Delight talks

Delight in UX design describes moments when a product exceeds expectations and creates genuine pleasure, whether through a thoughtful detail, a playful animation or a feature that solves a problem people didn’t expect it to. Delight is distinct from mere usability: a product can be easy to use without being enjoyable.

For product designers, delight matters because emotion shapes how people remember and talk about a product. But delight only works on a solid base: a playful touch cannot make up for a product that fails at the basics, and what delights today becomes expected tomorrow.

The talks here, recorded between 2013 and 2018, explore delight from several sides. Jared Spool’s Using the Kano Model to Build Delightful UX shows how to think about delight systematically, and Aaron Walter’s Designing Emotional Experiences focuses on emotion in design. Giles Colborne’s Delight and innovation (UX Lausanne, 2014) connects delight with innovation, Benjamin De Cock’s Motion & Playfulness looks at playful motion, and Bret Victor’s Stop Drawing Dead Fish completes the set. The Kano model has its own sub-topic, and the delighters pattern in the UI-Patterns.com library covers the idea in practice.