Product Emotional Fit: The Secret to Create Lovable Products

Nesrine Changuel at UXDX Community: Beyond Data: Crafting Products People Love. Video: https://youtu.be/Ma7OWtbeGdA

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.

Think about your favorite meal

[00:00:07] Hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here, and more particularly to talk about this topic that is very close to my heart. I truly believe in the importance, especially nowadays, of creating products that connect with people's emotions. I'm calling it the product emotion fit. It's also a story talk, so I'll be sharing a lot of my product stories, so that hopefully it will resonate with you and give you more insights and ideas about how to build that into your products as well.

[00:00:39] In order to start, I want you to think for a moment about your favorite meal. Just take some seconds to think about what was the best meal you had in the last, let's say, three months. I guess you have one. Now, I'm more wondering what made you pick that meal. Was it how delicious it was? How beautifully presented? Maybe the environment, or the people you were having that meal with?

[00:01:12] Chances are that you did not pick that meal because it honored your hunger. Chances are that you picked that meal because it made you feel something. It made you live what we call peak moments, and it created emotion in you. The reality is that in product it is the same. We connect with products more if we have some emotional relation with them as well.

The bill at the Griffins

[00:01:38] I want to share with you one of my favorite meal experiences. I live in Paris, and two months ago I've been in Stockholm for business. I took the opportunity to meet with some ex-colleagues and friends from my time at Spotify and Skype, and we went to a place called the Griffins. It's a restaurant reputed for its great food and service. But to be honest, what I do remember most was not the food. I do remember one particular moment, a moment that we all secretly hate. I think you guessed it: of course, it's the bill. Are we going to split evenly, or are we going to pay separately? Who had wine? Who did not?

[00:02:25] As I was thinking about all these awkward thoughts, the waiter came and she placed a small piece of paper with a QR code. We curiously took our phones out and scanned the QR code. What happens is that you see the entire bill displayed on the screen, and you can even seamlessly and smoothly pick from that menu what you want to pay. You can even have the option to split the bill as well. And all that went in a complete smooth and easy way.

[00:03:02] I'm telling that story because what was supposed to be an awkward and frustrating moment turned out to be almost a delightful moment. And as we went out of the Griffins, we were not talking about the food. We were more talking about that payment experience.

Why I'm convinced emotion matters

[00:03:18] Now that I told you this story, what I'm here to talk to you about is how much I'm convinced that for any product, any tech product, to stand out today, it's extremely important to take into consideration the emotional impact that a product can have on the user. You should probably be wondering why I am so convinced, and there are actually two reasons.

[00:03:42] The first one is because I experienced that firsthand. For most of my career I worked on products that are globally used and loved, like Skype, Spotify, Google Meet and Google Chrome. In addition to being a product leader in these organizations and these products, I loved being on stage and I always spoke at different conferences. One day a conference organizer reached out to me and said, hey Nesrine, we want you to be on stage, but we have one particular topic for you. He wanted me to talk about what's in common when it comes to building product within these companies: Microsoft, Spotify and Google.

[00:04:23] I found this question quite challenging, but at the same time interesting, because when I started thinking about it I realized that yes, there is something in common throughout my 15 years of experience in these companies, which is the fact that these companies invest heavily in creating the emotional connection between their products and their users. So that's the first thing.

What the research shows

[00:04:43] The second reason is that research backed it up, because huge companies and firms like Capgemini, McKinsey, Deloitte or even Harvard Business Review studied the exact same phenomenon. Within the last three years they published huge reports studying the impact of emotional connection on product adoption. I spent weeks trying to walk through these reports, and before even telling you the results of these reports, I want to share the fact that if huge firms like these invest heavily in such studies and research, it's a proof by itself that there is a huge interest for your company as well to invest into emotional connection.

[00:05:29] What did they really study? They actually compared two groups of users: one is what they call the highly satisfied ones, and the other is the emotionally connected ones. Highly satisfied users are those who are having their needs fulfilled and their expectations met. When it comes to emotionally connected users, those are a group of users who are having their needs anticipated and their expectations exceeded.

[00:05:58] So what did the results show? What I loved about the results is that there is a huge consistency across the four reports, and the consistency shows a huge impact on three key metrics. Number one is retention. Research shows that emotionally connected users are 50% more loyal. They will stay longer and they will use your product longer than the second group. Then revenue, because emotionally connected users are twice as likely to spend more money and buy more products and services from you. And of course the third, which is the referral or the word of mouth, because emotionally connected users are 60% more likely to actively promote and talk about your product across their friends, their network, and even their family.

The delight framework

[00:06:59] I told you that I had the chance to work on what I call emotionally connected products. But in order to validate this concept, I went ahead and spoke to different organizations. I interviewed different product leaders that I consider successful, and I asked them about their perception of emotional connection. That was no surprise, because out of these multiple interviews I realized that those companies invest in one way or another into creating emotional connection with their users. The problem is that there is no consistency, no tools or process that could help you really put that in place. So everyone is trying some ways. It may work sometimes, may not work some others.

[00:07:49] That's what made me create what I call the delight framework. Now you should be wondering why it's called delight. Delight is because in the world of product we all talk about how we should delight our users. You know what the problem is? We don't know how to. So I created this framework in order to help people, through a step-by-step process, get to the aim and goal of delight.

[00:08:16] Let's go through that process, or that framework, step by step. As for every product process, it operates in two spaces. There's the opportunity space, where we explore options, and the solution space, where we try to put these options into solutions. Each of these spaces has two steps, and I will walk you through them one by one.

Step one: identifying motivators

[00:08:40] The number one is identifying motivators. Users are using your product for a reason, for one particular reason, and this reason is not random. It's usually driven by what I call the motivators. What we should know, though, is that there are two types of motivators. There are the functional motivators: you want to send an SMS, you want to book a flight, you want to listen to music. Those are goal-oriented motivators. And there are the emotional motivators, which are, by the way, much harder to identify, because the users themselves may not even be aware of them. It's the need for feeling secure. It's the need for feeling reassured. It's the feeling of, maybe I want to feel less lonely, and that's why I listen to music.

[00:09:28] I want to do a case study with you so we get exactly what I'm talking about. For this case study I want to use Spotify as an example, first because I worked at Spotify, but also because it's a well-known product, so it's easier to relate to. What could be some of the functional motivators for Spotify users? It could be the fact that the user wants to enjoy high quality music, or the user wants to discover new content, or a user may probably go to Spotify to search for a specific audio content. Of course the list could be longer. I want to enjoy an audiobook, I want to listen to a podcast. But the idea, I think you get it: it's about listing the functional motivators here.

[00:10:10] The emotional motivators, on the other side, are a little bit more complex, and in this case could be the need to feel immersed, could be the feeling of being self-expressed as well, or maybe I want to feel connected, or I want to feel less lonely. Again the list could be longer, but the idea is to pay attention to both of these motivators, because what I see in most organizations is that we are very good at identifying functional motivators, but when it comes to emotional motivators it's another story. Sometimes we just ignore those, and it's a big, big, huge risk.

[00:10:50] Now you should be wondering, how can I identify those emotional motivators? To be honest with you, there's no surprise: yes, the best way is to talk to your users and try to identify those through some empathy and some clear communication and conversation with the users. However, it's really important to pay a bit of extra attention to not only what they are saying, but how they are saying it, the tone, and the emotional impact that this is having on the users.

Chrome tabs: a functional problem with an emotional side

[00:11:24] I want to share a story with you, because I worked at Chrome as a product leader, and more particularly for Chrome iOS. During my time I had to work on one of the biggest challenges of Chrome, which is tab management. Actually, this idea of working on tab management started from a functional need, which is the fact that a lot of Chrome users are having multiple tabs open, and of course this is not great for the product, because it takes space, memory, slowness and so on. So we wanted users not to have hundreds of tabs open, especially on mobile.

[00:12:02] While doing this exploration, I sat down with many users and tried to understand how they navigate through their tabs, why they leave tabs open, and how they can find a tab within a specific list of tabs. I love these moments, because all these moments come with surprises. You always discover new ways of using your product from your users. One particular thing that really stuck with me was the fact that when I asked users to walk me through how they navigate through their tabs, people felt somehow embarrassed and ashamed, not from the content of the tabs, of course, but more particularly from the number of tabs they had. So we see clearly that that phenomenon is having an emotional impact that we had to solve.

Step two: turning motivators into opportunities

[00:12:49] I promise that by the end of this presentation I will explain how we solved it at Chrome iOS. But for now I want to move to the second step of the framework, which is turning these motivators into real product opportunities. To do so, I want to explain it with another product of my own, which is Google Meet.

[00:13:12] I joined Google Meet exactly when COVID-19 hit Europe, to the exact period. I think it was February or something, and it was of course a special time for Google Meet from a scale perspective and a functionality perspective. But as a PM, and more particularly as a new PM, I spent months trying to understand the impact of this new behavior on users' emotions: the fact that we all moved from having meetings in offices[?] and in companies, and even in classrooms, into 100% remote.

[00:13:49] These conversations have been extremely important, and sometimes hard to listen to, because there's a lot of empathy, of course, while people were expressing the need for privacy, the need for being present, the need for being connected. Among multiple needs that were surfaced, I remember there were these three things that were spoken about: the fact that people expressed boredom, the fact that people expressed low interaction while working remotely or having remote meetings, and also there's even a new term that surfaced during that time, which is Zoom fatigue. To be honest, I was happy it was called Zoom fatigue. It's always better to put things, when they are negative, on the competitor.

[00:14:41] So how can we turn these, let's say, demotivators in this context into real product? In that case I love representing things under the "how might we" statement. It would be something like: how might we improve the meeting experience for participants in prolonged online meetings, in order to maintain their engagement and reduce their sense of boredom? Of course we brainstormed a lot of ideas and we tried to come up with what could be the one that could really improve this experience in the way that we wanted, and we came to emoji reactions.

[00:15:20] Emoji reactions were born out of this reflection that people wanted to be more present, they wanted to be more connected, and also from the fact that commenting takes time and effort, and unmuting yourself feels a bit invasive, to interrupt the speaker to say that I agree or I don't agree or something like that. So that's how we brought emoji reactions into life, and people loved it. They didn't just use it so much, but they also requested more images to represent more emotion from their side.

The delight grid

[00:15:52] So that was the opportunity space, which is the first space. It's all about identifying what motivates users, again from a functional and emotional side, but then turning these into real opportunities. At this stage we are getting to the solution space, which is: how can I turn these opportunities into real solutions?

[00:16:12] For that I want to propose to you a tool that I created, which is called the delight grid. The delight grid is a simple representation of the motivators that we spoke about earlier. Remember, there's the emotional motivators that I'm listing horizontally, and the functional motivators that I'm listing in this grid vertically. All you have to do is to place those motivators that you explored within the first step and place them in the grid.

[00:16:44] Why do we do that? Because once you have multiple solutions that you want to validate, whether they will create emotional connection or not, you will use this grid by saying, let's imagine this solution. Is it solving any of these motivators, whether functional or emotional? Let's take some examples. If your solution is only solving for a functional motivator, then in that case it belongs to a category that I call low delight. If the feature or the solution is only solving for an emotional motivator, it belongs to a category that I call surface delight. And if it happens that you have a feature that is solving for both an emotional motivator and a functional motivator, then you're into that sweet spot that I call deep delight.

Placing Spotify features on the grid

[00:17:33] Again, it's always better to understand with a real case, and I'm reusing the Spotify case. During my time at Spotify I got the chance to work on multiple features that are shaping the Spotify brand and personality today. Some of them are Discover Weekly, or search by lyric, or the normalization, which is the fact that you're having normalized volume within your playlist. I worked on Wrapped. I worked on Spotify Jam, which is the possibility of listening to music together within a group. Or the Star Wars one, which is when you're listening to a Star Wars track the progress bar turns into a lightsaber, just for fun.

[00:18:18] Now I want to do this exercise with you, because we're going to place these features into the delight grid. Do you remember the motivators we spoke about in the first case study? High quality, discover new content, search for audio content for the functional motivators, and the same for emotional motivators: immersion, self-expression and connection. We're going to go ahead and place the features based on what motivators they solve for.

[00:18:45] For a feature like search by lyric, so the ability to search for a song just by knowing some random words in the song without knowing the exact title, it helps you search for content, but there is no emotional motivator or no emotional contact there. Same for normalization: it's all about having a smooth and great volume, but there's no emotional aspect to it.

[00:19:10] However, features like Star Wars, or even Wrapped: I think you agree with me if I tell you that there is no functional need in there. Nobody really asked for Star Wars to solve a functional need, or even Wrapped, which is one of the most used features of Spotify. However, other features like Discover Weekly or Spotify Jam, these are features that of course are solving a functional motivator, because it helps you discover new content, but there is an emotional aspect to them as well, which is the fact that you can express yourself through personalization, or it helps you get some connection through Jam, for example.

[00:19:50] I want to highlight the fact that the best product is the one that is having a bouquet of the three types of delight within the roadmap. Ideally you should have some low delight, some surface delight, some deep delight, and never neglect the power of surface delight, because a feature like Wrapped just by itself had a huge impact on the app downloads, and it's heavily used and shared among the Spotify community as well.

Delight enhancers

[00:20:22] We're getting to the fourth step of the framework. You may be wondering, what if tomorrow you do the delight grid and you realize that most of your features are low delight? What should you do? The good news is that there are some tools and techniques that I'll be sharing with you for the next couple of slides that you can introduce into your product in order to start getting into this delight mindset.

[00:20:46] Number one, which is probably the most obvious one, is personalization. That's why Starbucks does not call you "number 35, your coffee is ready". They struggle writing your name, because we connect with our name. We love our name. It's the most familiar word for us. And it's not only about our name, by the way, it's about our taste, our settings. That's why features like Netflix recommendations or Spotify Discover Weekly are so successful. So personalization is a great delight enhancer.

[00:21:16] Number two is celebration. Because there are moments in the user journey where of course there are lows but also highs, and in these high moments the user is in this excitement moment that is actually an opportunity for the product to connect with you. I will share with you a story, because I'm an Airbnb user both as a host and as a guest. As a host, one of the things that I target most is keeping my Superhost badge, and Airbnb reassesses my ability to continue being a Superhost every three months. Every time it's the case, my app turns into confetti. And even if it's on the surface, the reality is that I feel like the app is celebrating this effort and this achievement with me.

[00:22:07] Enhancer number three, which is probably my favorite, I love it, is humanization. It's all about asking yourself, how would the experience be better if it was done by a real human being? I want to share this with a story as well, because I spoke with the head of product at Dyson, and Andy, the head of product, told me something quite interesting. I have a Dyson vacuum cleaner at home and I love it, and I told Andy, how come I love a vacuum cleaner so much? He told me something quite interesting, because he said, we do not compare our vacuum cleaner to competitors, but we do compare our vacuum cleaner to how it would have been done better if it was done by a real human. So think about cleaning your house. If you hire someone to do that for you, they probably recommend starting with a certain room or cleaning in a certain way. And they introduced this recommendation into the products as well. This is something extremely important to take into consideration as well.

[00:23:09] And the fourth, which is the last among the enhancers, is probably the cheapest as well: seasonality. I played a lot with that at Google Meet. Every time it was Easter or Christmas or Diwali, we played a lot with adding seasonal backgrounds, and people loved it, because we saw peaks of adoption and even continuous growth over time.

How we solved tab management, and what's next

[00:23:30] I promised to get back towards the end to how we solved the tab management challenge, and remember it was a functional and emotional challenge. The way we did it is we introduced this inactive tab. It's a small group of tabs where we place all tabs that were not used for more than 21 days into that tab group. The result is a cleaner tab grid, of course more compressed and with fewer thumbnails from a technical perspective, but also from an emotional perspective you see a smaller number of open tabs and you feel more relieved about yourself.

[00:24:02] I'm getting to the end of this presentation, and I want to share that I left Google actually last year, and I left Google with a mission. My mission is to help companies build more delightful products. But I quickly realized that this is a bigger topic, for talks and workshops, and I started writing a book about it. So I'm writing a book called Product Delight. The book is coming soon, hopefully before summer, so stay tuned.

[00:24:31] With that I want to leave you with these three key messages. Delight is not a cherry on the top, it's a must-have nowadays for differentiation. Delight drives impact, and we've seen retention, revenues, referrals. And of course it's actionable, because now you have a framework that you can apply, an easy step-by-step process. With that, I would love to connect. I'm available on LinkedIn. I'm putting up a QR code for the slides if you want to get them, and feel free to reach out anytime, or even now if you have questions.

Q&A

[00:25:02] Host: Awesome, thank you Nesrine. It was a really brilliantly constructed talk, taking us through all of those different examples. I really thought it was great, so thank you for sharing that. If anybody has any questions, please write them in. We probably only have time for one or two, but I'll kick the ball rolling, because one of the biggest challenges I always find is, I loved your grid about the functional and emotional metrics, but it's often a lot of assumptions internally that we're making, that my idea is going to solve this functional problem or my idea is going to solve this emotional one. So do you have any advice for people on how to try and minimize the number of assumptions that we make while we're trying to place our ideas on that matrix?

[00:25:51] Nesrine: Great question, because I get a lot of that question: how do we measure the impact of emotional connection, or the impact of delight? The reality is that there are specific metrics for measuring delight. For example, at Google we had a metric called the HaTS survey, which is a happiness tracking survey, a survey a bit similar to CSAT if you're familiar with that, but more towards the emotional aspect. It's a qualitative survey, but it's very important to track that over time. Why over time? Because our emotions evolve over time as well, and what makes you happy today is not necessarily what will make you happy in a couple of weeks or months.

[00:26:35] Nesrine: There's also this thing called the habituation effect. You want to make sure that you keep surprising your users and you keep making them excited about your product. So I recommend people read about the HaTS survey. There are a couple of research papers on how to structure that for your organizations. Otherwise, to be honest with you, delight is a big driver of adoption and retention. We've seen a huge correlation between delighted users and retention and adoption, so usually there is a big impact on these metrics too.

[00:27:06] Host: And do you think that that's a muscle that people will build when they start looking at it? They develop a sense for what will be delightful and what won't.

[00:27:18] Nesrine: Absolutely, I agree with you. Honestly, I sometimes talk about the delight mindset or the delight mental model as well, because it has to start mentally. In my book I'm having an entire chapter about the delight culture. You need to build a delight culture, and this depends a lot on your leaders setting that in place. For example, as a product leader I used to have a delight pillar in my strategy document, and that's something that you need to hear many times in order to build that muscle that you just mentioned. So it's not something that you build once a year and then it's over. There's a continuity, there is a push that is needed from leaders to get into that culture, and there are plenty of companies, by the way, that are building this muscle, and they are even mastering the muscle of delight and they are succeeding through that.

[00:28:11] Host: Excellent. Well, thank you very much Nesrine. That actually brings us to time. I'm looking forward to when your book comes out, so please do keep in touch and let us know, because it is something that I think a lot more products need. They need that delight touch instead of the pure functional. Thank you.

[00:28:25] Nesrine: Thank you for having me.