Good, cheap and fast?
Why moments of delight shouldn’t be left out of the prototype
One of my favourite (admittedly nerdy) hobbies is to look for and record moments of delight in my daily life. You know — those small, often unexpected interactions with a service that leave you feeling extra satisfied or impressed.
One of my favourites is WeTransfer’s various animations that play while transferring a file.
Animation: Jose Lorenzo
The best moments of delight are more than superfluous. In addition to being beautiful, WeTransfer’s animations actually serve a purpose — to make sure people don’t exit the site as their files are uploading or transferring.
Domino’s pizza tracker is another great example of this. The visualisation is fun and quirky, but it also manages customer expectations.
If we apply Maslow’s hierarchy to UX, as Jon Duhig and many others have done, we could believe that moments of delight are not vital to use. That minimum viable products and services are all we need to test and create efficiencies that users will appreciate in their daily lives.
But a growing number of designers are starting to realise that we need to stop aiming for MVPs. We needs to start making MLPs — minimum lovable products — in order to compete.
Like DarkSky’s weather radar, which uses emojis to visualise the forecast instead of numbers or heat maps. In this case, the delight is not an addition but actually a competitive edge.
Or IKEA’s help centre holding music — “Mamma Mia” by the iconic Swedish band ABBA — that is so on brand.
But by far my favourite example of a useful moment-of-delight is Gmail’s forgotten-attachment feature. It’s saved my professional life many times!
As architect and interior designer Charles Eames famously said, “The details are not the details. They make the design.” I use Google over other email providers precisely because they include small touches like that. I order Domino’s instead of Papa John’s because its UX eases my impatience. And DarkSky beats out other weather apps simply because I smile a little more when I use it.
So while the iron triangle still rings true for most design teams, adding moments of delight early can actually increase the return in the long run. In the users’ eyes, the small touches are what define your brand — and what will ultimately set you ahead.
