As AI tools make software creation easier than ever, Dr. Nesrine Changuel shares why emotional delight remains the hardest, and most rewarding, part of building tech right.
The clock is ticking ahead of this year’s edition of How to Web Conference, and in anticipation, we’ve put forward a challenge aimed directly at the builders operating at the industry’s unprecedented speed: “What will you build when you can build anything?”
For Dr. Nesrine Changuel, Product Coach, Author of Product Delight, and featured speaker at How to Web Conference 2026, the answer lies beyond reinventing the wheel, and rather leaning into a human-centric perspective – centering the entire build around creating something that people truly and actually love.
The missing layer in product development
The standard approach to product development relies on functionality at scale. The traditional prototype recipe usually starts with: Is it fast? Is it reliable? Does it solve the technical problem? But is that enough to foster real user loyalty, emotional connection or meaningful differentiation when functional software is becoming a commodity?
True differentiation happens when product teams explicitly design for how a user feels. As Nesrine puts it:
“Building products goes beyond building features. What allows you to stand out and differentiate is pleasurability – the emotional connection you achieve between the product and the user.”
While “build something that people love” has circulated in product circles for years, long repeated in keynotes and roadmap reviews as an aspiration everyone nodded along to, few knew how to operationalize it.
Nesrine spent the last decade doing exactly that. Holding a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and having shipped delight at scale across Chrome, Google Meet, Spotify and Skype, she consistently uncovered the exact same pattern: functionality gets a product used, but emotional connection gets it loved.
Solving the emotional friction of open tabs
During her time leading Chrome for iOS, Nesrine’s team tackled a universal mobile challenge: tab management. Data showed that over 50% of users kept more than 100 tabs open at any given time.
From a purely functional standpoint, this was a performance issue – it consumed memory and slowed down the browser. But when the team interviewed users about their habits, they discovered an emotional insight: users felt overwhelmed, disorganized and even embarrassed by their digital clutter, unprompted in their apologies for their open tabs.
Instead of forcibly closing tabs or treating it strictly as a technical cleanup, Nesrine and the team designed Inactive Tab Groups (automatically grouping tabs untouched for 21+ days).
The outcome solved both sides of the coin: it freed up memory and improved browser performance while lifting the daily stress and frustration of losing saved pages.
Blending functionality with an emotional mindset
When the possibilities for building software are limitless, the builders who win will be those who expand beyond pure technical execution to incorporate human emotion.
Nesrine refers to this as cultivating genuine delight by asking deeper emotional questions during development. Detailed in her book Product Delight, and endorsed by industry figures like Marty Cagan, Lenny Rachitsky and Melissa Perri, her framework anchors the human instinct for user connection directly into the product process.
What does that look like in practice?
Uncovering emotional motivation: What actually drives users from an emotional perspective?
Designing for feeling: What do users want to feel while using the product?
Elevating utility: How can we turn basic functional utility into a rewarding experience?
Meet Nesrine Changuel at How to Web Conference 2026
If you’re ready to turn product delight from a nice-to-have into your competitive edge, join Nesrine Changuel alongside thousands of product leaders, founders and creators in Bucharest this October.
Get your tickets for How to Web Conference 2026.
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As AI tools make software creation easier than ever, Dr. Nesrine Changuel shares why emotional delight remains the hardest, and most rewarding, part of building tech right. The clock is ticking ahead of this year’s edition of How to Web Conference, and in anticipation, we’ve put forward a challenge aimed directly at the builders operating… Read more »
What will you build when you can build anything? - How to Web Conference 2026
As AI tools make software creation easier than ever, Dr. Nesrine Changuel shares why emotional delight remains the hardest, and most rewarding, part of building tech right. The clock is ticking ahead of this year’s edition of How to Web Conference, and in anticipation, we’ve put forward a challenge aimed directly at the builders operating… Read more »