Exceptional Products

I love the expression “spark joy” from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. It perfectly describes moments of delight. And it’s something I’ve been thinking about as it relates to making software and building products.

What makes a product exceptional? And how does a product spark joy?

Here are my attributes and principles of exceptional products, and lessons you can take to infuse in your own products, sparking joy, unlocking value, and creating raving fans.

Packaging

Packaging covers the entire product experience, from unboxing to everyday use. It creates a cohesive, memorable journey for users.

First Impressions

The experience of using an Apple product doesn’t start when you use it. It starts when you unbox the item. Somehow they infuse cardboard boxes and plastic sleeves with joy. And this extends into onboarding and usage of the product. The tone is established early, and it carries through the full product experience.

The first impression with physical products starts with the physical packaging. Digital products, on the other hand, start with onboarding (the digital “unboxing”), or even earlier with sales, marketing, and general branding—the initial exposure to the product.

Think about your product’s first impression. Establish a tone that reflects the values you want to instill, the emotions you want to create, and the value you want to provide.

Cohesive Experience

A product with a cohesive experience makes every interaction feel unified, creating a seamless journey from start to finish. Linear is my favorite example. Each screen within the product feels like a purposefully connected part of the entire product. The visual language is consistent, intentional. And nothing is out of place—the result of painstaking attention to detail and quality of craft.

Sometimes it’s not even about the functionality of the product itself. Interacting with customer support is part of the experience, too. And Linear is exceptional there as well. Every interaction I’ve had with support was met with pleasant responsiveness that quickly resolved my issue. It increased my confidence in the product and emboldened the principles of the product (and their company): speed, quality, and care.

Think holistically about your product and the user experience. Every interaction is a chance to elevate the experience, create loyal fans, and grow your product.

Thoughtful Details

Simple, intentional design choices create calm and purpose in each interaction. It’s the little things most people won’t notice—the little animations, the keyboard shortcuts, or the simple reminders.

My favorite example? The Slack release notes. In a sea of repetitive “bug fixes and performance improvements” release notes, they write thoughtful, entertaining, and engaging release notes for their product. These details make them stand out.

Care deeply about every detail. No part of your product is too small to refine. Do it strategically, but with intention and purpose.

Personality

Personality covers how the product is infused with character through visual language, storytelling, and delightful details that resonate with users.

Visual Language

Perplexity has a wonderful and unique brand and visual language. The design reflects the brand’s purpose, making the product feel distinct. They’re building a search engine for the AI era, and its magic is exemplified in their stellar visual aesthetic.

Think about the visual language of your product. It’s not just how the product is designed—it’s the marketing materials, the voice, and the tone.

Storytelling

Authentic stories connect the product to its creators, building a sense of human connection. The Browser Company, the makers of the Arc browser, are exemplars here. They not only give the behind-the-scenes tour and show what they’re working on, they bring you along for the journey. Their CEO, Josh Miller, is a charismatic presenter who gets you energized about what they’re building. It’s open; it’s honest; it’s human. And we could all use less nameless, faceless orgs selling to us.

Storytelling extends beyond sharing the work. Your customers are on their own journey, and it’s our job as product builders to make it a successful one. Tell their story. Let them be a hero by identifying the conflict they can rise above.

Storytelling is a critical device to use when building products. Think about the story you can tell when you sell and market your product, and tie that to the story of your users. Make them the hero of their story.

Delightful Interactions

I used the to-do app Things for years. I switched to Notion fully back in ~2017, but Things was my go-to task manager for a long time. Why? It’s gorgeous. They have top-notch designers and craftspeople making something simple, delightful, and powerful.

My favorite interaction is how you can drag the bottom-right “+” icon and drop it anywhere in a list to create a to-do. It feels like magic. It feels like a tangible element—like something I could pick up and manipulate with my hands. It breathes life into the product and sparks joy.

Add delightful interactions in your products. This ties to storytelling because those pivotal moments in the user journey are ideal moments to add delightful interactions. Celebrate the user when they accomplish something. Bring them delight and spark joy.

Precision

Precision covers how each element is crafted with intentionality, aligning user expectations, reducing friction, and guiding users through sensible defaults.

Seamless Flow

I’m a recent convert to Raycast. I’ve been using Alfred since college and finally made the switch to Raycast earlier this year. And I’m glad I did! It’s a wonderful application that goes far beyond launching applications. It has AI integrations, snippets, quicklinks, window management, and so much more. It’s infinitely customizable and configurable.

But what I love most? It let’s me stay in flow and work in my natural rhythms. I simply bring up the Raycast window with a keyboard shortcut and start typing. And I can do this from anywhere on my computer, at any time.

Create seamless flows in your product. Remove the friction as much as possible. If something takes three steps to accomplish, can you do it in two? Keep refining until there is minimal friction. The less the friction, the higher the adoption.

Predictable Performance

Stability is the standard for all exceptional products. When I initiate an action, I should have high confidence in the outcome. The product operates as expected every time, establishing trust through reliability. Basecamp is a great example. And it’s no wonder! They’ve been building and refining the core product for decades now.

The more features you add, the more instability you have potential to create. This is where balancing adding new features and paying down tech debt is important. Keeping products simple is a constant battle because users always want more. Continually find ways to reduce and make it more reliable.

Opinionated Design

Exceptional products are made by people who care. When you care about your craft, the product you’re building, and the problem you’re solving, you have opinions. And products with personality have clear opinions about how you should use them.

CleanShot is one such product. They create clear, sensible defaults and provide the right amount of customizations. Some products kill you with the customization options because that’s the easy path—just let users change whatever they want!

Have an opinion about how your product should work. Set defaults and make design decisions based on your domain expertise, but weigh them against user feedback.

Build Exceptional Products

As AI continues to evolve, building software will increasingly become commoditized. But what does AI lack? Taste, intuition, and nuance. These are the characteristics of the best product builders making exceptional products. Building exceptional products is a hard, but worthwhile endeavor. And that’s to be expected because making great things takes work. So are you ready to do the work?