Product leaders often measure success in terms of retention, revenue, and growth. In this episode of Product Momentum, Nesrine Changuel explains that the most successful products achieve those outcomes by creating meaningful emotional connections with users. Nesrine’s experience includes leadership roles at Skype, Spotify, Google Meet, and Google Chrome. But these days, she is perhaps best known for her book, Product Delight.
Nesrine will explore these and other topics at the ITX Product + Design Conference, June 24-25 in Rochester NY. On conference Day 1, she will conduct a workshop that delves into her Product Delight framework, guiding attendees on how to design products that users will not only use – but will come to love, remember, and recommend to others.
During this conversation, Nesrine discusses what she has learned from product teams since the book’s release and explains why delight is not simply a design tactic, but a business strategy that transcends industries.
Product Delight Extends Beyond Design
One of Nesrine’s biggest discoveries during her global book tour was the widespread misunderstanding of what product delight actually means. Many practitioners associate delight with visual design, animations, or clever interface surprises. This view is too narrow, she says. Nesrine defines delight as the overall feeling users experience while interacting with a product.
“Product delight is the entire experience,” she adds. “It’s actually the feeling that the user enjoys while using the product.” It extends well beyond aesthetics to focus on creating experiences that improve how users feel while accomplishing their goals.
Emotional Connection Creates Measurable Outcomes
Among Nesrine’s key challenges was helping product and business leaders recognize the fact that user emotions directly influence business performance. Emotional design has long been familiar to designers and marketers, but many product organizations still prioritize operational metrics above customer sentiment.
Nesrine was able to connect the dots between delight and business performance by demonstrating that “the delight itself can actually double retention, referral and revenues.” By framing emotional connection through the lens of retention, referrals, and revenue growth, she demonstrated that delight is not a soft concept. Rather, it is a practical approach that can strengthen both customer loyalty and business results.
Adding Delight to Your AI Product – Emphasize the Human Aspect
On conference day 2 – Keynote Day – attendees will be treated to brand new content from Nesrine: how to add delight into your AI product.
“I’ve been very quiet about AI over the last couple of months,” Nesrine shared. “I’ve always believed in the humanization of product and the human aspect, but now the product is the conversation. So how can we add delight in these kinds of experiences? That’s something new that I’m going to be talking about” at the ITX Product + Design Conference. As product teams continue navigating AI-driven technological change, core product principles remain unchanged: products that make people feel understood, respected, and supported are more likely to earn user trust, loyalty, advocacy – along with long-term success.
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[04:25] How writing a book is like a box of chocolates. When I was writing the book, there were some uncertainties about how it would be perceived….kind of like eating a chocolate egg, you have no idea what’s inside.
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[05:33] Emotional connection is a universal topic that spans industries. When the book came out, I received a lot of feedback that actually related to the topic and the framework — even from completely diverse industries.
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[12:21] The ITX Product + Design Conference, June 24-25. I’m really excited to be in Rochester, NY for this event to come. It’s always a pleasure to teach the Product Delight method. It’s going to be special because I want to make it as actionable as I can; I want to make sure that I inspire people.
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[13:54] Nesrine’s day 2 keynote to include brand new content. I’m going to talk for the very first time about something I have not spoken about before — how to add delight and the human aspect into your AI product.
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[15:56] Just because it’s harder for mature, well-established companies to integrate delight into their products doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try. Please don’t ignore delight; rather, to remain established and successful, you need to add those elements of delight in your product anyway.
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[17:58] Even busy PMs should make time for delight. Even when I was a “regular” PM sitting on a backlog on fire with so many conflicting priorities, I tried not to let that stop us from trying to incorporate any element of delight into our roadmap.
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