Brian Chesky and the founding team at AirBnB were trying to solve a problem, they wanted to give people the opportunity to rent couches, beds, homes, from one another, in a way that facilitated an experience that no other service could offer. Vacation rentals felt stale, and hotels were impersonal. How could they create an experience that was welcoming, positive, and memorable? The experience that everyone was going to enjoy so much, that they’d tell every one of their friends about it.

In my experience as a product manager, I frequently find myself asking “how can I make my product better today?”. It’s a natural question to ask. In the agile world I live in, I’m often asked to figure out how I can get the next version out the door, and how v1.2 can solve the customers’ problems better than v1.1. I focus on the nitty gritty details, features customers are asking for, developments that serve as a natural progression of the existing product.

Enter the Kano Model theory of user satisfaction.

The Kano Model states that there exists 3 types of features: Basic Needs, Performance Needs, and Delighters. Basic Needs are the things that form the baseline level of expectations required to enter a market — things that you’re going to want to see in order to consider a product. Performance Needs are things that one product can be comparatively better at than another. Delighters are features that cause your users to get excited about a product, their presence helps one product better meet users’ needs, so long as that product also possesses a base level of Basic Need functionality.

The Kano model tells us that a certain degree of basic need functions are important, but building too many of them will lead to a diminishing rate of returns. I find that these are the features that users most often ask for, the things that your customers say that they need, but don’t always respond to as positively as they think they will. Imagine if Uber unveiled a feature that gave you the option to instantly teleporting you to your destination, you probably wouldn’t think to ask for such a feature, but you’d sure be happy if they delivered on it, and you can bet you’d tell your friends.

Brian Cheske and the 10-Star product experience

Thinking back to Brian Cheske and AirBnB. Brian wanted to create an experience that would cause people to tell every single person they knew about it. To that end, Brian decided to imagine his 5, 6, 7 star experiences, and beyond. For the sake of originality, I’m going to do my own version with a date. Let’s call it a third or fourth date for the sake of not being creepy.

(1)✩

Your date texts you the misspelled name of a smelly dive that, shows up 45 minutes late, and “forgets” their credit card. They don’t text you back after.

(5) ✩✩✩✩✩

Your date shows up early to pick you up and takes you to a pop-up steak and wine pairing popup restaurant that you’ve never heard of. Your favorite candy is waiting in the passenger seat.

(6) ✩✩✩✩✩✩

Your date shows up in a limousine to pick you up, you tour the city and sit down to a private steak and wine dinner on a sailboat touring the San Francsico Bay.

(7) ✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

Same as 6 stars, but your date shows up in a vehicle which can act as both a limousine and a sailboat, preventing you from having to walk from one mode of transportation to the other.

(10) ✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

After being dressed by magical creatures a la’ Snow White in clothes of the finest silks, you’re whisked away by experimental flying car to a private yacht anchored in the center of a perfectly still lake. On the boat, you attend the remarriage of Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, presided over by Morgan Freeman, after which everyone sits down to a dinner cooked tableside by Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto.

Unfortunately, 10-star experiences are, by definition, infeasible. Teleporters don’t exist yet, and Elon Musk isn’t available to transport AirBnB customers into space, at least not on a regular basis. It’s this sort of thinking though that allows us to open ourselves up to new opportunities to show our customers something they didn’t know they wanted, or needed. If we can show a customer something that redefines their standard of a basic need, we’ve gained a loyal, happy user for the long haul.

What’s the 10 star experience of the problem that’s on your mind right now?