Engineering Delight

I am a big believer in meticulously crafting digital experiences with delight as a central focus. This philosophy goes beyond mere functionality; it aims to evoke ecstasy in users.

In this article I attempt to provide a framework comprising the science, principles and techniques for engineering delight within your Product

The Science behind Delight

Here are some key neurological components and processes that contribute to the sensation of delight:

1. Dopamine Release: Dopamine is heavily involved in the brain's reward system. When we experience something pleasurable, our brain releases dopamine. This release can be triggered by various stimuli that exceed expectations or provide a novel joy. Delight often occurs when there's an unexpected positive outcome, causing a surge in dopamine.
2. Reward Prediction and Error Signaling: Dopaminergic neurons in the VTA are crucial for predicting rewards. If a reward is better than expected, dopamine release increases, which strengthens the association between the behavior and the reward.
3. Activation of the Reward System: The brain’s reward system includes areas such as the ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens, and parts of the prefrontal cortex. These areas process rewards and motivate us towards reward-seeking behavior. When these areas are activated, they not only make us feel good but also reinforce behaviors that are likely to reproduce the delightful experience.
4. Emotional Response: The limbic system, which includes structures like the amygdala and hippocampus, plays a crucial role in processing emotions. Positive emotional responses contribute to feelings of delight, especially when an experience touches us personally or aligns closely with our preferences and values.
5. Engagement of Sensory Areas: Delight can also be triggered by sensory inputs such as sights, sounds, or other sensory experiences that are processed as exceptionally pleasing. The sensory cortices process these inputs, and if they are especially pleasing or surprising, they contribute to the feeling of delight.
6. Cognitive Appraisal: The prefrontal cortex, involved in planning complex cognitive behavior and expressing personality, also plays a role in interpreting and appraising situations. When an event or experience is perceived as particularly beneficial or satisfying, this area of the brain helps in assessing the situation and contributing to the emotional response.
7. Social Interaction: Humans are inherently social creatures, and delight can often be amplified through social interactions. Neurologically, this involves areas of the brain responsible for social cognition and empathy, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction.
8. Stress and Negative Emotions: These can inhibit the reward system by affecting neurotransmitter levels, particularly dopamine and serotonin, altering how rewards are processed.

The 7 Principles of Evoking Delight

Lets review the important phrases from the above science and classify them into 7 principles for evoking delight

1. Unique - exceed expectations; provide a novel joy; unexpected positive outcome;
2. Personalized - experience touches us personally; aligns closely with our preferences and values.
3. Rewarding - reward is better than expected; process rewards and motivate us towards reward-seeking behavior
4. Sensory - exceptionally pleasing sensory inputs such as sights, sounds
5. Beneficial - particularly beneficial or satisfying
6. Social - social interactions
7. Effortless - stress can inhibit the reward system

6 Techniques for Engineering Delight

From the above summary the below Design techniques become obvious. These should ideally be applied across the product, but most definitely to every high frequency interaction

Zero Cognitive Load

What it means

1. I prescribe designing interfaces that not just minimize cognitive load but rather represent Zero Cognitive load
2. If you have read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - he describes the concept of System 1 and System 2 as two different modes of thinking
3. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; it operates automatically and quickly with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 1 is used for routine decisions and impressions
4. System 2, on the other hand, is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. It involves conscious thought, reasoning, and tends to be more effortful. System 2 is activated when a task requires more attention, such as complex computations or reasoned decisions.
5. Zero Cognitive load for me means a user interface that does not require System 2 even when being used for the first time
6. A User should not need to think hard and should be able to smoothly sail through interfaces with mostly mindless clicks and System 1 navigation
7. Of course cognitive load is required when a user is performing any analytical task or making changes that have an impact, but these type of interactions tend to be fewer

Why - Effortless

1. When a user uses System 1 it feels “Effortless” since it is done autonomously / unconsciously
2. Anytime one needs to employ System 2 it requires conscious effort

How

1. Each screen must contain exactly as many elements (text, assets etc) that are both necessary and sufficient for majority of the users. Clutter results in Cognitive load
2. A visual scan should enable the user to get exactly what they expect from the screen
3. Smart defaults, auto-complete
4. Progressive disclosure - one screen at a time

100ms Response time

What it means

1. Every user interaction must respond within under 100ms

Why - Unique and Effortless

1. When the delay in response time is less than 100 ms, most users perceive the action as instantaneous. This means that the interaction feels direct and seamless, with no noticeable lag between the user input and the system response. Once the response time exceeds 100 ms, users can start to perceive a delay. Between 100 ms and 200 ms, the response feels slightly less immediate, but still fairly quick. Beyond 200 ms, the delay becomes more noticeable, and users may start feeling that the system is slower or less responsive.
2. The perceptual boundary around 100 ms is crucial because it aligns with the human brain's expectation for a near-instantaneous feedback following an action. This expectation is rooted in how quickly our sensory systems (visual, tactile) process stimuli.
3. Users conventionally do not expect instant response, so any app that responds instantly to every action is Unique, exceeds expectations and is joyful to use
4. Furthermore if your competitor’s app is slower, users will feel the pain when switching and will prefer your app to competition

How

1. 100% of read requests must be served from local data store without any network call. This requires designing your client app in a unique way.
2. I am personally deeply against how applications have become more central with data in the cloud and APIs for accessing all information, versus the good old days when data was on my device and always accessible. Note however these are not mutually exclusive. One can still leverage the cloud while ensuring that data is push-synced and permanently stored (not just as a temporary cache) on a users device
3. 100% of write requests should write to local store with a backend async operation that syncs those changes to the cloud
4. Note that this type of design requires handling various other challenges such as retry, user communication when an operation fails, user expectations. Also collaborative editing can be very complex to implement appropriately

Purpose-built Unique Design

What it means

Where relevant for high frequency features build a custom purpose-built design that departs from the traditional forms and buttons to provide a much more fit-to-purpose interface

Why - Uniqueness

Novelty triggers dopamine release

How

1. For each high frequency feature understand what the user is trying to achieve and instead of going with the convention, custom design the interaction to uniquely solve for the challenges of the user. Few Examples of this follow
2. Apple iPod Wheel: The iPod's click wheel was designed for easy scrolling and selection of music tracks, allowing users to navigate long playlists efficiently with just one finger
3. Tinder's Swipe to Like/Dislike: Prior to Tinder dating apps had lists with buttons and detailed profiles. Tinder truly understood that the primary decision making criteria tends to be physical attraction. It changed the entire interface by using the entire screen for just one thing - the photo, and a simple gesture - swipe right to like and swipe left to dislike mechanism
4. Apple Credit Card’s payment wheel
5. Conventionally apps are all forms and buttons and sure they are required in many cases. But if you truly understand the problem a user is trying to solve and custom create an interface that is uniquely suited to solving that problem using relevant design elements and gestures it can evoke delight
6. It is important to ensure that you do not end up increasing cognitive load while doing so. A new design should feel intuitive and natural and not require System 2

Engage the Senses with Microinteractions

What it means

Modern app platforms enable engaging the users with high resolution graphics, animations, haptics and sounds - use them where relevant

Why - Uniqueness

Exceptionally pleasing sensory inputs such as sights and sounds trigger dopamine release

How

1. Build in haptics and pleasing sounds on relevant events / completion of relevant actions
2. Add delightful micro animations when the user achieves, accomplishes, completes a task, milestone, activity

Gamification

1. Introduce rewards, badges, leaderboards, scores, unlockable content, progress bars
2. Progress bars, badges, leaderboards, scores all act as signals to our brains reward system and motivates us towards reward-seeking behavior

Personalization

1. Personalize content, flows, interfaces to user’s behaviors, preferences, and past interactions
2. Experiences that touch us personally and align closely with our preferences and values delight us and evoke emotion