Key takeaways from Product Delight, the book that puts emotion at the heart of products

What if the secret to a successful product wasn’t just about functionality, but the emotion it sparks? That’s the conviction Nesrine Changuel defends in Product Delight, her first book, published on September 23, 2025. With experience at Google, Spotify, and Microsoft, this Product expert shares methods, examples, and stories to help turn the useful into the unforgettable.

Everyone knows Google Chrome’s T-Rex. Who hasn't been through this: you open your laptop to search the web. You fire up Chrome… only to find there’s no internet. Suddenly, a little dinosaur pops up, and with one tap on the spacebar, it becomes the hero of an arcade game where you have to jump to dodge cacti and other obstacles. With this quirky feature, both fun and unexpected, Chrome’s team managed to turn what could have been pure frustration into a delightful moment.

Exceeding expectations, anticipating needs… This is the first principle of Product Delight, as introduced by Dr. Nesrine Changuel in her book, named after this very concept.

The book’s guiding theme? The idea that in an increasingly competitive market, the real differentiator lies in a product’s ability to create an emotional bond with its users. But since it’s far easier to state this confidently in a meeting than to actually make it happen, the author devotes 14 chapters to explaining how to get there - 14 chapters we had the chance to read ahead of publication. So, what’s really behind this “delight manifesto” once you turn the first page?

What is Delight?

First things first: let’s define what we’re talking about. Because not all delight is created equal. In her book, Dr. Nesrine Changuel distinguishes three forms of delight.

The first, called low delight, is basic functional satisfaction: the user gets exactly what they expected, no more, no less. Useful, sure, but without any real “wow” effect.

On the other end of the spectrum, surface delight relies on surprise and instant emotion: a playful animation, a visual wink, a bit of humor that draws a smile, but fades just as quickly.

The holy grail, according to the author, is deep delight: an experience that blends efficiency with emotional connection. It’s that subtle mix - solving a problem while creating attachment - that turns an ordinary service into an unforgettable product. And that’s the real subject of this book.

A book between personal testimony and academic study

From the very beginning, it’s clear that Nesrine Changuel has poured a lot of herself into this book. The use of “I” isn’t just a stylistic choice; the humor and personal anecdotes create a warm tone that makes reading its 230 pages surprisingly smooth.

At the same time, Dr. Changuel’s academic background quickly shows through. Backed by data, studies, and a structured methodology, the book often feels like a near-academic work. To bring her ideas to life, she draws on a wide range of references, from tech giants like Google to more unexpected players like Dyson. Each chapter ends with Expert Profiles, featuring voices such as Dan Olsen, John Saito, Raluca Bujoreanu, and Jonathan Rochelle, each shedding light on a different facet of delight, from the cumulative effect of small gestures, to “superhero moments,” to the balance between aesthetics and function.

A former PM and C-level executive with a track record at Google, Spotify, and Microsoft, Changuel speaks with authority to both Product leaders and hands-on practitioners. She also slips into the role of user, sharing her own experiences with Uber or Spotify, helping readers see themselves in the situations described. The result: a grounded, credible text that’s immediately useful to Product people of all levels, while still resonating with the everyday users we all are.

Most importantly, the book insists that delight is not abstract: it can be measured. Not by trying to “quantify an emotion” in some random way, but by tracking its tangible effects. Take Skype: moving from an average satisfaction score to a simple operational metric - the Poor Call Rate (percentage of poorly rated calls) - gave teams a clear performance lever. Similarly, Google, Spotify, and GitHub integrate both quantitative and qualitative feedback loops to monitor, continuously, the presence or absence of delight.

Conviction over concept

Product Delight is not just a theoretical exploration. It carries a strong conviction: delight is not optional: it’s a matter of survival in today’s crowded product landscape. The author challenges the idea that emotion is some optional extra, a cherry on top of a functional cake. Instead, she shows that once basic utility is met, only the emotional dimension truly differentiates a product and ensures its longevity. Delight is thus a driver of value - for the user, who adopts, grows attached, recommends, and pays - and for the company, which gains adoption, retention, and reputation.

The illustrations are plentiful: from Spotify Wrapped to Uber’s trip-sharing option, including Google Meet’s blurred backgrounds, delight emerges as a powerful differentiator for digital products. But the book doesn’t stop at tech: cases from IKEA or Zappos show that delight isn’t about features alone, but an entire experience mindset. Ignoring it means fading into the background noise of a hyper-competitive market. That’s why Changuel talks about B2H (Business to Humans): whether it’s fintech, retail, B2B, or hardware, as long as there’s a human at the other end, delight matters.

And the point goes beyond Product teams. For Changuel, delight must be embraced by leadership and embedded into company culture and strategy. It’s not a “side project” handled by a small, isolated team, but a guiding principle that aligns design, engineering, marketing, and business vision. The book cites collective practices like Spotify’s hack days/weeks, where iconic features like Discover Weekly were born - proof that delight can also grow out of team culture.

Action-oriented

Finally, and this is key in a world where ideas only matter if they translate into practice, Product Delight is is a hands-on book. Each chapter follows the same formula: a core principle up front, developments grounded in real cases, then a recap and a set of action items. This makes it possible to read straight through or dip back in whenever needed.

In terms of tools, the book revisits classics like the Double Diamond or hackathons, but also introduces original frameworks, some created by Changuel herself. The Delight Grid, for example, helps classify a feature as low, surface, or deep delight; the Delight Excellence Checklist offers nine simple questions to validate an idea before production. In each case, the author explains how to use them, their benefits, and their limits, helping readers build a genuine toolkit.

The book remains grounded in practice with diverse examples: IKEA’s in-home pickup service, Jira’s evolution at Atlassian, or collective rituals like hack days/weeks. These cases show that delight isn’t just for consumer apps: it applies just as much to B2B, retail, or hardware.

True to its subject, the book closes with a small bonus delight: exclusive interviews, ready-to-use templates, and practical worksheets. In short, a resource-packed guide that equips Product teams to start experimenting the very next day.

What about AI?

For all its breadth, the book leaves readers wanting more on one of today’s most pressing Tech and Product topics: artificial intelligence. AI is mentioned, in Jira’s smart features, in Google Meet’s evolution from blurred backgrounds to automatically generated environments, and in an Expert Profile on its use to measure user satisfaction.

However, it doesn’t go much further, even though AI today makes extreme personalization possible, crafting unique experiences for every user, and potentially multiplying delight. The book stays focused on fundamentals and immediately usable methods, though it’s clear there’s fertile ground to dig deeper into AI’s role in creating delight, given its enormous promise in personalization.

When asked, Nesrine Changuel explains her choice. In her words: “Products address both functional and emotional needs. AI accelerates the functional side: features can be developed in just hours. The risk, if we only focus on ‘doing,’ is to drift into a purely functional world. Our role, as product creators, is to be aware of this: to identify users’ emotional needs and integrate them into design from the start, in order to preserve the human, differentiating value of the product.”

Curious to learn more? Product Delight is available now on Amazon.