[ On Camera Phones & Candy Sushi ]

This past summer we went to a party where we had been promised “a form of sushi.” What we got were desserts made to look uncannily like sushi. On one plate, Rice Krispies treats topped with Swedish Fish were wrapped in green Fruit Roll-Ups. On another, chunks of Twinkies had been stuffed with candy corn and sprinkled with red sugar beads that looked like roe.

The partygoers were thrilled. One said, “This is why camera phones were invented!” and she happily began snapping photo after photo until the “sushi” was devoured. Afterward, everyone else begged her to email the pictures so they could have copies, too.

At work the next day, we received another surprise: a link to a broadcast of the World Cup. But this wasn’t streaming video. Instead, the program converted TV coverage of the game into images made from letters and numbers. In the tiny window, soccer players animated as stacks of keyboard symbols duked it out. In the ‘90s, similar pictures were all over the primordial Internet, only to disappear as graphics evolved. To see them back from extinction and animated made for a weird marriage of nostalgia and future shock. Watching soccer this way was enthralling and unexpected and fun.

Novelty sushi. The latest cell phone technology. A frivolous new way to watch sports. So what did these moments have in common?

Delight.

How often does pleasure take us by surprise? How often are we caught off-guard with laughter? And how often do we put something into the world that delights in return?

The best products, services,and advertising create delight, or make delight easy to capture and distribute. The sushi and the soccer program were novel experiences; the camera phone and a fast computer made them shareable.

The “delight factor” is easy to overlook. Businesses want their product to be the best, so they spend time adding features and gadgets. But that doesn’t necessarily make something more fun. (In fact, more features can just make something frustrating. VCRs also had clocks, but did you ever see one that didn’t read “12:00”?) Style, efficiency, or service can often trump something that’s “better” in the technical sense, especially if we’re caught off-guard by how good something is. iPods didn’t win by being the best music player; they won by being surprisingly sleek, stylish, and easy to use. The world was waiting for the next portable music player, but no one saw the iPod coming.

What business are you in? Are you building delight? Are you getting the job done, not only well, but well in a way that surprises? Not every business venture has the pizzazz of a camera phone. But every business can profit from doing more than just covering the bases. Can you reshape your products? Can you shake up your services? Can you make your advertising sing? Of course you can.

And you emphatically should. Because we never wanted a camera phone before. But since that party, getting one has become a high priority. After all, who knows what surprise might end up on our plates? There is delight to be captured, and as consumers we’re willing to spend on the products that will make that easy. And meanwhile letters and numbers take shape on our screen. They flicker; they form themselves into crude figures; they resolve into something greater: people at play.