I hear this a lot from product manager blogs and people who read them. I think it’s a bit contrived, honestly. Delight means great pleasure, or something incredibly pleasing, and I’m cynical enough that I think we should seek delight away from our phones. Yet my wife will tell you I have a mild phone addiction, so clearly I find some delight in my applications. I guess she’d tell you I’m a hypocrite as well. What delights then, on a phone? For social media blogs, it’s the engagement; getting into a great conversation on Twitter, discovering a new Instagram page that inspires you. For fintech apps it’s the easy conclusion of a job; uploading a cheque to your bank account by taking a picture, or having a budget set for you based on your expenses. No matter what app you’re using though, I think all delight is a function of a couple of factors though.
- The job has to visibly complete and the user needs to know the job is done.
- The job has to be done quickly for
it’s type. Different jobs have different benchmarks, and if your app completes it faster, that will create delight.
Speed and completion; these two factors matter most for delight. This is what I’ve observed in my time building fintech products in Africa. The UI isn’t great for a lot of our products. The design wouldn’t win any prizes. Yet our product has been used by over 11 million people in Africa. I think it’s because our product does those two things well, and if I ever build any other products, those two things will be a part of them.