“Delight” as a product design term needs to die immediately. It’s an impossible goal most of the time either because the designer is incapable of providing it, the company doesn’t actually want it, or the product doesn’t call for it. The cognitive dissonance drives me crazy.
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Delight is the outcome. What you are looking for is the reverse feeling at a given moment. For example if I input my credit card details, I feel insecure, the reverse feeling you should give me is a sense of security and safety. The outcome of this is delight.
I personally don’t find this approach useful. Security and safety should be distinct from delight, not a subset of it. This dilution of meaning makes the terms less effective for me. Otherwise, delight becomes a catchall term for good design.
I also don't think users *need* to have an emotional reaction or dopamine hit from using every single product, that's exhausting. A tool can just be a well designed tool. That's a digression though, my original criticism isn't for delight itself but how it manifests right now.
