Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!

Moments of delight are something we talk about a lot at Yahoo! in terms of product design. When a product takes care of something for you, like say, remembering your personal information from last time you visited a website, that's nice. But when something comes along that anticipates a need you didn't even know you had, that's the true delight.

Christmas came in January this past week when my new Nintendo Wii arrived fresh from a shipment from Ebay. Christian had originally meant it to be a Christmas present and even waited in line over 2 hours (!) at J&R Computer World in NYC when they first came out back then. It wasn't meant to be since they were out by the time he got inside the store and they were all over $600 on Ebay. The one I bough ended up half that price, less than a month later, a good lesson in Christmas buying hysteria.

So the set-up for this system in case you don't know is that it comes with a controller that is a bit different than most video game systems. This controller is actually used as an instrument in the games. The system came with a sports disc that includes seemingly hum-drum games like tennis, golf and boxing. Except this time, rather than pressing buttons to serve and volley, you actually swing the controller to hit the ball. It's most impressive in tennis, where you actually have to stand in front of the TV and dart back and forth to get the ball. I got a second controller and Christian and I actually played tennis in our living room last night and worked up a bit of a sweat doing it!! What fun, and for any of you in SF who want to come over and give it a try, let me know! Playing the game, you can really feel like the designers of the system decided to just make it, well, plain fun, and were looking to delight the users of it.

I had a similar experience with the nifty Nike/iPod connector that my brother and sister-in-law sent me for Christmas. Its a small piece you can plug into your iPod to keep track of how long and far you go when running. I've used it a few times so far and think its a great invention. But I had an extra delight when I went for a run earlier this week-- when I completed the run, the normal female voice-over came on the headphones and said the time of the distance of the run, as it usually does.

But then a man's voice comes on and says "This is Lance Armstrong. That was your longest run so far! Congrats and keep up the good work." My first reaction was "are you kidding me?!!" and then I thought "Thanks, Lance!" and I can't wait to hear that again. How incredibly motivating and a small but thoughtful touch the designers added.

So I didn't really ever think that I wanted to play tennis in my living room or have a doo-hickey that connects to my music player to keep track of when I exercise. But I wouldn't want to live without them now. And to that, I'm sure the owners of the products are delighted themselves.