Untrapping Product Teams Podcast What 15 Years in Skype, Microsoft, Spotify and Google Taught Nesrine Changuel
Why do some products succeed while most fail?
Think about your favorite products, what’s your connection with them?
Nesrine Changuel argues that emotional connection is what increases retention, referral, and revenue. She wrote a very needed book in the era of AI, where we focus on functional needs often ignoring the emotional connection. Her book’s called Product Delight.
This episode isn’t about techniques that apply only to big tech. This is something really necessary for everyone. Nesrine is an outstanding product professional, formerly at Skype, Microsoft, Spotify, and Google, she’s practical and down to earth.
I had the pleasure of meeting Nesrine a few years back at Productized, her drive and eager to help inspired me. And this episode will inspire you. It will give hope on the value you bring to creating great products.
Here’s how you can learn more from Nesrine:
This episode is brought to you by Productboard, the intelligent product management platform.
See how Productboard can help your product teams ship faster and deliver high-impact products.
Head to productboard.com/spark.
Beyond B2B & B2C debate
“Slack didn’t win because it had better chat features. It won because seeing your team’s emoji reactions made work feel human.” Nesrine
How many times did you hear something like: Is this a B2B or B2C thing?
I’d probably be richer than Musk by now if I got a dollar every time I hear this question. And honestly, it’s not easy to answer. We try treating both B2B and B2C as different worlds. And I think we got it all wrong.
Nesrine surprised me with a new term, B2H, Business to Humans. Build products for the human behind it. If there’s a human using it, that’s B2H, and as humans we deserve delightful products.
Of course, if you’re building a product where AI agents are your target audience, that doesn’t apply. But, as of now, most products have a human using it. Think about it.
Why Should You Care About Delight?
Everyone now talks about AI, and even how AI-PMs are making 500K+ USD per year. So why should you even bother listening to Nesrine about Delight?
Let’s be honest.
We’re going nuts with AI and sometimes forgetting the essence of great products.
We don’t build products for its sake. We build products to supercharge users.
What’s happening today?
We’re using AI to ship faster. But faster doesn’t matter if we’re building products people tolerate instead of love. That’s not progress. That’s just expensive noise.
Many companies are building soulless products without noticing it. And we should challenge that. We should act differently.
Whatever we choose to build is something that should improve people lives, ultimately enabling business value. That’s when delight is your ally to the madness we live in today.
Nesrine will equip you during this episode, and you will leave it inspired.
You may wonder if you should drop AI altogether. No, you shouldn’t. But you should use AI to delight people, not to create noise.
Bringing Delight to Life
Shall We Talk About the Elephant in The Room?
You’re busy, how will you find time to delight your users?
Nesrine called me out on this one. I told her it’s not easy to do that, and teams receive unbearable pressure, how can they do it?
Bluntly, she completely disagreed with me.
Nesrine said: “Delight isn’t a framework. It’s a mental model.” You can ask yourself, “Which emotion do I want the user to feel while using it?” Then, you use the product and feel your emotions, how does that match with your intentions?
Delight is what makes product hard to replace because we connect to them beyond their functional needs.
A Question for You: How are you delighting your human users?
Take action today for a better tomorrow. Only when we try something new, can we grow beyond our imagination.
This kind of thinking - moving from features to impact, from busy to strategic - is exactly what separates silent executors from product leaders. Which brings me to something I’m proud of.
A few months ago, I started running my mastermind, 100XPM, and I couldn’t have expected better results. A few participants already grew into leadership, and I continuously get messages like this:
* “I’m more confident because I have what I need to overcome my challenges.”
* “I shaped my mindset. Now, I’m not a silent player anymore. I have influence in important topics.”
* “I got the courage I needed to step into new adventures, and I couldn’t be happier.”
This mastermind is for the game-changers, those who want to transform the product world. Those who dare to challenge the status quo.
We’re opening another round in January, we will kick it off on the 26th at 7 pm CET.
Do you want to become the Product Manager that earns respect?
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