Awesome products raise the bar of customer experience by addressing the most common curiosities of their users. Not to be confused with the minimum viable product, the most common curiosity indicates the primary need of majority of your users when they are interacting with your product. 

While designing new customer experiences, I’ve found it useful to observe human behavior and identify the most common curiosities of users. For instance, one of our recent products – X-Ray for Video on Kindle Fire HD – solves a common curiosity of almost all movie watchers – “Who’s that actor and where else have I seen him?”. Shazam raises the bar when it comes to music by addressing the most common curiosity – “What’s that song and who sang it?”.

A few utility apps have mastered the art of addressing their users’ common curiosities. Google Maps is my favorite among them. Most users are curious to find out how far is a particular place from where they are and how long will it take them to get there. Google Maps addresses them by automatically showing distance and time in search results.

When a product solves a universally applicable need, it inherently raises the customer experience. It is equally important to reduce friction in the interaction, so users do more of it. X-Ray comes up by just tapping the screen while watching a video, Shazam identifies a track by just tapping the screen to tag it and Google Maps automatically shows distance and time.

What is the most common curiosity of your users?

-Kintan

Awesome products are useful, usable and delightful (in that order). While delight is the third order bit, it often ends up being the hardest to pull off. Apple is a master of  delight – from storefronts that mimic a sleeping person at night to tens of apps with a heightened sense of realism (such as Notes, PhotoBooth, Compass, Calculator and more). As a purveyor of delight, I first wrote about delightful products in 2010, but this post attempts to add some science to the art of creating delight.

Delight is best delivered subtly. Subtlety can be achieved with -

• a witty, but honest use of words,
• an uncanny attention to detail,
• anticipation of user’s desires and
• an element of surprise.

Witty words: Words can delight users, if used aptly. Airbnb’s iPhone app uses words to make their first use experience delightful. For instance, if a user hasn’t booked any trips, the app subtly nudges the user – “Search for that city you’ve always wanted to visit!” instead of showing an empty screen with an ad. I wrote about the power of words in the last post.

Attention to detail: Apple refers to this attention to detail as a ”heightened sense of realism” in the official design guidelines for iOS apps. One of my favorite apps – ness (instant restaurant recommendations) changes the background with a mouth-watering dish that represents the search term. For instance, searching for Indian food changes the background to a dish of Channa Masala or Chicken Tikka. Such attention to detail converts a user into a fan by offering unforgettable experience.

Anticipating user’s desires: While it may sound tricky, anticipating user’s desires can be simplified by focusing on user’s primary intent on a particular screen. Google is the master of anticipating user’s intents – from “I’m feeling lucky” button since the very beginning to  suggestion search. Another app that skillfully anticipates user’s desires is Songza. It takes simple cues such as time of day, day of week, day of year, etc. to deliver delightful experiences. It eliminates the need for mental math for users by recommending playlists based on activities and moods suitable for a given time.

Element of surprise: Timing is critical, when it comes to delivering delight. Twitter Music’s iPhone app masterfully surprises the user at the least expected instance. For instance, when you long press the app icon to rearrange them on your screen, the wiggling icon creates an illusion of a throbbing boom-box speaker. 

Further, the app uses a clever animation when a user refreshes a page – nine dots first form an arrow and then a grid with disco lights. Users don’t expect these subtle animations, but get delighted by the surprise.

Such delights don’t make a product more useful or usable, however they make useful products more fun, sticky and awesome. Let’s build delightful products!

-Kintan