Designing For Delight

Tem Aguerre at UXDX Community: Stockholm. Video: https://youtu.be/DKvTb_nuD3g

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Explaining UX, and the word delight

[00:00:14] By show of hands, who here is a UXer? All right, quite a lot. Who here is a researcher? A few, yeah. Who would consider themselves to be a designer? What about a developer? Any developers today? No. Nice. Engineer: who is an engineer? That could be. Who has an engineering degree? Oh, a few more. All right, nice. You guys are still engineers even though you're not working with it. It's fine. You can be proud and say, "I am an engineer."

[00:00:52] So who here has, by show of hands, successfully explained UX, or something to that extent, to your mom? How do you explain what you do to your mom? Who has successfully explained it to your co-workers? I work in a pretty big organization; I struggle with it sometimes. Successfully explained it to your boss? Nobody. Nobody has successfully explained to their boss what UX is. Not even the two people in the back who actually have a UXer as a boss. All right, nice.

[00:01:28] How'd you do it? How did you explain it? Did you just show them this? Have you seen this before? It's called the design squiggle. Designers love to show this: how we go from uncertainty to clarity. Maybe try walking them through some design thinking. How about that? All it takes is this not-so-simple five-step process and you will do great things. How about a double diamond? Show them that. Or maybe you just went, "Oh, you know what, [ __ ] it, I'm just going to draw a process." I've done all of these, by the way, so don't be ashamed.

[00:02:10] Did you ever mention the word delight? Have you heard the word delight when it comes to design and UX and product development? What is it with that word, delight? We've used that word forever. At every new product launch and stuff like that, we hear about delightful, delight. What's our obsession with that word, and what does it mean? What do we talk about, and what do you think about, when you hear delightful UX?

Surface delight

[00:02:43] You think about swooshes, animations. How about some sassy microcopy? This is also known as surface delight. In reality, it can be interpreted as unrequired functionality. It's not going to solve any problems. However, it can have a powerful effect on the way something is perceived and the way something is experienced.

[00:03:11] A great example of surface delight is a game called Red Dead Redemption 2. It's a cowboy game, so you spend a lot of time on horseback, and the developers actually modeled testicles on the male horses. You might not be able to see very well, so here's a better view. But not only did they model them, they actually gave the testicles physics. Red Dead Redemption 2 has fully simulated weather, and the horses' balls actually shrink and expand depending on whether it's cold or hot outside. And it's delightful.

[00:03:48] So why does this matter? Why are these horse testicles relevant? Well, first of all, Red Dead Redemption 2 is already a highly immersive experience. Horse testicle physics is just another tiny detail adding to the realism. To have an emotional connection with your user, you must first solve a problem or meet a need.

The hierarchy of delight

[00:04:09] Just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the 1940s, and I might have added the last part, but you all know it's true, there's also a hierarchy to be able to reach delight, and this goes through the whole product. First, your product must be functional. This is a technical problem. Does it even work? Does the car even start? I work in telco: can you even make a phone call? Solve the technology and you have met that criterion. Super simple, right?

[00:04:47] Next, it needs to be reliable. This is also a technical problem. Does it work every time? Can I make a call every time I try to make a call? Can the network handle the traffic? Can I make a phone call anywhere and everywhere, etc.? Does the car start every time I try, well, nowadays, to push the button rather than turn the key?

[00:05:09] After that, it needs to be usable: easy to learn, or somewhat easy to learn, easy to use, easy to remember. This is a technical problem combined with a UX problem. Solve those and you have a usable feature. Can the users actually use it without any extensive training or onboarding or handholding? Once you have that, you can start enhancing that experience by adding unrequired functionality.

[00:05:44] Some companies spend way too much time and work on the presentation and ignore the basics. They're designing for the sake of design. This is also known as Dribbblification, or trying to be up here right away. The thing is, there are no shortcuts to this. It either works or it doesn't. It's either stable or it's not. Adding some swooshes and sassy microcopy is not going to help anything. If you can't make a phone call, it doesn't matter how good the phone is. It's dead. If the foundation isn't set, you risk making a promise that your product simply can't handle, resulting in something that looks nice but works like [ __ ], or is just downright unusable.

Deep delight: Apple Maps versus Google Maps

[00:06:38] If this foundation is set, users are able to reach a state that we like to call flow, or immersed productivity: reserve a table, get directions, send a message, without technology or UI getting in the way. It's also known as intuitive: when you pick something up for the first time and suddenly you just know how to use it. It's also known as deep delight. It's about meeting the user's needs. And while deep delight isn't as sexy as surface delight, the foundation is the most important step in going from fun to valuable.

[00:07:26] A good example of this is Apple Maps versus Google Maps. Apple Maps comes pre-installed on the phone. You just start your phone and it's there, if you have an iPhone, that is. If you have a Google phone, you don't have it at all. With Google Maps, you have to start your phone, go to the App Store, search for Google Maps, download it, and then you can start. Yet the difference in usage between these two apps is staggering. In 2017, 70% of iPhones used Google Maps, while 11% of iPhones used Apple Maps.

[00:08:06] So why is this? Well, when Apple Maps launched, they were all about, "Oh, we have 3D functionality." You could do a double-finger swipe thing and it would tilt and it would all come up in 3D. You could do 3D satellite flyovers and everything. But the pathfinding was [ __ ]. It didn't have good directions outside of the US, etc., etc. So even with all the bells and whistles, Siri integration and everything, Google Maps quickly took over, because while it might not have been as sexy as Apple Maps, it actually just solved the problems. What do you want to do? You want to search for directions? Hey, you want directions there? You want some navigation?

[00:08:52] It took them years to achieve this basic map functionality. In 2018, Apple came out and said, "We're going to do Apple Maps from the ground up." Nice. They launched it 5 years before. Good job, guys. They went top down and they suffered from it. They still do.

Delight as a tiebreaker

[00:09:14] So what does this mean for surface delight? Is it unnecessary? Not at all. In a world with similar products, all phones look the same. They work basically the same. It's all about preference. I work in telco. We all promise the same thing: 99% coverage. Our price plans are about the same: unlimited data, etc., etc. This is where surface delight becomes essential. Delight is a tiebreaker. Delightful is what separates the good from the great. But not until your product actually solves the problem or meets the need. Because in reality, people don't care about our products. They care about their problems, their needs. The bigger the need you meet, the bigger the connection.

How the UX team helped change Tele2

[00:10:08] At Tele2, we recently had some change management going on. We bought a broadband company called Com Hem. We've had a shitload of change management; it's been really frustrating. But one of the good things we did is that we also evolved our identity. I don't know if you remember how Tele2 was a year ago, or if you've seen the ads or anything, but what we did as a UX team is that we spearheaded a change process, not only in our actual product but also in the way we communicate as a company. So we went beyond just the product. The Tele2 color for our UX teams is a little too bright, but I guess you'll get the gist of it. We helped transform the company from a focus on surface delight, which was apparent in the ads. Let's see if we can get this started with sound.

[00:11:05] (Ad plays: "Mike has limited nerves. But thanks to Tele2, he's got unlimited surf.")

[00:11:25] That's a classic move for fun, right? Advertising, yay. Pretty classic, typical. But this type of thing also propagates through the company: there's not a focus on actually solving needs and stuff like that. So what we did through this entire spring is that we were deeply embedded in this whole journey of change, and the UX team was a big part of the company's change as well. And finally, we landed on something that has more to do with deep delight.

[00:12:05] That song kills me every time. But you see the difference, right? And you feel it. Delightful takes talent. Delightful takes time. It takes understanding, caring and craftsmanship. Delightful is somebody emotionally connecting with something you designed, because you gave them one less thing to worry about in life. Thank you.

Q&A

[00:12:39] Tem: Questions? Yes, sorry, in the back.

[00:12:42] Audience: You showed two ads. Do you also have some information on how the two ads impacted the company? Was one ad much more efficient than the other, or did it create more emotional attachment?

[00:12:56] Tem: Really well. All the numbers are... yeah. These were shown at about the same point of the year, so we're comparing the dancing ads from the same point last year with this one. Yes, sir.

[00:13:17] Audience: So how should you think about delight if you have to do the bottom things in your triangle?

[00:13:24] Tem: Well, I can take an example that made me almost want to quit. Just a couple of weeks ago we had some technical difficulties where, just for a few hours, and Telenor also had these, by the way, you couldn't even call 112, or 911 for our American friends. That was fantastically awful, and it made me want to jump out the window, or at least throw my computer out the window. You could say, "You know, guys, you don't even need me here." So that's super frustrating. And that just goes to the point that in how most products are staffed today, you have CEOs, you have POs, you have CTOs, you have COOs, marketing departments, that all have a direct impact on the way a product works and feels, because these are all your stakeholders and they all have a say. So it's a lot about stakeholder management. One good thing is bringing them into the process and making them see why it's actually better, and how much better it gets once they do get involved.

[00:14:42] Because some products can work even though they're not pretty. You have Microsoft products, and you have a bunch of products that don't really look too nice, but they just work, they do the job, and they're really popular. Slack is not sexy by any means, but it does the job fantastically well. They spruced it up a little bit, but when it came out, it was just a chat app interface. Did that answer your question, or did it give you more questions?

[00:15:12] Audience: That was a good answer.

[00:15:13] Tem: All right, thank you. Anyone else? Thanks again.