Functional, Usable, Delightful

I love this method of looking at a product from a user experience perspective. The whole idea is to look at a product and determine the items necessary to define each phase of the product as a user would experience them.

In other words, what are the outcomes we seek in our product to say it is ‘functional’? Building on this, what are the outcomes we are striving towards to say our product is not only functional but actually usable as well. Lastly, what are the outcomes that fill us with joy as we shout from the rooftops that our product is a delight to use?

Now, in order to define each of the phases we absolutely need to have a vision defined for the product. The vision is what is going to help us to understand what we’re striving towards and what we can define as those minimum criteria to get us up and running.

I personally like to define the functional phase as mostly aligned with what we define as the minimum viable product (MVP) or something similar. This functional phase is where we’re trying to hit those points that proves our product concept is actually onto something.

Next up is the usable phase. In this phase we really start to expand upon what we’ve built and discovered in the functional phase. We are starting to work on streamlining our user experience and tying elements of the product together. We want to remove the cognitive load on users as they navigate our product and make it easier to work with.

Lastly, in the delightful phase we are making the product a joy to use. Hopefully, we have gathered a large amount of discovery research to support our product development strategy which should give us a strong sense of what ‘delightful’ means for our product. We’re at a point where the product has taken on a life of it’s own and our users are becoming evangelists for our product as it has become something truly magical to use.

To wrap up, the functional to usable to delightful user experience journey doesn’t have to be a strictly sequential series of steps for your product. In fact, you’ll find that some features and outcomes may drift back and forth across these definitions as you find the implementation that works best for you and your product. The main takeaway from this effort is that you should not expect your product to be a delight to use from day one but you should always strive towards your product being a delight to use. Also, don’t forget to use the product vision to help serve as your guide along the functional to usable to delightful journey.