In reply to Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré’s comment on “Patrick McKenzie (patio11)”
M
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11 · I work on Atlas at Stripe
@nikkielizdemere Thanks! I remember that we've swapped a few emails over the years.
Are you familiar with the character Walsh on Firefly and how he uses the word "Shiny?" When I'm thinking about this in my own head, I think Time-To-Shiny. You're looking for a combination of both a) delight and b) either demonstrably improving someone's life or credibly demonstrating that you have the capability of doing so.
Twilio, for example, has among the best Time-To-Shiny of any complicated, development-heavy software product you'll ever use. You can credibly promise a massive improvement in folks lives as soon as their phone rings in response to code they have written; Twilio can have that happening in ~30 seconds or so for a new user if they're being guided; perhaps ~5 minutes or so if they're a motivated self-starter.
How to improve it? One, figure out a way to track it obsessively. Two, cheat like a mofo; ruthlessly defer as much as possible about the full experience until AFTER you have achieved that one moment of concentrated joy. Exact tactics for doing this depend a lot on the product at issue; often they involve (e.g.) having fake data pre-loaded in accounts so that someone doesn't have to do weeks of data entry prior to seeing any improvement in their lives, scripted onboarding experiences, etc.
3sharetweet・