Chat with Michael McWatters VP, Product Design at Warner Bros. Discovery

Delight with Purpose

As Vice President of Product Design at Warner Bros. Discovery, Michael McWatters’ unconventional origin story is essential to the way he thinks about user experience.

Soon after getting his masters degree in fine arts, Michael came to the disquieting realization that he didn’t want to spend his life making objects for people to observe. He wanted to create experiences that were immersive, experiential, and purpose-driven.

He found work at a studio that created laser light displays for movies, rock concerts, and other special events. At the small studio, he touched every aspect of the creative process, including storyboarding, animation, coding, 3D rendering, and set design.

In the mid-’90s, the studio decided to launch its first website, and Michael saw an opportunity to merge his artistic sensibilities with his interest in technology. Teaching himself to code, he dove headfirst into this new medium. Despite its early limitations, Michael realized the web held the potential to inspire, inform, serve, and delight, all within the confines of a simple browser window.

Michael challenges the idea that delight in the context of product design is superficial, like sprinkles on a cake. Instead, he advocates for a deeper, more fundamental approach in which delight is woven into the very fabric of the user experience.

“Delight isn’t an add-on,” Michael explains. “It’s not about clever marketing tactics or surface-level gimmicks. Delight happens when you give people what they want or need as quickly and efficiently as possible. It exists on a context-dependent spectrum, from high utility to deep immersion.”

The quality of an experience, Michael argues, can be measured against three traits: it serves a purpose; it’s easy to use; and it’s enjoyable. Put simply, the traits are utility, usability, and joy. Product experiences that are simultaneously functional, reliable, and pleasurable are more likely to be perceived as delightful.

At Warner Brothers Discovery, Michael leads the Discovery and Engagement practice, a set of horizontal product design teams focused on content and brand expression, data-driven design, and UX writing. This unusual mix of disciplines reflects his belief that product teams should consider the many ways delight can be maximized at every point in the customer journey. It also reflects his belief that delight is as much about function as form, if not more so.

“Focusing on quick-hit, surface-level delight is one way to create a positive experience,” he notes. “But considering delight over time, by continuously creating a sense of value, meaning, trust, and pleasure, is a more sustainable way to run a business.” Pursuing delight through clever stunts, he argues, is like gorging on empty calories: immediate gratification with long-term regret.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qV6QkE0I7nAm1ZwtvBMMKfgVh_LjDkn0/view?usp=drive_link

To maintain a continuous and deeper sense of delight, Michael and his team look beyond their immediate peers and competitors for inspiration. They look to successful experiences in other industries, such as e-commerce and social media, trying to identify similar underlying customer problems or opportunities, then adapting interesting solutions to their own work.

Michael’s approach to product design shows that genuine delight isn’t about adding superficial elements to an existing product. Instead, it’s about creating experiences that blend functionality with pleasure, and blend utility with joy. His work at Warner Brothers Discovery demonstrates that this approach can be applied at scale, in a streaming product that attempts to add a sense of sustained delight to match the content itself.

As the digital landscape continues its rapid evolution, Michael’s emphasis on meaningful delight over shallow, quick wins provides a framework for a more sustainable product strategy.

The full interview and more stories about delight are available in the Product Delight book.