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.

It’s usually because the company doesn’t want it in my experience 🥲

Ultimately that's where I put most of the blame. I think a lot of designers don't really get a lot of experience developing that skill, myself included.

“Should we add a confetti animation to this?”

alt

The unfortunate reality is most apps are riddled with dark patterns to squeeze money from people and need to go back to basics like.. providing people (not shareholders!) value

It has definitely become that vague hot potato word