← Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
A 4-step framework for building delightful products | Nesrine Changuel (Spotify, Google, Skype)
01:24:50
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- [00:00]
Lenny Rachitsky
I feel like there's two buckets of teams. There's the product teams that are just like, of course we need to make our product delightful. That's how we win. And then there's just a bunch of product teams that are like, what are you even talking about? We have features to ship. We got to close some deals. We don't have time for this.
- [00:13]
Nasreen Shingel
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.
- [00:26]
Lenny Rachitsky
I know exactly what you mean. I never check Instagram anymore. I just don't feel good when I open it. The feeling of the product makes me nice. Use it anymore.
- [00:33]
Nasreen Shingel
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 cancelled for no specific reason. But what happened is that when I get to the app, there have 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.
- [00:54]
Lenny Rachitsky
Let's talk about how to actually approach this systematically.
- [00:57]
Nasreen Shingel
We need to satisfy three main pillars. The very first one is the big.
- [01:03]
Lenny Rachitsky
Elephant in the room. When is this not worth your time? Companies like Workday, SAP and Salesforce that did really well. Very undelightful.
- [01:10]
Nasreen Shingel
The hard truth is that.
- [01:14]
Lenny Rachitsky
Today my guest is Nasreen Shingel. 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 Nestreen 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 buyers 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. Nasreen 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 Lame for suggesting topics for this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. That helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of 15 incredible products, including a year free of lovable, replid, bolt, N8 and linear superhuman, Descript, Whisper Flow, Gamma Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, Chapierd and Mobin. Head on over to lennysnewsletter.com and click product Pass. With that, I bring you Nasreen Shankel. Today's episode is brought to you by dx, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers to thrive in the AI era, organizations need to adapt quickly. But many organization leaders struggle to answer pressing questions like which tools are working? How are they being used? What's actually driving value? DX provides the data and insights that leaders need to navigate this shift. With DX, companies like Dropbox, Booking.com, adyen and Intercom get a deep understanding of how AI is providing value to their developers and what impact AI is having on engineering productivity. To learn more, visit DX's website at getdx.com Lenny that's getdx.com Lenny you fell in love with building products for a reason. But sometimes the day to day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates. And you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible Introducing JIRA Product Discovery, the new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With JIRA Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds. And it's all built on jira, where your engineering team's already working. So true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from Finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback and insights in JIRA Product Discussion Discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira product discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com Lenny that's atlassian.com Lenny Nasserine, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
- [05:03]
Nasreen Shingel
Thank you. Hi, Lenny. Thanks for having me.
- [05:05]
Lenny Rachitsky
It's my pleasure. So you just published a book that is coming out or just came out a couple 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. Why do 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?
- [05:59]
Nasreen Shingel
Sounds like a great goal. And let's share this goal together today, okay?
- [06:03]
Lenny Rachitsky
This is our mutual goal. We have aligned KPIs. Okay, so let me. Let me start with just this broad question, and let's just see where this goes. What is your best pitch for why product team, with limited resources, constant fires, lots of priorities, should spend time on delight and delightful features?
- [06:20]
Nasreen Shingel
Every time I talk about delight, whether in a conference or a workshop, I always start with this very simple question. What is your favorite product? I mean, what I love about it is the range and the variety of answer I usually get. Like, some people would choose products for the productivity it get, and others may choose product because they feel joy or comfort with it without even knowing how to explain that. And that's even more exciting because we connect with products at different levels. We might connect with product for the functionality part, or we might connect with product because it fulfills a certain emotional link 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 sensual lead and. And the hard truth is that even functioning product, very well functioning product, may tend or still experience some trouble or issue getting tractions and growth and the success that is hoped for if they do not allow users to feel certain emotions. So let's take Spotify for example. 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 like 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.
- [08:21]
Lenny Rachitsky
I think about as you talk. I've had some feelings recently like this actually. I never check Instagram anymore and my wife, I was talking to my wife about it because she checks it often. I was just like, I just don't feel good when I open. It doesn't feel nice. And so I just don't ever go there. And so she sends me all these DMs and things in there. I'm just like, I didn't never nothing you send me in Instagram, I will even see. And that, that actually is a recent example of just like, yeah, the feeling of the product makes me not use it anymore. So I know exactly what you mean. I also think about Linear, which is like their whole thing initially was we're just going to make the most amazing basically task management system. And on the surface you'd be like, that is not going to work. There's like Jira and Asana and Monday and all these guys. You're not going to win. Just making it awesome. And they are winning, they're doing super well because they are so thoughtful about every part of the experience. And you could say it's very delightful. So I totally hear what you're saying when you talk about delightful features. Adding a delightful feature. Just like, what's a good way to understand what's a delightful feature? Making it delightful.
- [09:28]
Nasreen Shingel
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 and 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 an 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 create a gap because you have designers talking about emotion, marketers talking about emotion, and then in the middle, business are like, what are you talking about? We need to ship features, we need to ship functionality, so we cannot achieve that so much needed goal. So in product, I call it delight. You might ask, why delight? Because every time I talk to a founder or 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, with a concrete, of course, framework, but also an actionable way to put that into practice. 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 Pritchik 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 emotions?
- [11:52]
Lenny Rachitsky
The combination. Well, I've seen your stuff, so I think I know what you're gonna say. There's gonna be exceeding expectations is a part of it, and then I forget the other piece. But I think that's an important element.
- [12:04]
Nasreen Shingel
So the light is an emotion, and it's a combination of two emotions. So these two emotions are joy and surprise.
- [12:13]
Lenny Rachitsky
Okay, there we go. I started, right? I'm sorry, at that second, I'll take it. Okay. Joy and joy and surprise.
- [12:19]
Nasreen Shingel
Just. 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. The first one I said by removing friction, it's really important when you're building product to identify what we call this valet moment. These moments where the emotion is at the bottom and maybe the user is experiencing some anxiety, some stress. And how can we leverage 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 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 happened 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. Like, you know, I mean, I've been into these moments where the emotion was supposed to be low, and suddenly the, like, the, 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 might come out of that. So that's removing friction.
- [14:55]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's a really good example. Just to double down on how awesome this is, 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.
- [15:07]
Nasreen Shingel
So the second pillar is about anticipating need, meaning that remember in delight you have surprise. And if you have to wait for your users to tell you exactly what they need from you, then you are just honoring their need. You're not exceeding or you're not not even anticipating what they are already you want to offer them. So another example probably is actually I. My husband for many, many years is trying to convince me to move to Revolut. You know, Revolut app, that banking app. And honestly I was comfortable enough with my traditional banking app and I didn't want to add more check and 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 or like do not allow us to have like international calls for free. Meaning that we had to pay extreme high fees for roaming and for data. So what are the choices? Either you have to buy a local ECM or you need to accept these fees, which are very high. And that was the moment when I looked at my husband. He opened his Revolut app, he went to a tab called esim. Buy esim €7. It's done. It's like how the hell did Revolut thought about putting an Esim for a bank ad? I mean it's really insane. But then when you think about it, most of Revolut users are international or expats, so they travel a lot. And in that case they anticipated the need that people will travel and they will probably need at certain destination, that kind of feature. So that's the anticipating need part. Creating surprise by giving them something before even people ask you for. And by the way, Rahul Vora, I mean the CEO of Superhuman, who've been on the show by the way, and I loved his show, he said something very similar, said like for in order for a product to be loved, you need to set the bar higher than your users themselves. Like that's about exceeding expectation. And now we're getting to the third pillar, which is exceeding expectations. So once you anticipated 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 autofill 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 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. 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 bring the product, we to think about how can we reduce friction, how can we anticipate our users need and how can we 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 a value. It has to come with a concrete reason. And I call this like the confetti effect. Like, people think about confetti as a way of delighting their users, but if it doesn't bring any value, then don't do it. And by the way, I'm not here to say don't do confetti. I mean, why not? 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 user, both as a host, but also as a guest and as a host. I have a goal, which is to make sure that I always keep my super host badge. 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 recess, whether you want to. You can remain a super host or not. But you know what happened every three months if you're renewed as a superhost. 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 bring them joy and surprise.
- [20:28]
Lenny Rachitsky
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 superhost. 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 was 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. Might have changed over the years, but it was an interesting, interesting contrarian project that feels like, how could you not have it? But it didn't really move any metrics, which always surprised us, but maybe 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 you're there's joy and surprise and then this three piece more I don't know even practical way of thinking about it. Removing friction, anticipating needs, 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 thoughts.
- [22:41]
Nasreen Shingel
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 word. 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 for 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 probably not a surprise, is that they do value emotional connection in a way or another. I mean, it's not something new, they just do it in a different way. So for example, for Dropbox, they do have a product 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, like 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 define what I call humanization as a type of delighter. I mean, I listed a couple of the lighters and humanization is one of them. And I even said it's my favorite. It's about asking the following question. If my product was a human, how would the experience would be better? Just think about it that way. So for example, when I work for Google Meet, and I actually joined Google Meet right when pandemic happened, like 2020 and we had of course to work on those challenges of like how people are taking these new ways of working from home. So instead of comparing Google Meet to Zoom or Teams or whatever other video conferencing tool, do you know what did we compare Google Meet to as the.
- [25:15]
Lenny Rachitsky
Best, do you think maybe just like an actual conversation?
- [25:18]
Nasreen Shingel
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 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 a space could happen. So that's the concept of humanization. It's all about making sure that your product or it's actually about reminding users that there are real human behind the product and we want to achieve that.
- [26:33]
Lenny Rachitsky
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 didn't need to read your book. They nailed it. So coming back to this B2B piece, I think it's an important piece to just make sure we help people see. Do you feel like what I said is true? That if it's like a new market without a ton of competition and you're solving a big pain point, they're like, this is a hair on fire problem. I just need, I need a CRM that works or I need a customer service thing for 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 going to be okay.
- [27:23]
Nasreen Shingel
Honestly, maybe the product will work and of course it has to work. But the problem is that if you do not integrate that part into the way how you're building the solution, you're probably just building a product, but not the product that will stand out. I mean, if there is another 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 pinging 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 like resign or close your contract with a certain product, but the that even create a deeper connection that might even like drive you to not cancel at all. Like, okay, you're inviting me to cancel, but thanks so much for your honesty. So I'm going to remain. I mean, this kind of thing build trust over time and build emotional connection over time. So it might not, as you said, like, create like a big impact on metrics, but over time, as you're building personality or building a brand for your product, it will definitely have impact over time.
- [29:19]
Lenny Rachitsky
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. You know, the experience doesn't have to be incredible. Like Revolut, another example, there's a lot of banking products, but the way they stood out, incredible experience, a lot of delight. Okay, let's get to how to actually do this. We've been so far, we just like, here's why it's worth thinking about and doing. Now let's talk about how to actually approach this. You have a really simple and clear way of approaching this so you're not spending time in the wrong stuff and not just investing in confetti. You know, it's called the Delight Model. Talk about that.
- [30:07]
Nasreen Shingel
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 product 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, any strategic steps that you're already taking in your company. So what is the Delight model? It happens in four steps. So we're going to work them one by one. And the very first step is about identifying users motivators. What I mean is that actually users are using products for 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 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.
- [32:19]
Lenny Rachitsky
So just to be, just to be clear, so functional motivators are like I need to find a song, I need to get inspired, I need to find something for my kid to listen to. What are some examples of emotional motivators.
- [32:31]
Nasreen Shingel
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. 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.
- [33:01]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's interesting. It's like a nuanced version of jobs to be done. There's the functional jobs to be done, and then there's the how you want to feel. Yeah, super interesting. Okay, great.
- [33:11]
Nasreen Shingel
And even when the. When we talk about emotional motivators, we have the personal emotional motivators and the social emotional motivators. The personal emotional motivators is how users want to feel while using the product. That's exactly ace. The social emotional motivators is how users want others to feel about them while using the product. I mean, think about wrapped, 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 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. 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 more concrete things here is to try to identify solutions, but that solve 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 the identified solutions and you place them in the grid 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's Surface Delight. 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 these balloon. I don't know if you experienced it 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 are 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 business impact. Because, like, delight is not an excuse to just add like a aesthetic and fun part in the product. It really has to be aligned with the business. But also there are other couple of things like feasibility, familiarity. A very important part for me is inclusion. Like, inclusion really has to be taken into consideration here because when we talk about emotion, what makes me happy is not necessarily what make you happy, right? I mean, even myself, I might be happy with something that is not necessarily what's going to make me happy tomorrow. So inclusion is really important when we talk about the Light, because we've seen a lot of example where it's done wrong. And I can share some example here as well. So the example that comes to my mind is actually something that happened last year here in Paris or in France in general. It was Deliveral, you know, this company that deliver. And actually it was Mother's Day. And on Mother's Day, they came up with the idea of sending notification to Delivero 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 mom.
- [38:39]
Lenny Rachitsky
Clever. That's clever.
- [38:41]
Nasreen Shingel
It was supposed to be delightful. The problem is that this feature had the worst press ever in France. Like, people really started to 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 the light, because it might be undertaken sometime.
- [39:11]
Lenny Rachitsky
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. Well, accidentally. This episode is brought to you by LucidLink, the storage collaboration platform. You've built a great product, but how you show it through video design and storytelling is what brings it to life. If your team works with large media files, videos, design assets, layered project files. You know how painful it can be to stay organized across locations. Files live in different places. You're constantly asking, is this the latest version? Creative work slows down while people wait for files to transfer. LucidLink fixes this. It gives your team a shared space in the cloud that works like a local drive. Files are instantly accessible from anywhere. No downloading, no syncing, and always up to date. That means producers, editors, designers and marketers can open massive files in their native apps, work directly from the cloud, and stay aligned wherever they are. Teams at Adobe, Shopify and top creative agencies use Lucid Link to keep their content engine running fast and smooth. Try it for free@lucidlink.com Lenny that's L U C I D L I N K.com Lenny 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, let me share. So basically what this is is to help you figure out what is worth investing in under this umbrella of delight, which hopefully now you're convinced is worth your time, especially if you're trying to stand out amongst a bunch of competitors. So step one is identify user motivators. Like what are people? What are the jobs to be done? Both very Tang. Practically functional, you call them functional needs. And then also emotional needs. Are people trying to feel happy, sad? What are within that bucket? Actually, I'm going to take a quick tangent. When you think about emotional needs, what's like the taxonomy of them is, I know there's a lot of emotions, anger, like what are the most common emotional needs in your experience to think about when you're like, okay, here's when, here's how to think about what the options might be.
- [41:21]
Nasreen Shingel
It depends on the area, but for some product it could be security. For other, it might be be like, I want to feel a better version of myself. Like for example, when I spoke with some leaders from Miro, they might consider this as an emotional need. Like they are using the product, of course, for the functionality that is allowing them to achieve, but also to showcase that they are better facilitator or they are a better leader or just feel a better version of themselves. This could be a potential emotional motivator. So it can range depending on the type of the product or the industry. But actually emotions could be like, we can use for example, the wheel of emotion as a basis where we can select from it. But not all emotion could apply to all type of products. It has to be specific.
- [42:09]
Lenny Rachitsky
Cool. That's a really good example of feeling security. It feels like that's something that more and more people want. All these AI companions, 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 here's checklist of stuff you want to think through.
- [42:45]
Nasreen Shingel
Yeah. So we spoke about inclusion as a really important one in the delight checklist. Another area could be familiarity as well, because of course we love innovation, but we want to make sure that we are not surprising too much. I mean, we think that we love surprise, but we don't want to be very much surprised. And I have a maybe interesting story to share here, which is something that actually created the success of Discover Weekly. So I'm not sure if you know about that, but I'm going to go ahead and share it.
- [43:15]
Lenny Rachitsky
Yeah, let's do it. I use Discover Weekly all the time.
- [43:19]
Nasreen Shingel
So when Discover Weekly was first thought of or.
- [43:22]
Lenny Rachitsky
And it's in Spotify, by the way.
- [43:25]
Nasreen Shingel
Yes. So Discover Weekly, how it was created was the fact that it was supposed to be a complete discovery, meaning that it was supposed to be complete new for the users. So that's the idea behind it. It was like we are not. The user is not supposed to find or listen tracks that has been listened to or liked before. So it was shipped and when it was shipped, 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's 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?
- [44:19]
Lenny Rachitsky
Metrics.
- [44:19]
Nasreen Shingel
Test 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. And even more appreciated by the users. So they fixed the bug and now the 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.
- [44:59]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's an amazing story. That was your team that worked on that.
- [45:03]
Nasreen Shingel
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 that.
- [45:09]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's so funny. How many other products are we missing out on by not making these mistakes? Backs. And that makes so much sense. Just like people want a little bit of like. Oh yeah, I love that song.
- [45:18]
Nasreen Shingel
Oh, let's go.
- [45:18]
Lenny Rachitsky
And then. Okay, there's something new that is so funny. Okay, so. So these are the four steps and again, what you're trying to do here, I'll just go back to what makes something delightful Is you remove friction, make something that you expect to be hard, really easy, like canceling an Uber and getting a refund on Uber Ride. 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.
- [46:00]
Nasreen Shingel
So for exceeding expectation, we spoke about, for example, the shopping. It's called like cashback feature.
- [46:05]
Lenny Rachitsky
Oh yeah. The coupon code.
- [46:07]
Nasreen Shingel
Plenty of them. Yeah.
- [46:08]
Lenny Rachitsky
Yeah. That's amazing. Is that something. Is that something Microsoft does or that's like an extension that your husband installed?
- [46:14]
Nasreen Shingel
It's completely a part of the product. Even auto fill, like it's autofill. You don't even. I mean same like a password auto fill. And I know Chrome is working on it, so it's coming. If you are a Chrome user.
- [46:25]
Lenny Rachitsky
Wow, what a weird thing. 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.
- [46:42]
Nasreen Shingel
When I worked at Google, particularly for Google Meet, I told her 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?
- [47:06]
Lenny Rachitsky
Let's go with Chrome, since we've chatted about Meet, but I want to hear them both. Let's start with Chrome. I love Chrome.
- [47:10]
Nasreen Shingel
Let's start with Chrome. So when I work for Chrome, I have to work on the most challenging issue.
- [47:18]
Lenny Rachitsky
What do you think is most challenging issue of Chrome? Memory management?
- [47:25]
Nasreen Shingel
No, there is even worse. It's tab management.
- [47:27]
Lenny Rachitsky
Tab management. Okay, okay.
- [47:31]
Nasreen Shingel
No, it is the hardest one because actually when I worked at tab management, I realized that people are working with tabs for complete different way. It's like people are leaving tabs open as reminders or as to do or just they forget about it.
- [47:46]
Lenny Rachitsky
Very guilty of that.
- [47:48]
Nasreen Shingel
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 99.
- [48:01]
Lenny Rachitsky
Plus is all I ever see.
- [48:03]
Nasreen Shingel
Yeah, because we, we do not put three digit anyway.
- [48:06]
Lenny Rachitsky
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:07]
Nasreen Shingel
The real number could be really high.
- [48:09]
Lenny Rachitsky
Oh, man.
- [48:09]
Nasreen Shingel
And so we had to address this problem. I mean, from a functional perspective, this is, is a problem. I mean, from a. From a memory, from a performance, from a space. I mean, we don't want users to have to have like all 500 open tabs for. Without even realizing, by the way, that they have 500 open tabs. So we had to work on that. And how did we do that? The way we did that is actually we interviewed a lot of users, trying to ask them, hey, what if you navigate through your open tabs and let me know how you are, like, you can find an open tabs or. 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 is 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 tag grids. And a lot of people got like, a bit frustrated or like, they found that a bit hard, or some of them had, like, they found that there is a need to apologize. Not for the content, of course, of the tab they had, but 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 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 day that was not that should actually or open for more than 21 day are placed in this folder called Inactive Tabs. So the result sees 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 that we built. It was supposed to be functional only. I mean, we could just maybe compress the thumbnail or just do a performance way. But also that's an example of Deep Delight, where at the same time you're solving for a functional need and at the same time including the emotional dimension into it.
- [50:54]
Lenny Rachitsky
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 deleted. 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 have been used Chrome in probably long enough where I remember just the tabs deactivate. Like they just have to reload. When you go back to their old. It's cool that now they move to a different folder to kind of get them out of the way and clean up your whole thing. Very cool. Okay, what's the Google Meet story?
- [51:35]
Nasreen Shingel
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 behavior, 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 realized that there are three main patterns. Like people are saying, I'm feeling bored. People are saying, there is a low interaction. And there was even a new term that was born during COVID time, which is called the zoom fatigue. You've probably heard about that.
- [52:38]
Lenny Rachitsky
It's funny that it was zoom fatigue and not Google Meet fatigue.
- [52:41]
Nasreen Shingel
I was really happy it was called zoom fatigue. It's always better to put it on the competitor when it's negative anyway. Bittersweet, bittersweet so we had to work. I mean in that case, if you can see, we didn't 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 the Zoom critique 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 it 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 try 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 image 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 images can help you stay alive, stay connected and present and somehow improve the interactivity part. So these are the two features that we introduced back then.
- [54:51]
Lenny Rachitsky
That is such a cool example. I find myself using Google Meet all the time now instead of Zoom. So great job Google Meet team. I know Zoom was waiting for a long time and I feel like Google Meets really turned it 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 SEO or just some kind of leader that shutting this kind of stuff down.
- [55:27]
Nasreen Shingel
The very first advice is to try not to convince. I mean honestly, if you try to convince, it's a lost bottle. I feel like we live in a world where there is a true, there is a false. If you come to your CEO and leader say like I heard Nasreen 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?
- [55:58]
Lenny Rachitsky
No, I don't think so.
- [56:00]
Nasreen Shingel
Perception is our way of seeing things. This is exactly how we understand things. This is how we are convinced. For example, you listen to a podcast talking about the light, then you are, you have your own view about what this is about. Perspective though is the other view, is the worldview, how other perceive the light. So there is very likely, it's very likely that others like leaders and CEO, the reason why they're saying no is because their view is that the light is about this nice to have or the cherry on the top. So instead of trying to convince, and that's why I said don't even try to convince, is to try to align and put yourself into the 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 the when we initiated the coaching side, we actually started talking about strategy okr. I mean that's exactly what he was, he had in mind. He wanted to get help into creating product strategies and OKRs. And over time as we started like coaching, we ended up talking about the light. The reason is I actually asked him this very simple question. I asked him, do you think your users are proud to use your product? Are they proud enough to tell others artist and musician 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 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 like our users into producers and so they can tell others, tell other musicians, they will play the word of mouth game and they will allow our product to succeed. And that's exactly what we did by the way. So in the beginning this founder was completely opposite to the fact that we introduced a light into the product. But as soon as he realized that the fact that he invest into allowing their user 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.
- [59:10]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's awesome advice. It's good advice for just anything you're trying to get buy in from is understand their goals, connect what you're proposing to what they want to achieve. And it's almost like don't even use the word delight. Just like think about, okay, here's what they believe we need to do. How might removing friction, anticipating needs and exceeding expectations get us there and then later be like, haha, it's delight. 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 the light, make it a better experience. What's your advice for prioritizing amongst all of the ways that you can remove friction, anticipate needs, exceed expectations, how do you pick the things that are actually worth investing in?
- [59:58]
Nasreen Shingel
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 want to 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, it is that concept of trying to solve problems and create solutions in a way that emotion is taken into consideration. Into that. And by the way, I created this model called 504010. And 504010 is actually a guidance or 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, 504010 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 the light 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, search was not functioning that well. So that was improved. And that's of course, functionality only. And also we work on introducing video podcast on Spotify and we worked on Canvas. So Canvas are these small video, looping video. You know, the small clip when you open Spotify and you have like a small clip.
- [62:14]
Lenny Rachitsky
Oh, 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, yeah, how do I feel? It's. I don't want him to be watching that. It's like little iPad almost, but. But it is delightful for my dog.
- [62:30]
Nasreen Shingel
So for me, the success comes from the. The blending or the balancing or how can you create a roadmap where you have a bouquet of Deep Delight, Surface Delight and Low Delight all together?
- [62:42]
Lenny Rachitsky
These are awesome examples. Say someone listening is super bought in. How do we do this at our company? And then say they're a manager. Say they're like a manager 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?
- [62:58]
Nasreen Shingel
It's a mindset and I call this the delight culture. I mean, of course it's really important to talk about it. So that we understand what it is, but it has to be part of the culture of the organization. I mean, that's how I see it. So for example, at Google, I've seen that for during a long time we had like a product pillar called Delight. And the fact that it was a permanent place in the strategy 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 the rituals of your company. So here an example. When I worked at Spotify, we used to have something called Squad Health Check. Maybe you heard about that at some point. I mean, something about checking how good is the team is functioning. And it was happening every quarter. And actually the leaders used to be extremely religious about making sure that the team is actually doing it. And the fact that they show that they care made it happen every quarter. So the leaders actually, if they are bought in, as you said, and they are convinced they have a big role to play into putting that in place by giving it a chance. And again, when I worked at Spotify, we had something amazing called hack days. I mean, I've seen it at other company, but it's never as good as at Spotify. So we used to have hack days every month and we used to have hack week toward the end of the year. And again, the fact that it's happening on a regular basis make the thinking and the mindset completely adopted, like the mindset of innovation and going completely out of box, et cetera. So now I'm advocating for 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 the light days in that case, where we actually of course spoke about the light. And then we allowed all the teams to go crazy and innovate and think about the light for 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 the light feature that the company will end up implementing. So it's about putting it as a routine in a continuous way so that it become like part of the culture, not just. Just a topic that is brought in once in a while.
- [65:43]
Lenny Rachitsky
That sounds so fun. A delight day. And again, when people hear this Word, it could sound like the confetti example, but it's you keep coming back to this point. Delight is not just that surface level low type of delight. There's deep delight that solves anticipated needs, exceeds expectations or 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 delight they're so delightful and I don't think it's a coincidence. I think about Cursor maybe the fastest, maybe the second fastest growing company behind ChatGPT. Like speaking of exceeding expectations, you just like click tab and it's 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 of blowing your mind, incredible example of delight. I think about linear as we're talking just like they are winning in in a very crowded space because they invested in making it much more delightful. I think about Suno if you know the music AI app where it just creates magical music for you, just telling it 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 in AI especially just it's almost like cable stakes now it needs to blow your mind for anyone to pay attention.
- [67:18]
Nasreen Shingel
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 normal use case. So you mentioned like a couple of examples. Of course I do agree they are all delightful. But one of the element that 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 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.
- [68:15]
Lenny Rachitsky
Such a good point. Makes me think About Snapchat, who their only like strategy was just keep out. Innovating everybody else with new lenses and maps and all. Like that was their whole thing. Just 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?
- [68:42]
Nasreen Shingel
It's actually a feature that very much known nowadays, but maybe people don't know exactly what's wrong or what's good or what's bad about it. So it actually happened a couple of years ago now that actually Apple introduced updates into their operating systems. And that update of course enabled the fact that if you use gesture, you initiate like fireworks or whatever, any type of reaction.
- [69:07]
Lenny Rachitsky
I hate that shit.
- [69:08]
Nasreen Shingel
Yes, it's just your reaction. And it happens actually during the time where I worked at Google Meet and the reason why I remember it very well is because we had a lot of complaint from our Meet users saying, hey, what this picture is about? I want to disable it. And we're like, you need to disable it on your like, operating system if you're using a Mac. And why it's not like inclusive, by the way. I mean, this is one of the example I use for the non inclusiveness of a delightful feature because it did happen. And that's a real story, by the way. 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 cautious way and make sure that it's adapted for all situation and all cases.
- [70:05]
Lenny Rachitsky
Wow, such a good example of delight gone wrong. I had so many podcast episodes where the guest is 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.
- [70:30]
Nasreen Shingel
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 Dr. Lip 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 thing that stick. I think it's worth mentioning here. She actually said, Ms. Rain, you spoke about a lot of benefits of the Light, 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 the Light 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 reaction of users, they see the love of the users and they get even more happy and more productive. And for me that's actually a real benefit that of course I was not mentioning during the day. But I think it's something that all leaders can take into consideration because we want to make. Make work life more exciting and more more energizing.
- [72:09]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's a really good point. Like ideally you find a thing that you're very excited to build because it's so fun and drives functional needs and is just delightful, makes people joyous and surprised. That's the Venn diagram we're shooting for. Amazing. Okay, well, with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?
- [72:31]
Nasreen Shingel
Oh, I'm ready.
- [72:32]
Lenny Rachitsky
What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
- [72:37]
Nasreen Shingel
The first book is called Factfulness. Maybe you heard about it. It comes from Ula Rosling and Hans Rosling and Anna Rosling. The three are Swedish. It got. It's been a bestseller for years. It's still a bestseller by the way. New York Times. And here's a 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 park it exactly on our building yard. And so it had a for sale like sign. So we contacted the owner. It ended up to be the bike belongs to Ula Rosling, which is actually the author of Factfulness. And so by the way, Ula used to be the data PM at Google because he sold his statistic software to Google at that time. And the interesting part is that actually it's a book that is about how can we drive our thinking more using facts than using bias. 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.
- [74:13]
Lenny Rachitsky
Wow, great story.
- [74:15]
Nasreen Shingel
And the second book is actually very close to my heart. It's called A Strong Product Community by Petra Villier, 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 some something like PM Speaker Siri where we invited people from the outside to share their insights and perspective. So with that I actually get. We invited Petra at that time and then we. She got. She interviewed me and the interview was featured in the book. So if someone want to stay sane and contribute and learn in a product community, that's a great book I recommend.
- [75:34]
Lenny Rachitsky
Awesome. Okay, is there a favorite movie or TV show you recently watched that you really enjoyed?
- [75:39]
Nasreen Shingel
I have a TV show and a movie. Which one do you want to listen to?
- [75:43]
Lenny Rachitsky
Let's do TV show first.
- [75:45]
Nasreen Shingel
TV show. Okay, so the TV show has nothing to do with business or product. It's called, it's the equivalent of the American greatest baking, by the way. It's called Le Major Patissier and here is why I love it. I mean of course I love baking. We did not talk about that. But the reason why I love it is because the candidates are not professionals. Of course, they are good bakers, but they are not professional. Meaning that they make good cakes, but they fail a lot of cakes as well. And this failure is the most exciting part of the show. It makes it relatable. I mean, I succeed as many as I fail. And the fact that I can see these failures allow the show to be relatable. And that's why, for example, I don't like shows like Top Chef or whatever, 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.
- [76:53]
Lenny Rachitsky
Okay, you said there's a movie too. Let's share that.
- [76:55]
Nasreen Shingel
The movie I have in mind is called Untouchable. Again, it's a French movie, but it was a 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, sadness, all in the same period. And you even laugh for complete and appropriate situations. And there's 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.
- [78:03]
Lenny Rachitsky
Under exceeded expectations.
- [78:05]
Nasreen Shingel
Yes.
- [78:06]
Lenny Rachitsky
Okay. Is there a favorite product you recently discovered you really love?
- [78:11]
Nasreen Shingel
So we spoke about Revolut. It turns out to be one of my favorite product these days. Because it's actually surprising me almost every time. I mean, this is one of these rare products that. But every time I use it, there is a new surprise. And they are really applying this concept of continuous surprise. It's not just like one off and then they move to something else. So I really like the fact that they are continuously surprising users. But there is another one actually that I might probably share here. Where when I was interviewed for Google they asked me this question, what's your favorite product? And that was back like, like six or seven years ago. And I, I actually answered with a complete non tech products. I actually said at that time the Yoyo stroller. So the Yoyo stroller. It was a surprise, yes, for the interviewer at the time, but it turns out to be the most successful interview I had because the Yu Yu stroller has something special that really served one of my very much need at the time. It's a stroller that is completely foldable. There was no one at that time, but you can travel with it in a plane. And at that time one of my biggest stress and fear was taking plane with small kids and how am I 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.
- [79:41]
Lenny Rachitsky
It's a really good example of an emotional need of just like confidence. This can work on a plane. When I'm all stressed out with my baby, I went with the uppababy 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?
- [80:02]
Nasreen Shingel
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.
- [81:14]
Lenny Rachitsky
Nailed it.
- [81:15]
Nasreen Shingel
I just have one Goal to go, which is to be on one of the best stage. And I'm working on being on the TEDx. Why not?
- [81:24]
Lenny Rachitsky
There we go. No, you need TED, not TEDx. That's the goal. 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?
- [81:38]
Nasreen Shingel
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.
- [81:48]
Lenny Rachitsky
Smell the butter?
- [81:50]
Nasreen Shingel
Yes. From the outside. If you don't get it, it's not a good sign.
- [81:54]
Lenny Rachitsky
Wow. So, okay, so if you can't smell butter standing outside of this bakery, that's not where you want to get your croissant. Wow. I've never heard that tip. Okay, I need to know what butter smells like, but I think I can. I think I get it.
- [82:07]
Nasreen Shingel
It smell like caramel with hazelnuts. I mean, it smells really good. You need to train your ability to taste that.
- [82:15]
Lenny Rachitsky
I love. This answer isn't like. This is like teach a person to fish kind of answer like you can find them if you just go smell. Nasreen, 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. How to make your product stand out with emotional connection. Where do they find it? Where do people find you? And how can listeners be useful to you?
- [82:42]
Nasreen Shingel
Yeah. So people can reach out on my website, nesream-angel.com they can of course reach out. There is a contact form. I'm happy to get their inquiry or question or whatever. They can also learn more about the book. There is a website for it, like a productthelightbook.com I also started recently a newsletter where it's called the Light 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 the light, people started spontaneously to share their delightful stories like either personal or professional. And I love those. So if anyone listening want to share delightful story, I would love to listen to those and just want to end with the fact that Delight is a movement. I mean, when I started writing this book, a friend author told me the following. He actually said, when we're writing about something is either writing about a known problem, we're giving a solution for a known problem, or we are giving a solution for an unknown problem. And the second is harder and I chose the second. I mean, I'm going with evangelizing, but the light 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.
- [84:14]
Lenny Rachitsky
Amazing. What a cool place to be. Just people sharing all these delightful examples with you all day. What a cool job. Nasereen, thank you so much for being here.
- [84:22]
Nasreen Shingel
Thank you Lenny.
- [84:24]
Lenny Rachitsky
Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast. Com. See you in the next episode.