A meme with the text “believe it or not, straight to jail”

“Should we add a confetti animation to this?”

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.

It has definitely become that vague hot potato word

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.

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.

If you can communicate delight well enough to the business, they will adopt it. There are plenty of delightful products out there it’s not a unicorn…
Regarding users not needing an emotional connection to their experiences - good luck fighting competition

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

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.

“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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