The document discusses three key concepts - pleasure, flow, and meaning - that contribute to user delight in digital experiences. Pleasure involves anticipating needs, being responsive to context, and using visual design to make users feel considered. Flow involves immersive, empowering experiences that play on mastery and subtle motivation cues. Meaning involves connecting users to a purpose and making a difference through authenticity and virtue. The document provides examples and guidelines for incorporating these concepts into design.

1. Deconstructing Delight
Pleasure, Flow,
& Meaning

2. Marketing
QA tester
Call center
UX designer
Development
Product manager

7. EN
OK C E
BR IEN
XPER
E

8. Usable = = no
Delightful yes
Capital One

9. Delight
Flow
Meaning
Pleasure

10. USAToday weather

11. Swackett.com

12. Swackett.com

13. iPhone version
of Swackett

14. Houdini’s
birthday

15. Anniversary of
the Eiffel Tower

16. Matt Groening’s
birthday

17. Swackett
extended
forecast

18. Pleasure
• Shows consideration
• Anticipates users’ needs
• Responsive to context
• Users feel it
• Much can come through
visual design

19. Sharing
Aware of user
Treats
Bits of thoughtfulness

20. Extra goodness
TripIt.com
Anticipates needs

21. Virgin America

22. Virgin America
in-flight
entertainment
system

23. Virgin America
safety video

24. If I were to take care of this
customer, how would I do it?

25. Evidence of Pleasure
✤ Smiling
✤ Exclamations, “Nice!” or “Got it!”
✤ Behaving with infatuation

26. Cautions of Pleasure
Habituation
decrease in response after
repeated exposure
Distraction
dividing attention
Disruption
interrupting the user’s activity
Don’t force it

27. Pleasure
Anticipates needs and wants
Produces positive affect
Uses visual design and voice

28. word processor

29. ...sit down and start
making the clackity noise.
If I make the clackity noise
long enough every day,
the “writing” seems to take
care of itself.
-- Merlin Mann

30. Ommwriter

32. Flow
• Immersive
• Empowering
• Behavioral, automatic
• Plays on mastery and
control

33. Flow
• Subtle motivation cues
• Psychological cues
• Language (or lack of)
• Social cues
• Reinforcement

34. Conversation
Quora.com

35. Tags feed curiosity
Related
Question
questions
support
serendipity
Answers Outlets
demonstrate
knowledge
People

36. 36
Quora.com
Smooth, frictionless
Supports serendipity
Tangents are useful, meaningful
Feeds curiosity
Users demonstrate knowledge

37. Heft. Handling. Fit for purpose.

38. Flow by design
✤ Affordances and feedback are
clear, obvious, invisible
✤ IA matches users’ mental
models
✤ Perception of responsiveness
✤ Clutter is minimized
✤ Appropriate for context
✤ Benefit to user is clear

39. Evidence of Flow
✤ Gratification
✤ Feeling productive
✤ Focused concentration
✤ Energized
✤ Empowered
✤ Stop talking
✤ Key strengths tapped

40. Cautions of Flow
Could translate as either
engagement or frustration
Analytics data won’t reveal this
User control is key
Tangents must be useful acts of
autonomy

41. Assessing flow
When you are using it, do you feel a greater
awareness?
How much does it increase your ability to
accomplish new things?
How much does it expand your own
capabilities?
How much do you feel you have a larger
perspective because of using it?

42. Flow
Immersive
Frictionless, essential
functionality
Uses subtlety in design

43. Zipcar.com
less waste
saving money
good for Earth

44. Zipcar.com
doing good

45. Zipcar.com
having fun
strengthening
community

46. 46
Zipcar.com

47. Zipcar.com
attachment
responsibility
accountability

48. Meaning
• Flourish through purpose
• Connectedness
• Making a difference
• Belonging
• Virtuousness

49. Meaning
• Plan the emotional
effects
• Plan the behavioral
effects
• Clarity, simplicity,
funneling, modeling

50. Wardrobe Refashion

51. Culture of
generosity
After: Shorts
Before: Gauchos

52. 52
Kiva.org

53. Authenticity
Effort confirmed
Values supported

54. Meaning by design
✤ Effort is encouraged and
confirmed
✤ Involvement subtly rewarded
through support and values
✤ Site and interactions feel secure
and safe
✤ Branding is authentic, built in to
business model

55. Evidence of Meaning
✤ Connected, yet selfless
✤ Virtuous and altruistic
✤ Compassion and empathy
✤ Expansiveness, openness
✤ Devoted, engaged

56. Cautions in meaning
Not just a tagline: must be
authentic
Must come from the business
model, out
Can’t be layered on

57. Meaning =
Engagement
Gallup Customer
Engagement
assessment CE11

58. Meaning
design with purpose,
from mission to fulfillment,
not just touch points,
but through culture

59. Meaning
Must be genuine, from the
mission, out
Purpose comes through on all
channels
Results in belonging,
generosity

60. Delight
Pleasure Flow Meaning

61. Where does
your design
fit into a
beautiful day?

62. Where to learn more about the
psychology of happiness
TED Talks: The psychology of happiness - Martin Seligman
TED Talks: Play is more than fun - Stuart Brown
TED Talks : Happy design - Stefan Sagmeister
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi
Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, by
Donald Norman
Happiness: A History, by Darrin M. McMahon
Enchantment, by Guy Kawasaki

63. Where to learn more about the
psychology of happiness
Anything written by all of these people:
Aaron Walter
Stephen Anderson
Nathan Shedroff
Bill Scott
Jane McGonigal
Clay Shirky

64. 64
Where to learn more
Dana’s blog: http://
usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/
Download templates, examples, and
links to other resources from
www.wiley.com/go/usabilitytesting

65. Thank
You.
Dana Chisnell
dana@usabilityworks.net
www.usabilityworks.net
@danachis