Summary:
Rahul Vora, a repeat guest on the podcast, joins the show to discuss how he approaches designing software like a game. He emphasizes the importance of play and fun in software design and shares his definition of a game as something you play. He also highlights the difference between a game and a toy and notes that fun is a combination of pleasure and surprise.
Rahul Vora is the founder of Superhuman, a fast email client, and has previously appeared on acquired, a podcast about great technology companies and their stories. This episode will delve into the actual stories and playbooks behind Superhuman's product market fit and how they have matured into a professional or enterprise-class suite of tools.
Rahul Vora, the founder of Superhuman, joins the podcast to discuss designing software like a game. He defines a game as something you play and highlights the difference between a game and a toy. He also emphasizes the importance of fun, which is a combination of pleasure and surprise. This episode will explore the stories and strategies behind Superhuman's product market fit and its evolution into a professional or enterprise-class suite of tools.
Introduction to Rahul Vora and Superhuman
- Rahul Vora is the founder of Superhuman, a fast email client, and has spoken about designing software like a game.
- He has frameworks for finding product market fit and has spoken about it on other podcasts and summits.
- Today, he will dive into the stories behind these concepts and how they have been put into practice at Superhuman.
"Rahul had probably, I don't know if it's exactly the most listened to episode of all time, but it was certainly a standout episode when we released it."
Defining a Game
- Rahul defines a game as "something that you play".
- He uses a definition from Jesse Shell's book "The Art of Game Design".
- A game is different from a toy, which is an object you play with.
- Fun is a key component of a game, and it involves pleasant surprise.
"A game is simply something that you play."
What Makes a Good Game
- Bushnell's law states that a good game is easy to learn but difficult to master.
- However, Rahul believes that there are more factors involved in making a good game.
- He has identified seven principles that make a good game, across five factors: goals, emotions, controls, toys, and flow.
"There are plenty of other things that are required in order to make a good game."
Rahul's Background in Game Design
- Rahul was a game designer before Superhuman and Reportive.
- He was a game designer at Runescape, a legendary MMO.
- He has been obsessed with game design and making games for his entire life.
- He learned to code at a young age and started making games as a hobby.
"I've really been obsessed with game design and the art of making games for my entire life."
Early Days of Game Design
- Rahul Vora's experience as a game designer for Runescape
- Creating quests and content for players, which was a fun job
"And I can tell you it was one of the most fun jobs I've ever had."
Innovative Game Development
- Runescape was a browser-based game, which was unusual at the time
- The game was built using Java Graphical Extensions (JGE) instead of Flash
- Andrew Gower, the creator of Runescape, built his own object model in Java to achieve real-time graphics in the browser
"It was a real technical marvel at the time."
Flow State
- Rahul Vora experiences flow state when programming
- Flow state is characterized by losing track of time and being fully engaged in an activity
- Rahul Vora's experience of flow state while racing his Lamborghini Gallardo is an inspiration for his work on Superhuman
"This is the most extreme flow I have ever experienced. And this is the experience that I most want to share with others."
Inspiration from Flow State
- Rahul Vora's experience of flow state while racing inspired him to create a fast email experience with Superhuman
- The goal of Superhuman is to engineer for flow and create a sense of speed and efficiency
"It's why the unifying theme for everything that Superhuman does is speed, and it's why we try so hard to engineer for flow."
Game Design Principles in Superhuman
- Rahul Vora applied game design principles to create a fast and efficient email experience with Superhuman
- The goal is to create a sense of flow and make the user feel like they are flying over the keyboard
"I don't want to be too dramatic here, but the closest I have ever come to being in flow while doing email has certainly been with Superhuman."
Engineering for Speed
- Rahul Vora and his team rewrote large parts of Chrome's scripting engines to achieve speed and efficiency with Superhuman
- They had to figure out how to download, store, and index email in the browser to achieve fast search results
"We had to figure out how to work our magic, and we spent, no joke, this took nearly two years of time to figure out how to download, store, and index the email in the browser."
Typography and Fonts
- Rahul Vora is a typography nerd and wanted to create a beautiful and consistent layout for Superhuman
- The team dove into the Chrome source code, reverse-engineered the font layout engine, and built their own layout framework in CSS
"We figured out how to do it. We dove into the Chrome source code, reverse-engineered the font layout engine, and then built our own layout framework, actually entirely in CSS."
Gamification and Intrinsic Motivation
- Gamification is not just adding points, levels, trophies, or badges to a product
- True gamification involves designing a product that is inherently interesting and satisfying
- Extrinsic motivation can undermine intrinsic motivation
"We can be less enthused to do a thing once we're being extrinsically motivated."
- Intrinsic motivation is doing something because it is inherently interesting and satisfying
- Extrinsic motivation is doing something to earn rewards and achieve external goals
The Problem with Rewards
- Rewards can massively undermine intrinsic motivation
- A study showed that children who expected a reward for drawing spent less time drawing than those who did not expect a reward
"The children with no reward spent 17% of their time drawing. But the children who expected a reward... they only spent 8% of their time drawing."
- Rewards can halve motivation
Designing for Fun
- Instead of designing for user wants and needs, design for fun
- Consider what emotions you want users to feel and design a journey to get them there
- Emotions can include inspiration, triumph, longing, peacefulness, tranquility, and sentimentality
"How can you design for the emotions that you want your users to feel?"
Respecting Users
- Gamification can feel like a lack of respect for users' intelligence
- Give users awesome tools and trust that they know their goals
"It feels like it's also kind of an element of just respecting your users, too, and their intelligence."
Streaks Feature
- Superhuman is building a streaks feature to celebrate users' achievements
- The feature will count up the number of weeks in a row a user achieves inbox zero
- The feature is designed to reinforce intrinsic motivation, not undermine it
"We tested it in good old fashioned product management style... We didn't write any feature code. What we did was we wrote a bunch of SQL scripts."
Statsig Sponsorship
- Statsig is a feature management and experimentation platform
- It helps product teams ship faster, automate A/B testing, and see the impact of features on core business metrics
- Customers include Notion, Brex, OpenAI, Flipkart, Figma, Microsoft, and Cruise Automation
Designing for Emotion
- Designing for emotion is crucial in creating a memorable experience for users
- Emotions can be blended to create more complex feelings, such as joy and anticipation combining to create optimism
"When you combine joy and anticipation, you get optimism. And when you combine joy and trust, you actually get love."
- At Superhuman, the focus is on designing for joy, with subfacets including enthusiasm, excitement, optimism, and pride
The Importance of Emotional Design
- Emotional design can evoke feelings of power, control, and tranquility in users
- The use of imagery can widen the emotional repertoire beyond joy into love and surprise
"We pick images that are peaceful and tranquil. That's in the love end of the spectrum, we create images, rather, that create a sense of longing and sentimentality that's also in the love end of the spectrum."
- The goal is to create an emotional connection with the user, making the experience more memorable and engaging
Applying Emotional Design Principles
- The principles of emotional design can be applied to various aspects of life, including personal relationships and communication
- Being aware of nuanced emotions can help in articulating feelings and improving interactions with others
"What we actually want to say is something like, I'm feeling lonely, or I'm feeling disappointed, or I'm feeling anguish or whatever it is, and you can go to the emotional wheel and look it up."
- The discipline of being a game designer can make one a better manager and partner
Experience Design
- The principles of game design can be applied to experience design in various industries, such as real estate
- The goal is to create an immersive experience that evokes emotions and sensations in the user
"If you think about the onboarding experience of superhuman, there's not really much software in that experience. But we did look at the whole thing through these lenses."
- Attention to detail, including the use of scents, can enhance the overall experience
Superhuman and Emotional Design
- Superhuman's inbox zero feature is designed to evoke emotions of joy, pride, and triumph
- The use of imagery and design elements is deliberate and intended to create a memorable experience
"So when you do hit inbox zero, that's when we decided to show you this stunning and gorgeous imagery."
- The focus on emotional design has contributed to the success of Superhuman