Curiosity as a design constraint

The best products I’ve used make me curious. Not just efficient.

There’s a difference between a product that completes a task and one that opens a question. Most productivity tools optimize for task completion. The interesting design challenge is: can you complete the task and leave the user wanting to know more?

Music discovery at its best does this. A recommendation that gets it exactly right is satisfying. A recommendation that gets it 80% right — close enough that you can feel the algorithm’s model of you — is more interesting. It makes you think about your own taste.

I wonder if we’re optimizing too hard for accuracy and not enough for productive surprise.