Creating Magical Experiences

Product Managers and magicians have many things in common.

One of them is that we can work with, and manipulate purpose and intent to create unique and magical experiences.

As a magician I have the ability to give you a unique gift: a moment of astonishment — that moment when you experience something that you just can’t explain.

To do this, I must start out designing the routine with total clarity around what my purpose is. For example: to make a coin disappear from my empty hand.

In order for you to experience the magic, the purpose should be direct, simple and clear. Anything getting in the way of you understanding, at an intellectual and visceral level, exactly what just happened will destroy the purpose and the experience of magic.

In order to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the purpose and your experience of magic is where intent design comes into play. Through intent design I can construct the routine in a manner that allows me to control and direct your focus and attention, drawing you in into the experience, making sure that you see and absorb those details that will lead you to conclude — convince yourself — that what you just witnessed is impossible thus enhancing the experience of the magic.

To accomplish this I must be intentional (intent design) about every aspect of my technique, patter and presentation. Every word, every move and every gesture is designed to misdirect and redirect your focus and attention away from the procedural steps — the secrets of the effect — and right into the experience of the impossible. However, and this is crucial, where the purpose must be self-evident, clear and direct — otherwise there’s no magic — the intent build into the routine should be absolutely invisible and imperceptible.

Each failed moment of intent detracts from your experience of magic, until a tipping point is reached where the whole illusion crumbles and the magic just vanishes leaving you confused and unsatisfied.

For you to notice the intent is to destroy the experience of magic.

Let’s look at a simple example

Purpose: to create a magical moment by making a previously examined coin vanish from my empty hand.

Intent (patter is excluded for brevity): I’ll start by taking two coins from my pocket and directing you to choose one by saying “Please point to one of the coins.” After you’ve pointed to the coin, I’ll place it on your hand and let you examine it. While you do that I might add “It’s a real coin, is it not?”. Once you are satisfied with your examination I’ll ask you to place the coin in the palm of my hand. Once you’ve done this, I will reach out with my other hand and tug my sleeve up as a convincer that I have nothing up my sleeves. Then, very slowly, I’ll start closing my fingers, one at a time, around the coin.

Once the coin is out of sight I’ll turn my hand palm down and using my empty hand I’ll point at the one holding the coin and ask you “You examined the coin and placed it in my hand, is that correct?” To this, you will answer in the affirmative and when you do I’ll gently blow on my hand, turn the hand back palm up, uncurl the fingers, one at a time, and show you that the coin has vanished.

Just a moment ago the coin was in my hand and now it’s just gone. You try to fine an explanation but you can’t. You know that objects can’t just dematerialize and at no point did you take your eyes off of my hand and yet the coin is gone. All there’s left is pure astonishment. A magical moment.

In a routine as described above, there’s one single purpose: to vanish the coin in a very magical and unexplainable moment.

However, there are more than seven designed moments of intent that helped me carry out the effect. If I’m successful in how I designed my intent and carry out the routine then you are left with a moment of pure astonishment and wonder. Else, you are left with an unsatisfactory experience (and an embarrassed magician).

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The same principles of purpose and intention apply when we, as Product Manager, are building and designing products or services experiences.

The purpose of how the lives of our customers will improve when they use our solutions should be crystal clear and evident. A customer should be able to look at our solutions and quickly understand where it fits in their day-to-day routine, its use and how it will contribute value and to better outcomes in their daily lives.

Once the purpose has been properly established, along a few key metrics to help us know if we are on the right track or not, we can start utilizing intent driven design to start structuring and layering the experience.

They key here is: anything that doesn’t directly contribute toward helping the user realize the purpose of our solution is a distraction. Less is more.

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This requires, similarly to how the magic routine was structures, that every: interactions, features, workflows, functional components, word in the screen, every icon, every drop-down menu, every interaction, error message, empty state and everything else that’s added to our solution is scrutinized against the purpose, and if it’s not helping the user arrive to it, then it should be removed.

Remember what Antoine de Saint-Exupéry admonished us to:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

In this day and age of the attention economy, FOMO and digital widgets constantly flashing and beeping to get our severely sliced attention we must strive to create product experiences that help users stay focus and on target to achieve their desired outcomes and goals. In a way, our product and services experiences need to be invisible, so they get out of the way, while providing an invisible guiding hand.

So next time that you and your team are contemplating adding so much as a single colored pixel to the screen remember to review your solution’s purpose and ask: Will this pixel help drive the desired intent towards the right outcome for our customers? Any answer that’s anything less than a 100% absolute YES should be rejected!

That’s how we create magic.

Abracadabra!

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