This paper elaborates on delight in UX by drawing on existing knowledge and theory on emotion and experience. The multiple formulations and discussions of delight in UX demonstrate its significance for the UX design community. However, it appears unclear what delight specifically is and how it particularly differs from pleasure, which designers use interchangeably with delight. This paper argues that pleasure and delight are distinct, and posits delight as the combination of joy with surprise or captivation, which leads the user to experience a wow! or yay! moment, respectively. The paper also posits that a designer’s intended delight—how she envisions the product causing delight—may differ from the user’s experienced delight—the wow! and yay! moments—during the UX as such delight is assimilated by the user and affects her expectations concerning the delightfulness of using interactive products. Nevertheless, this same assimilated delight encourages continuous use of such products.

1. Delight in the User Experience:
Form and Place
Omar Sosa-Tzec
San Francisco State University
9th Congress of the International Association of Societies
of Design Research.
December 6, 2021
[SYSTEMS AND USERS] + DESIGN

2. MOTIVATION
• Delight appears as a signi
fi
cant concept in the UI/UX design community:
an interactive product should delight the user
• There is no consensus about what delight is and how it di
ff
ers from other positive
emotions that an interactive product should evoke: pleasure and delight are often
used interchangeably
• The elusiveness of delight hinders the development of design theory and approaches
that UI/UX designers can use

3. OBJECTIVE
• To identify characteristics of delight concerning UI/UX design by exploring existing formulations
of this concept and re
fl
ecting on their connection with design theory (and research)
• What is distinctive about delight?
• What does delight mean in relation to UI/UX design?

4. APPROACH
• Review of literature on customer delight
Identi
fi
cation of characteristics of delight to be considered in UI/UX design
• Use of Dewey’s notion of aesthetic experience (as applied in HCI)
Delight regarded as an (overriding) emotional quality of an aesthetic experience
• Use of Hassenzahl’s process-oriented model of user experience
Identi
fi
cation of the forms that delight takes from the perspectives of the designer and user

5. OVERVIEW: CUSTOMER DELIGHT
Russell’s pleasure-arousal space
high stimulation (arousal)
Happy
Satisfied
Pleased
Bored
Drowsy
Astonished
Aroused
Aroused
Tense
Annoyed
Frustrated
Excited
Delighted
low stimulation (arousal)
displeasure pleasure
Adapted from Russell (1980)

6. OVERVIEW: CUSTOMER DELIGHT
Delight as surprise discon
fi
rmation
Delight
customer experience
Surprise!
The product is better
than expeccted

7. OVERVIEW: CUSTOMER DELIGHT
Kano’s model of customer satisfaction
CustomerSatisfaction
Attractive Quality | Produce Delight
Expected Quality
Must-be Quality
one-dimensional requirements
must-be requirements
attractive requirements
CustomerDisatisfaction
RequirementFulfilled
RequirementNotFulfilled
Adapted from Matzler et al. (1996) and Dey et al. (2017)

8. OVERVIEW: CUSTOMER DELIGHT
Delight and magic/real joy
Luck | Lack of Agency
Intent | Ongoing Relationship
Joy
Surprise
Joy
Captivation
Delight

9. TAKEAWAYS
• Delight results from the combination of positive emotions
• Delight is di
ff
erent from pleasure:
sustained pleasure (joy) is necessary for delight to take place
• Delight entails a combination of joy and surprise or joy and captivation

10. AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
Dewey’s notion as considered in humanistic HCI
aesthetic experience
Alternations of Doing and Undergoing
Overriding Emotional Quality
Beginning Middle End
Consumation
Adapted from Bardzell and Bardzell (2015)

11. USER EXPERIENCE
Process-oriented model of user experience
Adapted from Blythe and Monk (2018, p. 19)
product features
Content
designer perspective
process-oriented model of user experience
Pragmatic Attributes
Manipulation
Hedonic Attributes
Stimulation
Identification
Evocation
Presentation
Functionality
Interaction
Appeal
Pleasure
Satisfaction
product character consequences
product
features
intended
product character
consequences
product
features
apparent
product character
situation
consequences
user perspective

12. THEORETICAL DISCUSSION
The Designer Perspective: Intended Delight
product features intended product character consequences
intended delight
Enjoyable
Surprising
Enjoyable
Captivating
expected delight

13. THEORETICAL DISCUSSION
The User Perspective: Expected Delight, Experienced Delight, and Assimilated Delight
situation
product features apparent product character consequences
expected delight
assimilated delight
experienced delight
surprise-based
delight
captivation-based
delight
Wow! Moments Yay! Moments

14. CONCLUDING REMARKS
• Delight manifests in the UX as the intertwinement of pleasure with another positive
emotion, such as surprise or captivation, which the user would experience and describe
as wow! and yay! moments
• Delight is a matter of not only appearance but also functionality and
fi
tness
• Besides the user’s needs, it is important to consider the ecology of products that are
present in the user’s life
• The objective of wow! and yay! moments is to make the user appreciate the product as
something special and worth continuous use
• Delight is in the details for both the designer and the user

15. Thank you!
Sosa-Tzec, O. (2021) Delight in the User Experience: Form and Place. In Proc. Of IASDR 2021, the 9th Congress
of the International Association of Societies of Design Research. Hong-Kong.