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 got to close some deals.
We don't have time for this.
Sometimes people think about the light as the confetti.
If you shake the phone, you have snowflake falling.
But that's not the light I talk about.
The light is actually this ability to create products that serve for both emotional need and functional need.
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.
How can we build products where we can achieve the life 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.
Let's talk about how to actually approach this systematically.
We need to satisfy three main pillars.
The very first one is... 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.
The hard truth is that...
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.
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.
The screen 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.
Head on over to Lenny's Newsletter.com and click Product Pass.
With that, I bring you Nasreen Shankar.
Today's episode is brought to you by DX, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers.
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Nasreen, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Hi, Lenny.
Thanks for having me.
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 my goal for this conversation is basically two parts.
One is help people understand why this is worth investing in, very practically not just the warm and fuzzies of it.
And then two give them an actual framework and model for how to do this successfully and not waste time on stuff that's not useful.
How does that sound?
Sounds like a great goal, and let's share this goal together today.
Okay, this is our mutual goal.
We have aligned KPIs.
Okay, so 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.
Every time I talk about the light, 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 they 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.
And that's the essence of Delight.
So Delight is actually this ability to create products that serve for both emotional lead and functional lead.
And the hard truth is that even functional, 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.
So that's why the light 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, in word of mouth, in growth and even in revenue.
I think about it 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.
And I was just like, I just don't feel good when I open it.
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, nothing you send me on 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 the whole thing initially was we're just going to make the most amazing product, basically task management system.
And on the surface, you'd be like, that is not going to work.
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 what's a good way to understand what's a delightful feature?
Making it delightful?
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 probably heard that very much in the design area and the marketing area as well.
I mean, you agree with me, the best design is the emotional design.
The best marketing is the marketing, like 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 Businesses are like what are you talking about?
We need to ship features.
We need to ship functionality.
So we cannot achieve that so much needed goal.
So in product, I call it delight.
You might ask, why delight?
Because every time I talk to a founder or a CPU 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 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 the light.
I promise I'm not going to spend too much time on the theory, but the first definition is the theoretic definition.
So the light is an emotion.
And there's a professor called Professor Pruchik who actually created what we call the wheel of emotion.
And he actually conceptualized the light as a combination of two emotions.
Could you guess what are these two?
The combination, well, I've seen your stuff, so I think I know what you're going to say.
There's going to be.
Exceeding expectations is a part of it, and then I forget the other piece, but I think that's an important element.
So delight is an emotion, and it's a combination of two emotions.
So these two emotions are joy and surprise.
Okay, there we go.
I started right at that second.
I'll take it.
Okay, joy and surprise.
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, 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 going to explain these one by one, maybe through examples, so that people can get exactly what I talk about.
So the first one I said, by removing friction.
It's really important when you're building product to identify what we call these 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 the 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 canceled for no specific reason.
And I was so stressed.
I really had to catch my train.
I was like late already.
So I jumped into the first taxi that just passed in front of my building and I forgot about my train uber application.
What happened is that actually, when your driver cancel uber do their best in order to assign you a new driver, of course, and i didn't pay attention to that.
So the driver came to my place, he waited for me and then i ended up being charged for the waiting time, charged for the trip that i didn't took, and i was so angry when i realized that on my app.
So i was psychologically prepared that i need to write an entire essay about what happened and how I want and I need to be refunded.
But what happens is that when I get to the app, there have been only two clicks to get refunded.
It's like select the trip you want to be refunded and bingo, your money is back.
Wow.
You know, I mean I've been into these moments where the emotion was supposed to be low and suddenly the solution that they provided is something that completely removed the stress and the friction.
And of course, now I can take more trips without the stress that may come out of that.
So that's removing friction.
That's a really good example just to double down on how awesome this is.
Like just making it easy to do something that you expect to be really hard is delightful.
Like canceling a subscription, unsubscribing from something.
Awesome example.
Okay, keep going.
So the second pillar is about anticipating need meaning that.
Remember in the light 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 Actually 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 money, check and etc.
So I did resist not getting into the temptation of trying.
But that was until one specific moment.
Actually, a couple of months ago, we went on a family trip to Singapore and when we landed there, we actually realized that our French operator do not allow us to have international calls for free, meaning that we had to pay extreme high fees for roaming and for data.
So what are the choices?
Either you have to buy a local eSIM or you need to accept these fees, which are very high.
And that was the moment where I looked at my husband.
He opened his Revolut app.
He went to a tab called eSIM. buy eSIM, seven euro, it's done.
It's like, how the hell did Revolut thought about putting an eSIM for a bank app?
I mean, it's really insane.
But then when you think about it, like most of Revolut users are international or expats.
So they travel a lot.
And in that case they anticipated the need that people will travel and they will probably need, at certain destination, that kind of Feature.
So that's the anticipating needs part.
Creating surprise by giving them something before even people ask you for.
And, by the way, Rahul Vora I mean the CEO of Superhuman, who's been on the show, by the way, and I loved his show he said something very similar.
He said like in order for a product to be loved, you need to set the bar higher than your users themselves.
Like that's about exceeding expectations.
And now we're getting to the third pillar, which is exceeding expectations.
So, once you anticipate their need, it's really important to exceed expectation, which means 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.
And suddenly, actually, Edge suggested him for a complete what-to-fill feature, a coupon.
Like he was about to pay something like €120 and suddenly you get 15 discount because Edge found out that there is a coupon you can apply.
And...
And you just get 15% discount.
That's for me exceeding expectation because I was not even asking for a coupon.
I was about to pay the 120 euro anyway.
So that also by itself creates a kind of surprise.
So these are the three pillars.
We need to play with them.
We don't have to do them all at the same time.
But every time we build a product, we need to think about how can we reduce friction?
How can we anticipate our users' need?
And how can we like, create that exceed expectation part of the products?
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 the value, it has to come with a concrete reason.
And I call this the confetti effect.
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?
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.
I'm an Airbnb fan 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 batch.
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 really says 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, the app turns into confetti, like just to celebrate that moment with you.
And that kind of moment is like, why not?
Because I feel like Airbnb is recognizing my effort and celebrating that small moment with me.
So it's about making sure you understand the value of your users and making sure that you're providing a solution that just brings them joy and surprise.
The Superhost example is actually really interesting because I built the Superhost 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 longtime hotelier.
And he's just like, you need a way to differentiate status and levels of quality.
And this is one way to do it.
And there's a lot of actually fear on the product team that this is going to tank search conversion.
People will be distracted by this thing.
Interestingly, it made hosts really happy like you just like.
I want to be superhost.
I don't know why, but I want to be superhost.
It didn't actually move any metrics, which is interesting.
It might have changed over the years but it was an interesting contrarian project that feels like how could you not have it?
But it didn't really move any metrics, which always surprised us, but maybe it did later.
Anyway...
I really love this very simple way of thinking about delight.
And I think you're almost underselling what this framework is helping people with, which is just how to build great product experiences.
So there's this joy plus surprise piece, which is just the emotional component.
You'll feel delighted if there's joy and surprise.
And then this three piece more.
I don't know even practical way of thinking about it removing friction, anticipating needs, exceeding expectations.
Like this is how to build great experiences.
And part of that is being delighted by it.
Part of it is just, this is a great experience.
I think a big elephant in the room with this question is B2B versus B2C.
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.
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.
Um thoughts.
Yeah, thanks for bringing this b2b versus b2c thing, because it comes a lot and every time i talk about the light, people might connect that to the b2c 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 So, for example, when I actually started this project of the light, I realized that most of my career has been mostly close to the B2C work.
Yes, like I've been working on Skype, Spotify, Google Meet, Google Chrome.
So I quickly realized that I needed to interview people from the B2B space so that I get the sense of what's the light in their space.
So I interviewed people from like GitHub or Atlassian or Snowflake.
I mean, I really wanted to get the variety of industry and type of industries.
And what I realized, which is probably not a surprise, is that they do find your emotional connection in a way or another.
I mean, it's not something new.
They just do it in a different way.
So, for example, for Dropbox, they do have a product principle called Cupcake.
For Snowflake, they have something called Superhero.
I mean, the names could vary, but the meaning is exactly the same.
I mean, it's all about bringing joy to the customers.
So I came up with this concept of B2H, which is business to human.
For me, it's really important to take into consideration human emotion while building the product, whether in a B2B space or a B2C space.
And by the way, exactly as you said, since people are so much exposed to B2C examples, I mean the expectations are getting higher.
And we are expecting also from B2B products to become more human and to feel more human.
So actually, when I wrote this book, I defined what I call humanization as a type of delighter.
I mean, I listed a couple of delighters and humanization is one of them.
And I even said it's my favorite.
It's about asking the following question.
If my product was a human, how would the experience would be better?
Just think about it that way.
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?
What's the best, do you think?
Maybe just like an actual conversation?
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 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?
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 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.
If you want to see a really delightful human-like vacuum cleaner, the Matic.
I don't know if you've seen the Matic.
I just got one.
And yeah, that is a pure delight.
They nailed it.
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.
I need a customer service thing for service now.
There's less need to get this right, to exceed expectations, to anticipate needs.
If you're just like solving the problem they have and there's nothing else, that's probably gonna be okay.
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 your product, but not the product that will stand out.
I mean, if there is another competitor 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 pinged in a post LinkedIn post that I really loved.
So I'm sharing it here.
Actually, it was from a product leader from Buffer.
And actually, he said something really interesting.
He actually said that we realized that 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 going to refund you?
Meaning that we're going to 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 resign or quit, close your contract with a certain product.
But that even creates a deeper connection that might even 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 going to remain.
I mean, this kind of thing builds trust over time and builds emotional connection over time.
So it might not, as you said, create a big impact on metrics, but over time, as you're building trust, personality or building a brand for your product, it will definitely have impact over time.
Slack, I think, is a good example of that.
I remember using Slack for the first time, the little delightful animations and these little funny quotes, and they ended up being a 30 billion company.
It feels like what I'm hearing 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.
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.
So far, we've been 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 on the wrong stuff and not just investing in confetti.
It's called the delight model.
We'll talk about that.
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 is even an entire product team who actually work on making sure that the product is delightful.
I mean, we do have such a thing for Chrome.
We have that for Google Meet.
I mean, that's a real thing.
And of course I understand that not every company could allow 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 or any strategic steps that you're already taking in your company.
So what is the light model?
It happens in four steps.
So we're going to walk them one by one.
And the very first step is about identifying users motivators.
What I mean is that actually users are using products for complete different reasons.
And that's the very first thing that you need to get aware of.
I mean, we do segmentation.
That's usually something that most of product people do.
But we usually segment based on demographic or behavioral, meaning that who they are or what do they really do with the product?
And the third type of segmentation that I believe is very powerful is the motivational segmentations, which means 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 want to get inspired.
And others will listen to Spotify because they want to feel less lonely, or they want to feel productive, or they want to 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, but the emotional motivators is an extremely important part of the process because we're going to use it later.
That's the first step.
So just to be clear, so functional motivators are like, I need to find a song.
I need to get inspired.
I need to find some for my kid to listen to.
What are some examples of emotional motivators?
So emotional motivator for the Spotify example could be I want to feel less lonely or I want to change my mood.
That's something that sometimes you go to Spotify without specific thing in your head to listen to, but 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 features for security reasons.
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 how you want to feel.
Yeah.
Super interesting.
Okay, great.
And even when we talk about emotional motivators, we have the personal emotional motivators and the social emotional motivators.
The personal emotional motivators is how users want to feel while using the product.
That's exactly it.
The social, emotional motivators is how users want others to feel about them while using the product.
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 these into an emotional opportunity or product opportunity?
So you have the basis.
I mean, the hardest job is to identify these motivators and then you can identify product opportunities related to that.
And, by the way, we see the shift that we are not too much talking about product space but rather opportunity space, because solutions are not only about solving problems but also about honoring needs and making sure that we are solving for those needs.
So we can use things like how might we or whatever.
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 a 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 grid.
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 Wrapped.
We used Wrapped a couple of times here, but Wrapped has nothing functional into it.
It's all about allowing people to feel cool and share that with their friends.
That 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.
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're just doing it in the wrong way?
So I created something that I call the delight checklist.
It's actually just a checklist that anyone can go through to make sure that the feature that we're building is making user impact, is making a business impact.
Because, like delight is not an excuse to just add like an 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 makes you happy, right?
I mean even myself.
I might be happy with something that is not necessarily what's going to make me happy tomorrow.
So inclusion is really important when we talk about the light, because we've seen a lot of examples where it's done wrong.
And I can share some examples 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 Deliveroo, this company that deliver.
Actually, it was Mother's Day.
On Mother's Day, they came up with the idea of sending notification to Deliveroo users.
And the notification look exactly as a missed call from your mom.
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.
Think about your mother.
That's clever.
That's clever.
It was supposed to be delightful.
The problem is that this feature had the worst press ever in France.
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.
Okay, incredible.
And that was a really good example of why you have this checklist at the end of making sure this is actually not going to upset people accidentally.
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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 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 like what are the jobs to be done, both very practically, functionally you call them functional needs and then also emotional needs.
Are people trying to feel happy, sad?
Within that bucket, actually, I'm going to take a quick tangent.
When you think about emotional needs, what's like the taxonomy of them?
I know there's a lot of emotion, anger, sad.
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.
It depends on the area, but for some product, it could be security.
For others, 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 emotions could apply to all type of products.
It has to be specific.
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, they're going to 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 your checklist of stuff you want to think through?
Yeah, so we spoke about inclusion as a really important one in the light 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 going to go ahead and share it.
Yeah, let's do it.
I use Discover Weekly all the time.
So when Discover Weekly was first thought of... And this is on Spotify, by the way.
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 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 started to see big success in the metrics.
But you know what?
Two weeks later, people, like the engineers, realized that there'd been a bug in the feature.
Actually, the bug was that sometimes the algorithm was injecting some of the like it song.
So the playlist was not completely new to the users.
It had some familiar feature, I would say.
So, of course, the engineers fixed the bug.
And you know what happened?
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 I mean that's why I added familiarity as an element that needs to be checked, because we don't want to just inject complete new surprising feature to the user that might be shocking.
That's an amazing story.
That was your team that worked on that?
Yeah, I've been very close working with them because I've been working on the transcoding part and we had to transcode these tracks for them.
That's so funny.
How many other products are we missing out on by not making these mistakes by accident?
That makes so much sense.
Just like people want a little bit of like, oh yeah, I love that song, let's go.
And then, okay, there's something new.
That is so funny.
Okay, 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, getting a refund on Uber right.
Anticipating needs, which I think was the eSIM example you gave in the Revolut app.
And Revolut, by the way, very delightful experience from what I hear.
I've never used it myself being in the US.
And then exceeding expectations, giving someone, 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.
So for exceeding expectation, we spoke about, for example, the shopping.
It's called the cashback feature.
Oh, yeah, the coupon code.
Plenty of them, yeah.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Is that something Microsoft does or that's like an extension that your husband installed?
No, it's completely a part of the product.
What?
And it's even autofill.
Oh, my God.
I mean, same like a password autofill.
And I know Chrome is working on it.
So it's coming if you're a Chrome user.
Wow.
What a weird thing.
Like, I love it.
But it's funny that that happens.
Like all these poor businesses are going to lose out on all this revenue.
Anyway, we don't have to get into that.
Okay.
Is there an example, like a broader example, of something you worked on following this model that was really successful, really impactful?
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 want to listen to?
Let's go with Chrome since we've chatted about me, but I want to hear them both.
Let's start with Chrome.
I love Chrome.
Let's start with Chrome.
So when I worked for Chrome, I had to work on the most challenging issue.
What do you think it is?
Most challenging issue of Chrome.
Memory management?
No.
It's even worse.
It's tab management.
Tab management.
Okay.
Okay.
No, it is the hardest one because actually, when I worked at tab management, I realized that people are working with tabs for a complete different way.
It's like people are leaving tabs open as reminders or as to do or just because they forget about it.
Very guilty of that.
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.
99 plus is all I ever see.
Yeah, because we do not put three digits.
Anyway, the real number could be really high.
And so we had to address this problem.
I mean, from a functional perspective, this is a problem.
I mean, from a memory, from a performance, from a space.
I mean, we don't want users to have like 500 open tabs 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 and let me know how you can find an open tabs?
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 Their tabs are really, really important things.
I mean, for them, there's absolutely no choice for Chrome to close tabs on their behalf.
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 a specific tab in their tab grids.
And a lot of people got a bit frustrated, or 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 said something like hey, I mean sorry, I usually don't have that many tabs open.
And that's not the point.
The point is to see if you get frustrated from the experience itself or not.
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 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, which is called inactive tabs.
So inactive tabs is that ability where you can Actually this happened automatically where all tabs longer than 21 days that was not touched actually or opened for more than 21 days are placed in this folder called inactive tabs.
So the result is that you're getting like a cleaner 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 functional needs and at the same time, including the emotional dimension into it.
That's a super cool example.
That's actually the reason I switched.
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 hours, 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 haven't 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?
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 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.
And when we try to synthesize these informations, we actually realize 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 probably heard about that.
It's funny that it was Zoom fatigue and not Google Meet fatigue.
I was really happy it was called Zero to Teach.
It's always better to put it on the competitor when it's negative.
It's bittersweet, bittersweet.
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 stress 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 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 imagine yourself walking on the street and someone is holding a mirror next to you.
I mean, even if you avoid, your brain will try always to check how you look.
So the fact that there was self-view was a big risk, and it was even listed as among the most significant risk of zone fatigue or causes of zone fatigue.
So we worked on minimizing self-view.
It's as simple as you can minimize your self-view, meaning that you can still broadcast or share your video, but you don't have to see yourself.
That's one example that we worked on.
The second one, which was related to low interaction and boredom.
We tried to understand how can we bring in a little bit more of joy but at the same time allow people to feel heard and seen and active.
And that's how we actually brought reaction, emoji reaction, you know, that waving hand or thumb up.
Because sometimes it feels invasive to unmute yourself and say I agree, or cut the speaker for saying yes, I don't agree, or something.
I mean, these emojis can help you stay alive, stay connected and present and somehow improve the interactivity part.
So these are the two features that we introduced back then.
That is such a cool example.
I find myself using Google Meet all the time now instead of Zoom, so great job, Google Meet team.
I know Zoom was winning for a long time, and I feel like Google Meet's really turned that around.
Good job.
Let me ask a couple 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.
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?
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 truth, there is a false.
If you come to your CEO and either say like I heard Nisreen talking about the light, we should absolutely do that.
It might seem like a threat for the organization, for the ways of working, because it's something new.
Instead, have you heard about this concept of perception versus perspective?
No, I don't think so.
So perception is our way of seeing things.
This is exactly how we understand things.
This is how we are convinced.
For example, you listen to a podcast talking about the light, then you have your own view about what this is about.
Perspective, though, is the other view, is the world view, how others perceive the light.
So 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 leaders and the CEO shoe and try what do they value most?
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 when we initiated the coaching side, we actually started talking about strategy, OKR.
I mean, that's exactly what he had in mind.
He wanted to get help into creating product strategies and OKRs.
And over time, as we started coaching, we ended up talking about the life.
The reason is I actually asked him this very simple question.
I asked him, do you think your users are proud to use your product?
Are they proud enough to tell others artists and 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 to curator 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.
And I think after two weeks he kept coming back saying hey, Nusreen.
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 products 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 the founder was completely opposite to the fact that we introduced the 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 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.
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 think about, okay, here's what they believe we need to do.
How might removing friction, anticipating needs, and exceeding expectations get us there?
Yeah.
And then later be like, haha, it's delight.
I'm 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?
The very first thing that I really want to highlight here is that we need to shift from the mindset that tells us balancing, or like how can I balance between the light and functionality, because we need to move away from the light versus functionality into the light 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 the light or should I prioritize functionality?
And remember like deep delight is that concept of trying to solve and create solutions in a way that emotion is taken into consideration, into that.
And by the way, I created this model called 50-40-10.
And 50-40-10 is actually a guidance or a recommendation, so that if you have done your delight 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.
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 wasn't improved, and that's, of course, functionality only.
And also we work on introducing video podcast on on spotify and we worked on canvas.
So canvas by this small video, looping video.
You know the small clip when you open spotify and you have like a small clip.
My, 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, where he's just listening to the music in these little clips.
I'm like, how do I feel?
I don't want to be watching that.
It's like a little iPad almost, but it is delightful for my dogs.
So for me, the success comes from the blending or the balancing.
How can you create a roadmap where you have a bouquet of deep delight, surface delight and low delight all together?
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 of PMs or even just a PM.
Is there something more they can do to create kind of this culture of delight being important?
To start, it's a mindset.
And I call this the light 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 a like, a product pillar called delight.
And the fact that it was a permanent place in the strategy and we see it all the time.
That's actually a kind of reminder that we need to build features and create opportunities that map and align with that pillars.
I mean, just the fact as a director, having this as a pillar is a first step.
And the second thing is to make it part of the routine.
I mean, the routine of your and rituals of your company.
So here an example, when I worked at Spotify, we used to have something called a squad health check.
Maybe you heard about that at some point.
I mean, 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.
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 makes the thinking and the mindset completely adopted, like the mindset of innovation and going completely out of box, etc.
So now I'm advocating for the light days.
And I actually help organizations setting up the light days.
And I recently did this with a company called Migros.
It's actually the largest supermarket chain in Switzerland.
And we had hack days or like 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 part of the culture, not just a topic that is brought in once in a while.
That sounds so fun, a delight day.
And again, when people hear this word, it could sound like the confetti example, but 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 removes 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 the light, they're so delightful.
And I don't think it's a coincidence.
I think about Cursor, maybe the second fastest growing company behind ChatGPT.
Like speaking of exceeding expectations, you just like click tab and it codes for you.
Anticipating needs, that's like the ultimate example of anticipating your need.
It's writing your code for you.
Okay, delight, amazing.
Lovable, like it's called lovable.
Amazing example.
ChatGPT, if you can imagine, exceeding expectations and blowing your mind.
Incredible example of delight.
I think about Linear as we're talking, just like they are winning in a very crowded space because they invested in making it much more delightful.
I think about Suno, if you know, the music AI app where it just like creates magical music for you, just telling you what you want to hear.
So there's so much here of just like yes, there's a lot of power to making, especially in a crowded market, and AI especially, just make.
It's almost like cable stakes now.
It needs to blow your mind for anyone to pay attention.
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 no one use case?
So you mentioned a couple of examples.
Of course, I do agree.
They are all delightful.
But one of the elements that is part of the delight checklist is are you, or do at least have a plan to maintain that delight or that surprise over time?
For example, when we introduced background replace in Google Meet, we first introduced like a blur.
Then we added static image.
Then we allowed for video background.
Then we added like a blur 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.
Such a good point.
It makes me think about Snapchat, who their only strategy was just keep out innovating everybody else with new lenses and maps.
That was their whole thing.
Just do 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?
It's actually a feature that's 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.
I hate that shit.
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 complaints 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 phone like an operating system if you're using a Mac.
And why it's not 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.
Being a person having a call with a therapist having a hurt finger and he was trying to show his finger to the therapist.
And what happens, like fireworks happening.
I mean, what an appropriate time for fireworks.
And of course, bad press.
I mean, you want to avoid this bad press.
And that's why like, the light is great, but do it in a conscious way and make sure that it's adapted for all situations and all cases.
Wow.
Such a good example of the light gone wrong.
I had so many podcast episodes where the guest 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 was 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.
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 a delight workshop in one of the largest health tech company here in France.
It's called Doctolib.
And we had an amazing day.
We spoke about a lot of ideas of delight.
But then toward the end of the day, I was approached by the product director called Suzanne.
And she actually told me something that stick.
I think it's worth mentioning here.
She actually said Miss Reen, you spoke about a lot of benefits of delight, but there's 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 First, I was not mentioning during the day, but I think it's something that all leaders can take into consideration, because we want to make work life more exciting and more energizing.
That's a really good point.
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?
Oh, I'm ready.
What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
The first book is called Factfulness.
Maybe you heard about it.
It comes from Ola Rosling and Hans Rosling and Anna Rosling.
The three are Swedish.
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.
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 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 facts using bias.
And this book was recommended by Barack Obama and Bill Gates and everyone.
So the fun story is that I get to read this book before anyone else because it was released that day.
And I met that guy who's awesome.
So that's my first book.
Wow, great story.
And the second book is actually very close to my heart.
It's called Strong Product Community by Petra Villa, 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 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, we invited Petra at that time and then 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.
Awesome.
Okay.
Is there a favorite movie or TV show you recently watched that you really enjoyed?
I have a TV show and a movie.
Which one do you want to listen to?
Let's do TV show first.
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 spoke about that.
But the reason why I love it is because the candidates are not professionals.
Of course they are good bakers but they are not professional, meaning that they make good cakes but they fail a lot of cakes as well.
And this failure is the most exciting part of the show.
It makes it relatable.
I mean, I succeed as many as I fail.
And the fact that I can see these failures allow the show to be, And that's why, for example, I don't like shows like Top Chef or whatever, 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.
Okay.
You said there's a movie too.
Let's share that.
The movie I have in mind is called Antouchable.
Again, it's a French movie, but it was so successful that there's 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 emotions throughout the entire movie.
I mean, you go through joy, to sorrow, to sadness, all in the same period.
And you even laugh for complete and appropriate situations.
There is one moment, one particular element that made this movie very unforgettable and very special.
It's actually the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is something that is so special in the movie and goes so well with the movie that makes it completely unforgettable.
And so when I watched the remake, I was completely disappointed, because that soundtrack was not part of the movie.
So I was completely disappointed, as I said, and that's exactly what I call the anti-delight.
So I was anti-delighted at that time.
Under exceeded expectations.
Yes.
Okay.
Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love?
So we spoke about Revolut.
It turns out to be one of my favorite products 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's 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.
I actually said at that time, the Yoyo stroller.
So the UU 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 UU stroller has something special that really served one of my very much needs 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 a plane with small kids and how am I going to 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.
So just sharing this story because that was my answer for my Google interview.
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 in life?
It might sound cliche, 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.
Let's see how it goes.
I mean, the guy answered and he said, yes, but you have to pay a lot of fees.
I mean, that's the policy.
Okay, I didn't really manage to get that sponsored.
So I didn't also want to reduce the prestige of the university.
So I applied for UCLA and it did work.
I mean, for me, that was something that I really wanted from the beginning.
Have something extra or not?
And I kept doing that throughout my career.
Like I wanted to work for the best tech company.
And I work for Google.
I wanted to be featured in the best podcast.
And I'm with you.
Nailed it.
I 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?
There we go.
No, you need TED, not TEDx.
That's the goal.
Let's go for TED.
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?
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.
Smell the butter?
Yes, from the outside.
If you don't get it, it's not a good sign.
Wow.
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.
I need to know what butter smells like, but I think I get it.
It smells like caramel with hazelnuts.
I mean, it smells really good.
You need to train your ability to taste that.
I love this answer.
This is like teach a person to fish kind of answer.
You can find them if you just go smell.
Nisreen, 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?
Yeah, so people can reach out on my website, nesrine-shangel.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 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 a delightful story, I would love to listen to those.
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, it's 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, but delight is an important thing.
That's what's going to 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 want to have and implement the light culture into their organization, they can reach out.
And that's exactly what I love doing with organizations.
Amazing.
What a cool place to be.
Just people sharing all these delightful examples with you all today.
What a cool job.
Nasreen, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Lenny.
Bye, everyone.
