Ten Principles for Product Delight

It's common for companies to hunt for delight when they want to increase the amount of engagement a product has or improve retention through increased happiness. But often, "delight" gets constrained down to either kitsch ideas or animations. This is particularly true since we've seen a rise in Design Engineer roles at companies, and also thanks to the ability for interfaces to be super fluid using modern frameworks.

I've often been tasked with adding delight to interfaces I work on. Making delightful products and delightful interactions is super valuable, and it does geniuinely improve how people feel about your products, so I really have no issues with doing it. But one thing I've noticed all too often is that this shakes out to be an animation of an interface element and little more.

As I've been tasked with these projects more frequently (and my role as a Design Engineer is a good reason why), I've found that I need to make conscious decisions about what actually consitutes delight in the interfaces I work on. If it's not an animation, then what is it?

In order to figure this out, I sat down and mused about what principles I might consider to describe delight, and I found myself with a list of ten... and as a fan and practitioner of Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design, I couldn't resist my own ten principles list (albeit far less likely to get famous).

1. Delight is getting what you want without knowing you needed it
2. Delight is getting what you want before you asked for it
3. Delight is seeing the care and attention put into the smallest of details
4. Delight is knowing that the maker thought about you as much as you think about you
5. Delight is when everything works as expected every time
6. Delight is expecting the expected but receiving the extra mile
7. Delight is the little details that have the biggest impact
8. Delight is the icing on the cake
9. Delight is the sweet spot between excess and restriction, when the porridge is just right
10. Delight is the journey that leaves no question unanswered

In doing this exercise, I was able to vocalise what I've always felt, that delight is about more than surface level animation or UI feedback, delight goes much deeper than that. Delight is a feeling we won't often be able to put our finger on, but we'll know when it's there, when the thing has made us feel something, or when we have a moment happen that makes us think in our heads "that was delightful".

Next time you're tasked with making something delightful (the ever famous "make it pop" could also be how this gets communicated), have a think about these principles, they might just help you out and push you to go deeper.