Nesrine was a Senior PM at Google, Spotify and Microsoft. She’s now a product coach and will be releasing her first book on how to infuse emotional connections into product design by the end of March!

In our conversation, Nesrine shared a surprising “failure story” from her time on the Google Meet team.

Nesrine’s failure story

Nesrine was working on Google Meet as a PM, when COVID broke out. You sure can imagine how intense that time must have been for the team. One day, suddenly a lot of users started complaining. About a new feature that created fireworks and celebratory effects in inappropriate situations. These could have been triggered by raising a thumb for example. In case you’re an Apple user you might have seen them:

What wasn’t clear to all users at that time was that this was not a feature from Google Meet.

Google didn’t build this fireworks feature. Apple did. Apple’s operating system update enabled these reactions by default, so users naturally blamed Google Meet.

The situation sounds like a small thing, but one shouldn’t forget that Google’s products are reaching 100s of millions of users and this impacted core functionality of Google Meet. That means that these reaction were triggered in very inappropriate situations, such as therapy sessions or high-stakes corporate calls. Triggering random fireworks in such situations was anything but delightful.

What started as an innocent attempt to introduce delight (from Apple’s side) turned into a big escalation for the Google Meet product team. As soon as the team realized how intrusive and potentially harmful these auto-reactions could be, they tried to explain that this was not a native Google Meet feature and advised users how to turn it off on their Macs.

A lesson in how to create product delight

Creating product delight is generally a topic that Nesrine cares deeply about. That’s why she also dedicated a full book to it, that will be out soon! Below are a couple of her key takeaways on product delight:

* Product delight creates an emotional connection between users and the product

Product delight is created when a product meets its intended purpose (functionality) while exceeding user expectations.

* Usually not quantifiable

Investing into delightful features is often not measurable or quantifiable. Integrating playful animations or fun features often doesn’t solve a problem and therefore won’t move any needle in the short term. We btw dedicated a full article + podcast on problem-free product work, in which we also covered UX deligthers: https://thehotfixpodcast.substack.com/p/006-does-every-feature-need-to-solve. Nesrine argues though that emotional features often take longer to show a direct impact on revenue or retention. That means that PMs need to be more patient in measuring usage patterns, and watch loyalty indicators (like referrals and advocacy).

* Delight = Joy + Surprise

In our podcast Nesrine shared a definition of Delight. A truly delightful feature combines surprise and joy. A feature that is only surprising—or only joyful—can end up being distracting or disappointing.

* Prioritize with a balance

Product teams should ideally aim for a balanced combination of Low, Surface, and Deep Delight features in their product roadmap to ensure both functional needs are met and users are emotionally engaged.

Nesrine’s arguments on why it makes sense to invest into delighting customers reminded me of this graphic by Casey Winters, that shows why constant UX investments enable companies to keep product-market fit:

The gist is that customer expectations keep increasing as the bar for average software is being raised constantly. And competitors also won’t stay still. That means once companies stop investing into UX work they might lose their product-market fit.

What Else We Talked About

* Functional vs. Emotional Features

Nesrine explains why some top-performing products (e.g., Spotify Wrapped, Duolingo streaks, Slack’s whimsy) thrive because they provide emotional benefits beyond core functionality.

* B2B Can—and Should—Delight

Even Jira, the quintessential enterprise tool, invests in delight. Users are humans, regardless of the “B2B” label. Emotional touch points in B2B products can be a massive differentiator.

* Motivational Interviewing

Instead of directly asking users about “problems,” Nesrine recommends deep, open-ended discovery that uncovers hidden emotional drivers.

* Start Small and Scale

You don’t need to overhaul your product overnight. Dedicate a small percentage of your roadmap each quarter to try simple, delightful additions. Track how your users respond before expanding further.

Links

Link to Podcast Episode

* 📹 YouTube

* 🔊 Spotify

* 🔊 Apple Music

In case you want to reach out, please do so on LinkedIn:

* ❤️‍🩹 Follow Hotfix: https://pal.bio/the-hotfix-podcast

* 🎙️ Follow Christoph: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophbodenstein/

* 🎙️ Follow Stefan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-pernek-629901107/

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