Earlier if you accidentally removed your headphones from phone/ laptop, your music would not pause and all of your coworkers would suddenly hear your playlist. It used to be super awkward.

Then some PM/Designer decided it should not be the case.

Earlier you would open multiple tabs on your laptop and suddenly some popup ad video on one of these tabs would start playing before you get to pause it. You would frantically search for the culprit.

Then someone decided to put a speaker icon on the tab and make our lives easy.

Earlier you would keep talking on your microphone not realising you are on mute.

Then Zoom decided to tell you to unmute yourself.

Earlier all meetings would have video and audio on by default.

Then Zoom decided you could choose to turn off your video before a call. and You need not frantically try to locate the webcam to cover it.

Earlier you would switch back and forth between browser/app to messages app in order to find out and add verification SMS code.

Then someone decided to extract verification code from the SMS and put it right above the keyboard. Tap, add, verify.

Earlier you had to switch to a calendar app when replying to an email for a confirmed meeting time.

Until someone at thought of better approach: Convert to event.

It is small things like these which gets me excited about product design.

You don’t have to do anything revolutionary as a PM or designer. Just think about the small improvements which can bring outsized delight to your customers.

P.S Thanks to R. Bhavesh (who pointed out the SMS example) & Sunil Patro (who shared the Outlook Calendar improvement).