would love to listen to those.
1:22:59 Speaker 01 And just want to end with the fact that delight is a movement. I mean, when I started writing this book, a friend, author, told me the following. He actually said, when we're writing about something, is either writing about a known problem. We're giving a solution for a known problem, or we are giving a solution for an unknown problem. And the second is harder. And I chose the second. I mean, I'm going with evangelizing that the light is an important thing. That's what's gonna allow your product to win and stand out. I know it's harder, but I'm pretty sure that that's what will help us create a more delightful world. So if they wanna have and implement a delight culture into their organization,
1:23:42 Speaker 01 they can reach out, and that's exactly what I love doing with organizations.
1:23:46 Lenny Rachitsky? Amazing. What a cool place to be, just people sharing all these delightful examples with you all day. What a cool job. Nesrine, thank you so much for being here.
1:23:54 Speaker 01 Thank you, Lenny.
1:23:55 Lenny Rachitsky? Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Previous Why AI evals are the hottest new skill for product builders | Hamel Husain & Shreya Shankar Next Finding hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com) Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
