The Secret Formula Behind ChatGPT's Billion-Dollar Success (Product Delight Framework)

The AI products that win, chat, GPT,

cursor, quad code, they delight. They're

not just better at their functional job.

They're doing something most AI product

builders miss, their engineering

delight.

>> When we build products, we are supposed

to meet both dimension. The functional

needs of our users, but also the

emotional needs of our users. And if we

only focus on the functional part,

there's a risk and I see it as a trap.

Nazarin Shenel is the product leader

behind Spotify Unwrapped and Google

Meets AI transcription.

>> In today's episode, we're going to dig

deep into how to engineer delight into

AI products and beyond.

>> Today, she's going to break down her

exact toolkit to engineer delight into

your AI products.

>> The only thing is that they don't

necessarily know how to.

>> What makes JBT so successful?

>> Successful product used to create

loyalty. It's about creating that

emotional connection. It's not a

feature. It's a relationship that you

need to build. The light model is a

four-step process. First step is about

identifying users motivators. The second

step is about turning those motivators

into real product opportunities. Once

you identify those opportunities, you

create solutions. And then the last

step, which for me is fundamental and

very necessary, is about validating

delight.

>> Why do some products feel like they're

delivering on both of these areas of

delight and others fail? because some of

them are authentic and other might feel

like um

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we'll continue to make this content

better and better. And now on to today's

episode. Nazine, it's so nice to be

filming with you. How are you?

>> Hi, Cash. I'm excited to be with you as

well.

>> So, we met up for breakfast. We planned

out an amazing session for people today.

I think they're going to get a ton of

value here. Let's start here. What's the

one thing that separates billiondollar

AI products from the graveyard of

forgotten tools?

>> Let me be clear. When I talk about

product, I talk about successful

products. And I talk a lot about how can

we create standout products and those

standout product has something in

common. They blend while building the

product two dimensions. They blend the

functional dimension and the emotional

dimension into the same core experience.

So I do believe that for product to

stand out and to differentiate themsel

and to create what I call excellence,

it's really important to create them in

a way that we address both functional

needs and also emotional needs. So

that's the that's the essence when I

talk about the light. It's about

creating those two dimension while

crafting the solution, not like

separately. So why do some products feel

like they're delivering on both of these

areas of delay and others fail?

>> Because some of them are authentic and

other might feel like um something on

top a bit like fake. Let's be

transparent. So I usually distinguish

between different type of delight. There

is what I call the surface delight and

there is the other type which is the

deep delight. And here's the thing like

when we talk about surface delight these

are just those shiny moment those

confetti effect those animation that

makes the product a little bit brighter

and of course we know that they are nice

to have but it's not necessarily what is

making this strong emotional connection

that I'm talking about. However on the

other side the deep delight is when we

create functional solutions while

addressing emotional needs while

building them. So you see the difference

it's not about that sprinkling confetti

on top of utility. It's about creating

the product while addressing the

emotional need at the same time. So

that's the big difference between the

two type of the light.

>> I think that's a really important

distinction. Why do some AI products

just shoot themselves in the foot?

>> So when we talk about the light, let's

be very clear. It's about emotion. And

by the way, one element that we can

address and clarify here is that the

light by itself is an emotion. And there

have been some studies like

conceptualizing delight as a a

combination of two primary emotion.

These emotions are joy and surprise. So

just think about yourself. If you are in

the moment where you are experiencing

joy and surprise at the same time, then

you are delighted. The problem is when

we talk about emotion, what makes you

happy is not necessarily what makes

other happy. And even yourself, you

might be happy with a situation that

might not make the same effect on you on

other situations. So inclusiveness is

really really important in that aspect

and making sure that you create that joy

instead of disappointment. You see like

that's the problem and I've seen this in

action unfortunately in many product we

can talk about few product that tried to

be delightful but in some situation

turns out to be unfortunately more

disappointing than delightful and I

brought two example to share with you

today.

>> Let's take a look.

>> Yes. So the first one is actually that

went viral I think on social media

people spoke about it's this uh Apple

message AI summary. So of course the

idea was like when you receive a long

message on your phone then you get like

a short two sentences summary and that's

supposed to reduce friction for you and

make it easier for you. However there

are situation where summary doesn't make

sense at all. And I'm taking this

screenshot because like this post went

viral on LinkedIn and X and a lot of

social media and it's a real situation

that someone get a long message from his

girlfriend saying that she's leaving and

she's quitting and she want to take her

belonging and it's actually a very long

message with a lot of explanation. But

if you see the message how it went and

came as a summary like no longer in a

relationship once belonging from the

apartment like was so cold and and funny

enough it was his birthday. I mean

that's that's that's why like that's

exactly the opposite of delight. That's

when you try to bring joy but turns out

to be disappointment. So there are

moments where delight doesn't work if

the emotions are not addressed exactly

as as they should be. That's the first

example. That's crazy. Like this is like

AI gone rogue, right? So yeah, and it's

very hard to predict as a product

manager that you know you might have

created your eval test suite of 200, but

you didn't create the one about breakup

messages and just being super sensitive

there. And all of a sudden, this is out

there in the wild. And so this is the

type of problem people trying to

engineer delight have to really work

around.

>> Yes. So that's actually something I did

a lot as a PM is to look at corner cases

because we don't want to have bad press.

We don't want to hurt users. I mean,

it's better not to bring the light than

to bring the light the wrong way. Uh, so

for example, when I worked on Google

Meet and we introduced filters, we made

sure that it worked on all skin tones

and there have been one skin tone that

it didn't work well. We did not ship the

feature because we don't want to hurt

even like 0.01% of the population. that

won't be aligned with the value of the

product and that will not be delightful

because it's not aligned with our

values. So that's that's an interesting

uh case. The other case I wanted to

bring is actually a real story from one

of my best friend who actually shared

this story with me and we are all user

of WhatsApp in a way or another and she

actually it happens that she lost her

brother quite recently and she was

scrolling some messages on WhatsApp and

found out there is a a picture of her

brother holding her baby like like her

six-month baby at the time. So she

clicked on the picture and she couldn't

get the picture and instead she got this

like a very similar message to this

saying like this picture is no longer

available. Ask John to resend it. You

know this kind of the fact that asked

John to resend it in that grief moment

was the the worst message she said like

I could even receive. She said like I

was willing to not use WhatsApp anymore.

Like I'm taking this screenshot. it's a

real one like for also the same for if

you get an audio message and you want to

relisten to it. So sometime it's about

choosing the wording so you make sure

that it's appropriate for all cases and

all situations.

>> That's absolutely wild. Yeah. I think

that um this is only getting tougher

with AI features.

>> Yes. So here's the thing. AI is making a

lot of progress when it comes to

functionality. And remember I said

something in the beginning that when we

build products we are supposed to meet

both dimension the functional needs of

our users but also the emotional needs

of our users. And if we only focus on

the functional part because AI is

allowing to progress so fast in

developing functional features then we

there's a risk and I see it as a trap

that we ignore a little bit the

emotional need and we become like just

functional products and that's the worst

case that we don't want to fall into. So

it's doesn't mean that we we I mean we

should not work with AI the way it is

today but in the opposite we need to

train AI to be better at addressing

emotional needs and we see quite nice

products like succeeding in doing it the

the the most important thing and that's

what why I want to talk about this

inclusiveness is to ask yourself the

following question is it inclusive

enough is there any corner cases that

has not been addressed test and if not

how can I train my agent how can I train

my machines to make sure that I am

experiencing most of the cases to avoid

whatever bad harm might happen out of

that

>> I think you had shared with me an

interesting example from Deliveroo

around this

>> yes because that's an interesting case

as well since we're talking about the

bad corner cases and that's something

that just happened last year so I'm

based in Paris And on Mother's Day, a

deliverer tried to do a delightful

campaign. So what they did and these are

real screenshot by the way. They sent a

notification on all like a user's mobile

and the notification as you can see look

exactly like a missed call. So this is

written in French. It says like appel mo

which means literally missed call from

your mom. And so again, when you click

on this, you're supposed to get like,

"Hey, it's Mother's Day. Think about

your mother. Send her flower." Blah

blah. I mean, we can help you doing

that. That's what what the campaign is

all about. But again, this is something

that had the worst press ever because a

lot of people felt hurt. And not

everyone can feel the joy out of this

supposed to be delightful moment. Some

of them felt weird, some other felt

grief, some other felt sorrow. And so

again, this is a pure example when

delight can go wrong if it's not

addressing all cases and all corner

examples.

>> I think the delight challenge around

corner cases is perhaps hardest for

something like Chad GPT, right? It needs

to succeed in every single corner case.

What is Chad GPT's success really about?

Is it about delight? What makes chachi

so successful? So if we talk about

chachipity, chachipity is definitely one

of the product now that is used by most

people around like again we might not

maybe all agree on how it's used some

are using it more like a a search engine

and other using it more as a a company

and I like this concept of I'm using

chat jeepy as a company or like a cow

writer or coworker or you see the point

so I've been talking a lot with with

many of my friends and and ex-colagues

about how are they using chachi and I'm

realizing that a lot of my friends are

paying subscription to chat not for the

functional part but for the fact that

they are feeling less lonely with with

the products like especially like I

personally very recently moved from

being a full-time employee and very well

established organization to working by

myself and having Chad Chippet on my

side honor that need of creating

uh that company feeling and feeling less

lonely aspect. So that's one part

because what I mean the again the set of

emotion is not necessarily the same for

all products. I mean when we talk about

Spotify the set of emotion that I'm

looking for while using Spotify is

definitely not the same set of emotion

that I might be looking for while using

Chad GPT. So it's really important

whatever product you are building to

identify what set of emotions you want

to feel and build toward achieving those

uh those emotions.

>> That was great. So in the case of Chad

GBT, how do we make sure that we achieve

that sense of belonging that sense of

company into the product? So here's the

thing. We as human being have some core

value and we have some core needs and

these needs of course we we are doing

our best to honor those needs and one of

the needs that is very evident and it's

got even more proven during covid time

is the fact that we want to be closer

human to human. So we want to be um of

course in company we we want to be

closer to other uh peers and this is a

concept that also can be very much

integrated into tech products. Here's

the thing I can talk about uh a

technique that I'm calling humanization.

What it means is that how can we build

products that feels like it's a human?

It's not necessarily a machine. What I

mean by that is that asking your

question, if my product was a human

being, how would the reaction be? How

would the service would be? And then

compare your product to that to that

level of service or that level of

product. And I'm bringing here an

example uh because it's a real

conversation I had with the head of

product back then uh from Dyson. And I

asked Andy, like Andy the head of

product from Dyson, like hey, how come

that I love my vacuum cleaner? Like it's

a vacuum cleaner. And I feel proud of

having it. I show it to my guests and

friends. And how come? And he he shared

an interesting story with me. He

actually said, "We do not compare our

vacuum cleaner to competitors. We do

compare our robot to how it would have

been done better if it was done by a

human being." You see the point?

Actually, he told me that if you hire

someone to clean your house, you

probably ask that person to to start

with a certain room or you probably uh

clean in a certain way. And they got

inspired by this kind of recommendation

system to add it into their robots. And

the reality Akash is that that's exactly

what we did at Google Meet as well.

Because when we when I work for Google

Meet, we almost never compared Google

Meet to Zoom or to Teams or whatever,

but we compared Google Meet to how it

would be better if we were all in the

same room having the same meeting, but

like a in a human style. And if you do

so, you raise the bar because that's

exactly what our brain is is so uh

willing to have. And that's exactly what

we want to have as well. So for example,

we developed features like uh hand raise

or we developed features like imagery

reactions like these feature were born

out of conversation like if my product

was a human how the experience could be

better.

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So they're really bringing that

humanization into the feature

development process so that you're

focusing on the human element instead of

the competit competitive element. Are

there specific variables or types of

emotions or ways people should be

thinking about bringing humanization

into their product?

>> Yes. And again, it's not a bucket of

emotions. I think it depend a lot on the

product you are developing. Again, I

mean, we spoke about the example Spotify

earlier. The set of emotion that you are

looking for is definitely not the same

set of emotions that you might expect

out of a product like teams or like Muro

or Atlassian or whatever. So what I can

highlight here is that and that's

something that I've seen from coaching a

lot of organizations like people not

necessarily don't necessarily want to

agree or to feel agreed with. However,

they value very much feeling seen,

heard, and valued, right? So, if your

product can allow them to have this kind

of set of feeling, I want to feel more

heard, I want to feel more seen or I

want to feel valued through my work.

Maybe I want to feel like a better

facilitator, I want to feel like a

better leader, I want to feel like a

better than the fraud. For example, if I

have a product against that, then that's

an interesting set of product that can

bring that product to humanization

style. And the best example I can bring

here is for example the Spotify AI DJ

like um this is a very interesting

project by the way. It's been like now

growing in many countries like started

from the UK and now it's available in so

many uh company and uh countries sorry.

But the beauty of this uh specific

product is that it adapts the way how it

speaks to the user based on what type of

playlist you want to listen to, what t

what time in the day you are uh trying

to listen to that playlist. Also, what

kind of mood are you in? And this is

again very much aligned with the set of

uh emotion of feeling heard and feeling

seen. So and and I see a lot of company

trying to navigate through these two set

of emotions nowadays

>> and you can access this AI DJ through

chat GPT. Oh, actually this is very new

uh what I've seen very recently and

that's um I think a week ago that I've

seen Gustav the new president of Spotify

talking about the integration of Spotify

with chat GPT and the interesting part

was not only the integration let me be

honest with you I was very interested by

the text in the message the the post

itself so Gustav didn't sound like we

integrated Spotify into chat He said if

you want to get a playlist from Chad

Chipi or if you have a set of emotion

you want to honor now you can get them.

So now you see leaders of top companies

talking about emotion in their way of

communicating around their product and

their features. It's very clear that I

mean emotion was part of the text was

part of the marketing campaign because

we value and we see clear connection

between product success and honoring

users emotion in the product.

>> So when chatpt is thinking about

engineering delight and it's thinking

about it you know we've already said

don't think about it too much from a

competitive lens think about it more

from a humanistic lens but you're living

in a competitive marketplace versus a

claude or something like that. Are these

integrations are these good factors that

a PM should be considering good tactics

to potentially build more delight into

their product and differentiate from the

competition like Claude?

>> From my perspective and I've seen this

working both for the product I've been

building but also in so many other

products. Competition is very easy if we

compete on the functional side only. I

mean if you have a product that is

brilliantly engineered and users are

using it tomorrow if they find another

product that gives them the same set of

functionality users will feel very

easily I mean they they there's no

attachment they can easily move to the

new product especially if you offer them

like a lower price however here is the

secret ingredient that product or

successful product use to create loyalty

it's about creating that emotional

connection if you invest in creating

that emotional connection. It it will

take time by the way. It's not a

feature. It's not two features. It's a

relationship that you need to build and

you need to build from the start by the

way because you want to gain the trust.

You want to gain the confidence and you

want to gain the proudness as well

because you want to make sure that users

are proud enough to tell the word. So if

you invest in this emotional connection

then it's much much harder for your user

to move to competitor. And that's why

like I really emphasized on the fact

that the light is a lens of

differentiation. It's a lens for growth.

It is a driver for standing out and

having a longer relationship with the

users. And by the way uh I want to

highlight something u maybe interesting

for our audience here that there have

been recently quite interesting

researchers and this research has been

conducted by giant like cap gemini the

lawyer Harvard Business Review McKenzie

actually they all studied the same thing

they studied the impact of emotional

connection on product adoption and so

out of these reports and I spent weeks

trying to like

compel and get the best out of this

report. I realize that there is a

consensus and the consensus is saying

that emotionally connected users are

twice more likely to stay longer, twice

more likely to recommend your product

and twice more likely to buy more

product and services from you. So you

are doubling revenue, retention and

referral just with the ingredient of

emotional connection. And by the way, do

you know what they are comparing these

numbers to? They are comparing them to

highly satisfied users. So the two

buckets are highly satisfied users and

emotionally connected users. So you see

the potential by investing into this

area.

>> I think that uh delight has to be one of

the most important factors for

differentiation for any product builder

out there. And it's about thinking about

both the small and the big investments.

Here we see I would say what would be

like maybe a little bit of a smaller

investment where you just integrate with

a delight feature that Spotify has had.

But as you stack up these delightful

experiences, that's how you create

differentiation. And if we look at the

monthly active users of a Claude versus

a Chad GPT, Chad GPT now crossing 800

million. Claude still stuck well below

100 million. Being first mover helps

Chad GPT. But all these elements of

delight, all the consistent shipping

they're doing also, I think are playing

a really important role. And I love how

you're highlighting that here. Do you

have any other examples that would

really help illustrate how to stack in

these competitive vectors of different

delight?

>> Yeah, I mean the second example I have

is an example of a product that is very

close to my heart which is Google Meet.

uh I've been working and building

product uh like Google Meet for for

years and I see how much value is

putting into like a product like me and

by the way maybe what people don't

necessarily know about Google meets is

that Google invests so heavily into

delight that they create delight teams

like I have been the PM for the delight

team in Google meet and it's not unique

for Google meet like it's also the case

for Google search for chrome and for

most of the Google products So at Google

meet our mission was to make sure that

we create the most delightful experience

and so when I left Google meet this

feature got shipped uh by my ex team I

would say and they shipped the Google

meet translator which is powered by AI

of course. So what is beautiful about

this feature is not only about

translation. I mean translation is

definitely not a new technology. It's

about featuring your own voice and even

integrating your own emotion in the way

how your speech is translated. And

that's for me is the power of this tool

because like translation as I said uh

itself is not a new technology but

integrating your own emotion and your

tone and your voice into the translation

make you feel present make you feel

connected and suddenly even make you

feel surprised about yourself speaking

another language.

>> I love that example. So as I was reading

your book, thank you so much for writing

this. I think one of the coolest

resources you put in here was that there

were three types of delight. Can you

walk us through those and how those

might relate to AI products?

>> Yes. So, here's the thing again. We

always get back to this concept of every

product is created for two reasons. For

functional reasons and for emotional

reasons. If the feature you are building

is only solving for a functional reason,

there's no emotion into it, then it

belongs to this category that I call the

low delight. If your feature is only

solving for an emotional need and there

is definitely no functional need into

it, then it is a surface delight. Think

about this confetti thing or this like a

Easter eggs that we see nowadays in some

products or even the emojis in slack or

the emojis in chat as well in order to

add this tone and the fun effect in the

in the output. And then the third

category is what I call the deep

delight. And that's when functionality

meets emotions and that's when we create

products that uh are like blending the

two dimension together. So let's maybe

go through some examples so we

understand a little bit more these

categories. I think the low delight

category is very easy to understand.

That's what most people are doing

nowadays like we are building features

that works and that's what we want. Now,

the Surface Delight is actually

something, for example, just happened to

me few weeks ago. It was my birthday,

and on my birthday, my Apple Watch just

popped up some balloons and some uh

interesting confetti saying happy

birthday in the screen. Is there any

functional need for that? Maybe not.

Same for wrapped, by the way. And I'm

going to surprise you now because a

feature like Spotify wrapped, which you

get like this retrospective toward the

end of the year, there is no factional

reason for having wrapped. It's all

about making you feel cool so that you

can share it with your friends and these

kind of features might sometime have a

lot of positive impact on the business

and the product because like feature

like wrapped had a huge impact on the

app downloads just wrapped by itself had

a huge impact on the app download. Uh I

want to also since we're talking about

Spotify, I want to highlight an

interesting feature and I was talking to

uh the head of product who actually came

up with this feature on Spotify which is

when it's season like these are seasonal

features on Spotify. It turns the

progress bar into lighting when it was

Diwali time. So when Spotify was trying

to grow uh in in India uh we tried like

to to make the product feel a little bit

more local and so like Indian users

might feel like more connected to the

product. So when it was Diwali we just

slightly just turned the progress bar

from a regular dot like the green dot

into this sprinkling light. And this

feature by itself like I remember I had

this very interesting conversation with

the head head of product who came with

this idea told me like it went viral in

India. Everyone was talking like hey we

need to download Spotify to see this.

It's not about listening to the music.

It's about I want to see the progress

bar turning into this twinkling light.

So that's why I'm not don't get me wrong

I'm not saying that surface delight is

not interesting. It is important for the

brand and the personality of the

product. It's just not the unique and

the only delight that will bring growth.

It has to be like addressed with some uh

some control I would say.

And then Diwali it seems like really is

hitting at what Indians like feel their

pride in. So it's something about really

understanding your users and not just

you know sprinkling some random delight

on there but getting to something

they're really going to associate with.

>> Yeah. I mean uh let me I mean I usually

use seasonality as a great driver for

delight. Let me explain again. When I

work for Google meet, we ha we

introduced background replace. Uh that

was co time when we quickly realized

that hey most of people are moving from

having like meetings in offices and

classrooms into 100% remote. And those

same people started to realize that they

want to protect their privacy. They want

to protect their um of course their

their private life. And so we quickly

introduced background replace. And again

it might sound like obvious nowaday but

at that time the need was not that much

clarified. It got clarified through

covid and so we introduced background

replace with a static image and then we

started introducing like a seasonal uh

background. So when it was Christmas we

uh introduced Christmas background for a

certain period of time like few weeks.

When it was Diwali we introduced Diwali

background. When it was Ramadan we

introduced Ramadan background. The idea

is that we want to surprise our users in

a seasonal but also in a personal way.

Uh and again the risk is that you are

not inclusive enough. So you know want

to make sure that you're not excluding

some people and only like addressing

some people's value. So we try to be as

much diverse as we can. So we even did

some Olympic themed background when it

was like Olympic game. The idea again is

like to surprise our users positively

but also in a continuous way to avoid

this habituation effect. The habituation

effect is when you see something, you

get surprised the first time but then

you're not surprised anymore. And in

order to maintain delight, we wanted to

do this in a continuous and repetitive

way. And and that's also another example

that we see from the progress bar on

Spotify.

>> Very very interesting. So what does it

look like if you're trying to engineer

deep delight?

>> So deep delight now is a different

aspect is it's not even comparable to

the surface delight. The surface delight

I think it's even well understood from

designers. Designers are really good at

understanding surface delight. They will

help you into getting this shiny moment.

Uh however before we move to deep

delight I want to make sure that even

surface delight has to be there for a

reason. I mean it's not about hey I can

shake my phone and you can get confetti

or snowflake or whatever. You need to

ask yourself what value am I honoring?

What emotional need am I honoring? Like

think about the wall as we spoke etc. So

if there is a value for the user or the

business do it. If there's no value just

for the fun skip. Now let's move to the

deep delight. Deep delight now is when

you are building a functional feature

like you are already like thinking about

improving your functionality. think

about how can I do this in a way that I

integrate my users's emotion and let me

be let me give you an example uh I will

give two example the first one is from

my time working for Google Chrome when I

joined Google Chrome actually I worked

on one of the toughest I would say

problem on Chrome which is managing tabs

>> so uh I know we know that a lot of our

users do have many tabs open and so of

course from a functional perspective

that's not ideal. You end up having a

product that is heavier like from a

performance perspective it's not the

great from a memory perspective it's not

what you want etc. So we wanted to

encourage our users to close their tab

but at the same time we wanted also our

user to enjoy their experiencing

navigating through their tabs. So what's

what's the solutions? Some of the

solution we explored is like what if we

close tabs on their behalf and we

quickly realized that that's the worst

that's the worst worst solution you can

bring. Why? Because when we interviewed

our users we do we did it by the way on

a very repetitive way. We realized that

there is a relationship between users

and tab. It's not like just a

connection. It's a relationship. Some

people would tell you don't touch my

tab. It's like in a very aggressive way.

So, we quickly realized that okay,

that's not an area we're going to get

closer to. So, how can we still help

them without uh frustrating them or

creating friction? While doing this

investigation and user interview, we

realized that also the number of open

tabs creates some confusion because some

people will feel like ashamed when they

show us their uh like their tab grid and

they will probably like some of them

apologize saying hey sorry I usually

don't have so many tabs opens. So all

these insights turns out to be very

useful like we wrote down what's what's

possible what's not possible at all what

is a red line and what's like the

emotion

what's the provocation that we made out

of this conversation and we created a

feature by the way that we called

inactive tabs it's available on on on

iOS Chrome iOS uh that meets this

functional need which is about like

improving the performance but at the

same time honoring the user's emotion or

the user's value. So, inactive tabs is

this possibility of grouping all tabs

that have not been visited or opened for

more than 21 day. And so, they are

grouped in this uh this group. And of

course, users will see all tabs that

have been opened over the last 21 day.

And if they want to see their old tabs

and they rarely do by the way they just

like care about them but they will never

go to they know that they are there. So

there is a connection of trust. There is

a relation of trust and confidence that

we didn't want to touch at all. So

that's the example I personally worked

on and I see it as a pure example of

deep delight because we try to like

compress thumbnails and make the the end

inactive tabs like taking less memory

and space but at the same time improve

the experience and honor their users

needs.

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What's your take on Gmail smartcompose?

Is that a good example of deep delight?

>> Yeah, same. Uh for me, this is another

great example of deep delight because

it's about again there is a functional

part. Your functional part is I want to

help you write uh your message. I want I

mean the functional side is making you

answer your email or sending uh emails

but at the same time I'm making you feel

less stressed. I'm making you feel less

uh uh frustrated as well or even like

making it feel easier for you. So you

see I already used at least three time

the term making you feel. Uh why?

Because it's not only about making you

write an email. It's making you write an

email in the easiest but also in the

relaxed way. So for me it's another

example of deep delight that could meet

this category.

>> I think uh two other examples that

people should really pay attention to.

So one is a claude code. So I think that

they're getting their deep delight and

they're winning right in this developer

market against a GitHub copilot or a

chat GPT codeex where they infusing

similar things like autocomplete like a

Gmail smart compose but they're adding

on like they have these crazy verbs

every time it working. It's like

meandering or bamboozling or

pontificating or whatever different

interesting verbs that they're putting

in there and similarly cursor. So we're

seeing through these spaces in AI

products like cursor where you just hit

tab and it feels like magic as a coder

that delight and specifically deep

delight is the way to win for AI

products. I think it's probably one of

the most important lessons out there but

a lot of our examples so far have really

been in the BTOC realm people could say.

Could you give us some examples in B2B?

>> Yes. So I I love by the way the example

you brought from the AI word and I just

want to complement one more thing

because uh over the weekend I've been

trying to prototype with lovable and

again this is one of those product that

everyone start to know nowadays I mean

if you don't know lovable is like you

feel like so much behind and I love the

time I spent on lovable the reason is

not only the output I get or the the

product I managed to prototype it's the

sense of achievement out of or hours of

work. This is a very rare like um

sentiment or feeling I usually like get

like I was so much impressed not only by

the outcome but also of of that sense of

achievement which is again one of our

emotional needs is you want to want to

feel like a accomplishing and valued and

that's that's an interesting part I just

want to complement what you said about

now when it comes to B2B or B2C I just

want to highlight one thing here is like

when when we talk about honoring

emotional needs. I rarely distinguish

between B2C and B2B. Uh I mostly talk

about B2H which is the business to human

because if the user is used by a human

being toward the end uh then they need

their emotion or they deserve their

emotion to be honored. So that's the

concept that's the mindset I usually do.

Now I also agree with you most of the

product I worked on are more toward B2C

like Spotify, Skype, Google meet even if

like for Google meet we also address the

enterprise side and we brought a lot of

delight by the way in the enterprise

side but the reality is that when I

started writing my book product delight

book I interviewed a lot of people from

the B2B space in order to get their

opinion toward what it makes to build

delightful products. So I interviewed

people like from into it, Atlassian,

Muro, Slack. The point was like hey you

are I'm considering you as delightful

product. How do you do and what I

realized that all those product do

integrate the principle of delight. They

just integrate them in different ways.

So for example, let me give you an

example. When I spoke with uh some

product leaders from Dropbox, I realized

that they had a product value called

Cupcake. When I spoke to people from

Snowflake, which is a pure tech company,

I realized that they had a value called

superhero. They want to make their user

feel like superhero. So that's the

that's the point. And I quickly realized

that they have more or less the same

goal in order to achieve this excellence

and this human connection. They just

call it differently. And that's the

beauty part. So whether B2B or B2C, we

need to take or at least think about it

the same way. The big difference though

and that's what I want to highlight is

again it's not the same set of emotions.

So if you're working toward building a

B2B product, the set of emotion that you

want your user to feel is definitely

something worth investigating and trying

to understand. I was talking the other

day with a heavy user of mirror and she

told me something quite interesting. She

said actually what I love about using

mirror is that I feel like I'm a better

facilitator. I feel like I'm a better

leader. And she didn't said like I can

use board or I can move cards or

whatever. She said like I feel like I

can do my job better. I can feel as a

better leader. And and that's an

interesting set of emotion in the B2B

space to investigate. I'm not saying it

is the set of emotion. is one of them

that you might consider others as well.

>> So I think that there's also this

element where if you're going to delight

the end user, you're going to delight

the person who wants it, you're going to

create a lot more lock in for those

enterprise contracts. Eventually those

enterprise contracts might you might get

more of them because the user talks to

the buyer or the user is the same as the

buyer or the buyer tries out the product

as a user. So there's so many different

ways where delight I feel like in a B2B

context we shouldn't ignore it. I think

that I've generally seen more PMs of

delight like you were on gigantic

consumer products, but there are

probably some B2B products out there

that could really use a Delight PM and

create it as their differentiation

vector.

>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we see that as

well like Atlassian recently released a

blog post called the new Jira. I don't

know if you've seen it. It's a long blog

post. I mean, it's not that recent. It's

like from couple of months ago. And new

Jiraa is actually the list of new

features that was released out of the

like the recent release of their Jira.

And I went through all the lists uh and

I tried to apply the delight model on

all the features that they uh released

and I realized that almost 70% really

like almost 70% of the new features that

got listed in that new Jira blog post

applies to the delight concept. And and

that's ana great example to see like

pure B2B company investing into delight

and the reason is because we as users

are so much um we are interfering with

so many B2B or B2C product that our

expectation now is raising like since we

see the light in B2C we also expect to

see it in B2B if I don't see it then I

will check if there's any other product

where I can find more delight into it.

So I agree that it's definitely a tool

for differentiation and it's definitely

a tool for success as well.

>> So if you're trying to decompose it into

a model which you have done in your

book, what would that model be? What is

the delight model and how can you

engineer delight? So after like with my

own experience and also by interviewing

a lot of leaders from different industry

by the way like I checked hardware

industry B2B industries like tech

industry like a GitHub or snowflake I

mean these are company that I don't

necessarily have big knowledge about how

they develop their product but I spend a

lot of months uh interviewing them

actually I have a research background

like I did a PhD in my early days so I

put my researcher hat again and I did my

research to try to consolidate both my

knowledge together with what I consider

successful outside of my my knowledge

and I ended up creating what I call the

delight model. So the light model I mean

I'm more calling it as a model because I

see it more like a mental model. First

of all delight is a mental model. You

need to be convinced that you need to

delight

>> your customers. And here's the truth at

cash. The reality is that now that I'm

coaching companies and founders, I think

and I see that most company and most

founders agree that we need to delight

our customers. They will tell you we

should delight our customers. All of

them, all industry is confused. The only

thing is that they don't necessarily

know how to. So we agree on the goal, we

just don't know necessarily how to. So

that for me was a eyeopener and a

revealer that we I I needed to put this

into something actionable. I needed to

put it into like something step by step

that people can benefit from. So the

delight model is a fourstep think about

it as a model or a process that works

the following. The first step is about

identifying users motivators. The second

step is about turning those motivators

into real product opportunities. Once

you identify those opportunities, you

create solutions and you categorize

solutions into these different type of

delights. And then the last step which

for me is fundamental and very necessary

is about validating delight. Why?

Because we don't want to get into that

bad press and all the risks that we

started the session with today. So these

are three steps or four steps sorry that

operate into the opportunity space and

the solution space and if we follow them

step by step then we can guarantee at

least that we can achieve this uh goal

of delight. So I assume there's a lot of

depth here that we could go into. Let's

start with into identifying a user's

motivators. What are the next level

layers and techniques to do this? Well,

>> yes. So it might be surprising and a lot

of time when I talk about this to

leaders and founders, I surprise them

the first time, but then they agree. The

reality is that users use your product,

but they not using it. They are not all

using it for the same reason.

So you think that you're serving them

the product for a reason, but they are

using it for different reasons. And

here's the thing. When you're building a

new feature or a new product, of course,

you have to start with segmenting your

users. You need to start by like doing

your personas and creating your personas

to understand who they are. But what I

see nowadays is that there's the

different type of segmentation. There is

the demographic segmentation. It's about

the who they are. And there's a second

type of segmentation which is more about

the behavioral segmentation and that's a

little bit better than demographic

segmentation. But the very best one is

the motivational segmentation. It's the

why. It's why your users are using your

product and you need to invest and

that's the very first step. If we skip

that step, the rest will not match. We

need to start by listing what motivate

my users on the functional side and what

motivate my users on the emotional

sites. Here an example like when I build

Spotify together with my team, we know

that from a functional side, some people

go to Spotify knowing exactly what album

they want to listen to. So they want to

search for a specific album. But there

are also other users who have no idea

what they want to listen to. They go to

Spotify to get inspired. So another need

could be inspire me or I want to get

inspired whatever thing that you know

about me maybe my taste my preferences.

So these belong to the functional

motivators. On the other sides a lot of

people go to Spotify just because they

want to change their mood or because

they want to feel less lonely or they

want to feel more productive. So these

are also area like let's call them

emotional motivators that need to be

identified. Why? Because when you build

the feature later on in the process you

want to blend them together to create

that emotional connections. So for me

that's the most important part. It's

about identifying the motivators but

also from the functional sides but not

only please not only because most of

people I spoke with are really good at

identifying functional motivators. Think

about the emotional motivators of your

users and if you manage to get them

right. It's a continuous process by the

way. It's not like a one time and then

I'm done with my motivators. Every time

you have an opportunity to speak with

your users, try to ask this question

like walk me through uh the journey of

using the product and describe how you

feel. Even if you don't ask that

question like take notes as the example

of Google Chrome, this frustration

feeling, this shame feeling, this

relationship feeling, address that and

write them down.

>> What are some of the motivational

segmentations we could think of for a

product like Spotify? So usually when we

talk about functional motivators they

can belong into these three type of

category. It's either solving a problem

or it's about creating efficiency or it

could be related to ease of use. So if

the feature is related to ease of use

efficiency or solving a specific problem

then that belongs to still like this

bucket of functional motivators.

However, on the emotional motivators,

and that's something that I love talking

about, there is two bucket. There's the

personal emotional motivators and

there's the social emotional motivators.

Let me explain. The personal emotion

moderators is how users want to feel

while using the product. The social

emotion moderators is how user want

others to feel about them while using

the product. You see the difference? So

for example, a lot of people would go to

Spotify because they want to feel part

of the vibe. They want to feel part of

the community. They wanna I mean this is

the sense of proudness. It's the sense

of community that most of the successful

company by the way build. Like if you

think about company like Slack, it's not

only the product that is successful,

it's the community. Like people are

bringing in their knowledge. they are

bringing in their bots and their their

their experience into the community and

and the same for Spotify like we develop

a feature like jam. It's the possibility

to to listen to music with others. It's

the collaborative playlist which is one

of the most successful feature by the

way because it gives you that sense of

belonging. give you that sense of

connection and uh I'm going to share

with you a concrete example by the way

because I truly believe that for a

product to succeed there's a true

connection between success and the sense

of proudness like remember this Dyson

thing I told you like I'm proud of

showing my vacuum cleaner it might feel

weird but it's so true because the other

day I was actually uh coaching a founder

of a company the company is about

helping music curator to get uh like

artists sorry like music artist get

connected with curator in order to get

known in the music space and like get uh

some some advertisement and some

promotion and so when I asked the

founder like how's things are going etc

and I asked the following question I

said hey do you think your users I mean

these artists who's getting your service

are proud to use your product

and he actually said I don't think they

are I don't think they are proud because

if they are using my product

>> they might feel like they are little

they are not big artists they need our

help in order to get known

and we stopped there and then two weeks

later he came to me and said hey Nri we

really really need to work on this

particular point we need to shift our

strategy toward how can we make our

users proud enough to tell the

to tell other artists because you cannot

play the game by yourself. You need to

get the help of your users who will be

proud and delighted telling others to

bring you more users.

>> Yeah, I've noticed that in my own

business for the newsletter podcast.

That's the absolute only way to grow

sustainably, especially at scale. So

important. So you put together this

delight grid that helps us walk through

these. Can you walk us through that?

>> Yes. So the light grid is another tool

that I'm also like describing very well

in the book and it's why by the way I

created this delight grade. It's about

helping teams who still wonder like is

my feature delightful? Am I into the

delight surface delight or surface

delight? Am I into the deep delight? I

created what I call this delight grid.

And the best way to think about the

light grid is to use the motivators that

we just spoke about. So remember I spoke

about functional motivators and

emotional motivators. All you have to go

to do is to go to your grid and write

your motivators in the grid. So you see

here on the vertical side you have the

function motivators. On the horizontal

side you have all the emotion

motivators. Why do we do that? Because

once this is done you're going to go and

place your ideas from the backlog. And

if a feature is only solving for

function moderators then it belongs to

the low delight category. If the feature

is uh solving only for an emotion

motivators then it belongs to the

surface delight and we spoke of that and

then the rest is about deep delight. And

what I love about the delight grid, it's

not only a categorization tool. It's a

tool that will force you that every

feature you are building in the product

is connected to a motivator. I mean, if

you can't map it in the grid, it's

probably not something that need to be

there at all. and and I did this

workshop with a lot of organization

where we try like to categorize their

features in the delight grid and we end

up having like three four features that

we are not at all able to map them. It's

like okay if the user is not at all

asking for it and there is no motivator

for it do you think it's really

necessary to build it and it's usually a

great food for thought to think whether

it's really needed or not.

>> Can you give us an example? maybe walk

us through the grid with an example

product.

>> Yes. Uh since we spoke about Spotify,

maybe we can continue talking about

Spotify. So when I work for Spotify

features like by the way, my team helped

developing um uh video podcasts. So we

introduced video podcast into Spotify.

We also introduced like a lossless which

is the uh the ability to stream music in

uncompressed music. Those features are

usually more toward the low delight

category. So we would bucket them into

low delight. However, on the other side,

features like the progress bar that

turns into light or the wrapped feature

would be more into the emotion

motivators because it's making you feel

connected. It's making you feel

immersed. So these are some emotional

motivators that you're honoring through

these features. On the other sides,

feature like jam or discover weekly, by

the way, it's an interesting example to

talk about here are more into the deep

delight because it's about helping you

uh find like a new track or getting more

inspired by a new playlist while

listening with others. There's a sense

of connection, there's a sense of

belonging and there is a deep level of

personalization in discover weekly for

example. So this is this is maybe an

example where you can think about the

delight grade in action at Spotify. But

let me maybe add one more thing here

since we're talking about the light

grade. I usually I want to be very

clear. I'm not here to say that it's not

because it's called low delight that we

should not invest in low delight. And

here is my clarification. Uh I ask I've

got asked a lot of time about hey how do

we prioritize between this low delight

versus deep delight and and surface

delight. So I came with this rule that

I'm calling the 50410.

The 50410 is a recommendation. Think

about it as a recommendation where I

recommend your backlog or your road map

to look like the following. 50% would be

would be more for low delight, 40% for

deep delight and only 10% for surface

delight. You might be surprised me

telling you 50% of your road map should

be low delight but it's actually so

necessary. I mean your product exists

for a reason and this reason need to be

there and need to function the right

way. Now if you can allocate 50% of the

rest of your backlog toward the surface

delight and deep delight then you're

going to win. That's what will make you

different and that's the pure delight.

>> I love this framework because there's a

big waiting towards deep delight here.

It's like you might have some surface

delight. We talked about things like

that. Good examples of that, but you the

more waiting you have towards deep

delight, the higher returns you're going

to get, the better retention you're

going to see, the better word of mouth

you're going to see.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

>> This is fascinating. We've been talking

a lot about AI products. How would Chad

GPT map to the Delight Grid? Yeah, I

think independently of the product again

it all come to the fact that we need to

identify what motivate users both

functional side and emotional sides. It

applies to hardware, software, AI. By

the way, um the way how I see AI is more

like an ingredient like technology,

uh features, they all ingredient toward

human connection and so AI is one of the

ingredient that we can of course well

use or not well used depending on the

the purpose to achieve human connection

and if we want to talk about chachi of

course it's a great example because it's

a one of those great example that we

feel a certain human connection between

us and the product. And so if we try to

map it to the delight grade, uh I see

clearly three buckets into how we are

getting value out of chat. The first

value belongs to this low delight. It's

more about the how accurate are the

answers. Uh I mean also the quality of

the answers, the speed of the answer. Um

I mean this is all related to the low

delight category. The second category,

which is the surface delight, might be

much more related to the tone and the

warmth that you get out of the the style

and the voice if you're using like a

voice command. It's it's also about

these emojis that might be added. It's

about uh again how the you're getting

the answer. It's about this uh emotional

connection there. And the deep delight

comes more from create like combining

those two together so that you feel like

a the sense of belonging and the sense

of connection with the product. So think

about for example

uh so if you get like one of the thing

that I love most about chat is that the

fact that I'm using it over time and the

more I use it the more the the product

get to know me and the better the

answers get customized and personalized

to what I'm looking for. So the fact

that I'm getting answers aligned with

what I'm looking for and aligned to what

I value is an example of deep delight

because the quality combined with how I

want to get them is an example of deep

delight. So you see we're not talking

about confetti here at all. We're not

even talking about design. We are

talking about how these three can be

combined together to create the best

experience. So one more thing that you

had put in the book that was a very

interesting tool that I thought I

personally will take away and use is the

delight checklist. Can you walk us

through that?

>> Yes. So the delight checklist is a tool

that comes more toward the fourth step

of the process.

So when we are done with like generating

ideas, categorizing idea, understanding

how much of them is low delight, surface

delight, deep delight, then comes the

time when you're about to start building

them, you check like is it really

delightful? Is it bringing me the value

that I want to bring to the customer, to

the user, and to the business. So the

delight checklist, think about it as a

guideline that you take every feature

and ask the following questions. So it's

not only a list of category, it's a list

of questions as well. So the first two

which for me are really important is

like is this delightful feature bringing

any value to the business and does it

bring any value to the user? Because for

me delight is not an excuse to add

confetti. It's about again aligning with

business goals and and KPIs and and

metrics. And also the same I mean we

spoke about this example of confetti and

I would love to share an example since

we're talking about confetti here is

like I'm I want to share an example from

Airbnb because I'm an Airbnb user both

as a guest but also as a host and as a

host I have a goal and my goal is to

make sure that I maintain my superhost

uh tech. Yeah, I mean I work hard

>> I work hard to get that. I mean for me

it's an achievement and of course I

depend on users review I depend on my

quality of service a lot of things but u

Airbnb actually reassess my ability or

to remain superhost every three months

and you know what every three months

when I still a superhost or I'm

re-evaluated to stay super host the app

turns into confetti again this is

surface delight yes but for me it's an

interesting example because I feel like

Airbnb is valuing the effort and

recognizing the effort I've been putting

into that goal. So I feel like the app

is celebrating it with me. So Kofetti or

not Kofetti, is it aligned with your

business goal? Is it aligned with your

users goal? Those are the two and the

rest is like other other guidance like

for example have you been investigating

enough to get insight from your users?

Have you collected motivator from your

users and from your data? Uh you can

also check whether the feature is looks

familiar or not. Uh I I really uh like

this example because if you come up with

something completely new I mean of

course we are told that we love

innovation but we actually hate when

it's completely new. Uh I mean I see

you're surprised. So I will uh share a

story with you. A story you might even

know about which is uh the story behind

Discover Weekly. So Discover Weekly

turns out to be one of the most

successful features of Spotify. And do

you know that Discover Weekly, the

success of Spotify really came out of a

bug?

>> Because the real story behind Discover

Weekly is that it was supposed to bring

you only new track that you never

listened to before. That's why it's

called Discover. It's all about making

you discover new tracks. And so when we

ship at discover quickly the first time

we checked it metrics and we've seen

that they are all successful things are

going so well but two weeks later the

engineers realize that there is a bug in

the feature and the bug is actually

injecting some like it song from time to

time into discover weekly and we started

to question what the hell this is not

supposed to be that way and so they

fixed it and do you know what happened

when they fixed it? Absolutely. Things

went down and so that was an interesting

moment to think like hey people love

discover weekly because from time to

time they found something familiar into

it but if it was completely new for them

or unfamiliar then it won't get that

success. So inspired by that story I put

familiarity as an interesting point to

check when you're building feature.

Think about like even like Google

glasses didn't work the first time

because we've never seen them before.

However, nowadays like when you see

someone with the like the Apple glasses

or like their those are like start to

become more familiar and so more

successful. So again I don't think we

have time to go through them all but

it's about making sure that it's

feasible. It's inclusive. Again this is

really really important. We we started

the session talking about it and it's

never enough to talk about inclusiveness

when we talk about emotion. It should

not be uh destructive. It's not about

distraction. it should almost do not

feel there. I mean the most delightful

features are those that

you almost do not notice it. Uh so uh if

if it should not interfere between the

user and the product. It's about the

experience not the feeling. Uh again

continuity we spoke about habituation

effect. Do you have a plan to make this

continuous? Do you have a plan to make

this delight continuous or is it like a

oneoff and then you move away? And of

course it's about measurability because

people think that the light is not

measurable. However, there are ways of

assessing user satisfaction. There are

way to measure users happiness and you

need to align

your delight metrics with your business

metrics in order to make sure that

you're serving for the right thing.

>> We've been talking a lot about delight.

We've shown people how through the

delight grid they can create delight.

They've engineered it. What is

anti-delight? the flip side of delight.

>> Actually, let me correct something here.

Anti- delight is not the flip side of

delight. It's not even the opposite of

delight. Because here's the reality. The

opposite of delight is disappointment.

I mean, if you want to have your users

not delighted, you're going to get them

disappointment. However, anti-delight is

more like a deliberate technique that is

sometime used deliberately by certain

products. uh it could be in the design,

it could be into the way how they're

building product in order to give you a

sense of the product but not the full

experience.

Uh so it's it's sometime it's used

actually in a lot of products. Some of

the example we can talk about here is

like the uh if you're a premium user at

Spotify, you have a limited number of

skips. It means that you can enjoy the

feature for a certain time but then I

have to limit that experience for you so

I can drive you toward the premium. So

you're not delighted at that moment, but

at the same time, you're getting the

full experience or part of the full

experience. And and it's a bit risky, by

the way, because you need to balance

between giving you enough information

and enough experience, but also not

enough to uh encourage you to move to

the next beer. We see this a lot on B2B

products as well, when I give you the

experience for a certain time or for a

certain seat and then I ask you to pay

for extra. So these are like anti

delight for me is more a technique that

forces users to or encourage user let's

say to move to a to next plan.

>> If you had to summarize what are the

things that PMs or founders miss when

they're trying to create an engineer

delight.

>> I think we especially let me be

transparent here. This emotional

connection thing is not a new thing. I'm

not the first one talking about

emotional connection. It's even very

well covered in design. It's very well

covered in marketing. I mean, the best

marketing campaign are the emotional

ads. The best design is the emotional

design. But here's the truth. I realized

that and I've been a product manager

myself like product managers and

business people are not educated toward

building delightful products. And that

by itself creates a gap. Meaning that

you have marketers building to like

trying to aim for delight designers

aiming toward delight and then business

aiming for northstar metrics revenues

OKRs and metrics and then that creates

gap that creates misalignments. So one

of my biggest goal out of like

evangelizing around the light or writing

the book product delight was number one

bringing this topic to the same level

like making these crossf functional

people talk the same language and aim

for the same goal and that's by itself a

huge step because if we make these

people work together then we can achieve

that that goal. So that's my first goal

and the second goal was to actually we

don't know how to. So the biggest

mistake usually is when I don't know how

to I get back to my like original

mistake or my my habit which is okay

let's build feature let go fast let's go

feature and the other mistake I've seen

is that people think that okay I will

bring the light later I mean let me get

it to the market let me assess users

feeling and then I will bring the light

field later I agree that you need to

work on functionality first I agree that

your product needs needs to function

first. However, if you bring the light

too late, you already build that

perception. You already build that

personality and that brand and it's much

harder to change it later. So, I highly

encourage people to think about

delighting their customers as early in

the process as as later because we might

for forgive for lack of functionality

and we spoke about like cha earlier as

an example where we see like accuracy is

is a load like category and sometime we

get inaccurate answers from chaty

completely nonaccurate and we forgive

chat why for the rest of the experience

because don't aim for perfection of

functionality bring in delight as early

in the process as you can

>> amazing so we talked a lot about delight

I have to ask you this question about

Google because you were a PM there what

are the biggest misconceptions people

have about being a PM at Google

>> okay So before maybe I had that

misconception myself. So before I joined

Google I thought that working for Google

will be about having

very clear very structured processes and

we're going to be very like strict about

these steps and and it will be very well

managed. And as soon as I joined Google

I quickly realized that it's definitely

not about having a clear and structured

process. It's about being able to

navigate through chaos because there is

chaos. I mean, there's absolutely no way

for me to describe to you a single

process how we build product at Google.

It's a lot about back and forth. Of

course, there are like strict rules

about making sure that we do not violate

like a legacy, privacy, security,

inclusiveness. Of of course, like Google

is very strict about those kind of

things. But we I mean we allow ourselves

to go crazy and it means if you want to

allow yourself to go crazy it means that

you're not going to follow all the

rules. And so maybe that's the biggest

misconception. It's about thinking that

working like building product for Google

is is about stepby-step process but the

reality is that about going back and

forth and and and being comfortable with

with chaos because it's chaos

everywhere. I loved all the sto stories

you shared about Google, even just going

back to the checklist that we talked

about at the beginning for diversity and

inclusion around these filters that we

were putting that you guys put into

Google Meet. So, there's so many

interesting anecdotes you shared with us

today about your time at Google. How in

the world did you leave? What are you up

to now? Why did you leave this job that

people consider having golden handcuffs?

>> Okay. I usually sometime tell people in

order to leave Google you either have to

be crazy or you have a great mission.

I don't think I'm crazy. At least I

don't hope I'm crazy. But I I really

left Google with a very clear mission in

mind. like having built product for over

15 years in let's say globally used and

loved products from Skype time by the

way to Spotify Google meet I started

acquire this concept of how to build

successful products and when I joined

Google I actually realized that is even

a discipline called delight and we know

how to delight our customers and most

people don't know how to so when I left

I was like this is really a mission I

want to bring to the world this is what

I want to teach others about. This is

one what I want to demystify because

unfortunately it's very much seen as a

buzzword. So when I left I left with a

lot of insights in my head and my first

step was to put that into a written

format. So I spent most of the first

months trying to of course interview

like put my hat of researcher back and

in order to consolidate the biggest

knowledge and then put that on paper and

I wrote product delight. So I was really

excited to bring product the light to

the world through few

uh weeks ago because now it's available

on Amazon and um what I do nowadays is

actually I help organizations uh through

coaching but also uh training because I

organize what I call the light days. So

delight days is this like a delight

workshop where we work together not only

on understanding the concepts but also

get our hands dirty into building

delightful features for their own

products.

>> So for the PMs daydreaming about a

mission like yours that strong I'm

curious what's the real talk here and

feel free to not sure if you aren't

comfortable but you know how is life

like post Google that's a really secure

place. How big is the business as a

soloreneur now?

>> I think from the beginning, in the very

beginning, it came with a lot of

uncertainty. I'm going to lie to you if

I say I I left Google with a lot of

confidence. Let me be transparent with

you. When I left Google, it was the the

most terrifying decision I made in my

life. Like most of the experiences or

like the the jump the career change I

made so far are toward going to the best

like going from a product to another

trying to acquire more knowledge and

more experience or better level at least

like moving from a PM to senior PM or a

leader and when I moved away from Google

with a such established role and company

it was a lot of uncertainties like hey

now I'm getting into this pure uh

unknown word but I'm very surprised

nowadays that this is opening for me a

lot of opportunity that I didn't get

back then. Uh let me give you I'm going

to be very transparent with you today. I

love being on stage. One of the thing I

do a lot nowadays is public speaking. I

speak a lot about different topics.

Actually I started in this during my

research time. Like when I was a

researcher, I traveled the world and I

did a lot of conferences and I kept this

for me even during my PM roles. And

before leaving Google, the thing that

terrified me was like what if nobody

would invite me on stage anymore because

I won't have this like senior PM from

Google or serum PM from Spotify. I was

terrified by that idea. But let me tell

you the truth. The reality is that I'm

getting maybe easily 20 more invitation

and talk opportunities than before

because I'm not a PM anymore. I'm a

creator of a model. I try to be I'm

moving away from being a coach. I'm not

just a coach. I mean I don't see myself

as coaching company based on others

framework. I'm really putting my heart

and soul from my own experience to share

my model and the and the framework I

created. So I see that the the career is

taking another dimension and I'm really

enjoying it a lot and at the same time

I'm doing things that I I love like

teaching MBA students and I mean I have

the freedom to do the things that I

really love at the scale that I love.

>> Amazing. What a role model for people

who want to follow that. Do check her

out the productddelightbook.com.

She has an amazing LinkedIn presence as

well. Nazarene, thank you so much for

being on the podcast.

>> Thank you, Aesh.

>> Bye, everyone. So, if you want to learn

more about how to shift to this way of

working, check out our full conversation

on Apple or Spotify podcasts. And if you

want the actual documents that we

showed, the tools and frameworks and

public links, be sure to check out my

newsletter post with all of the details.

Finally, thank you so much for watching.

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