Is Your App Instantly Forgettable? The Cure Is “Emotional Design”

Features aren't a defensible edge anymore. Discover the emotional design playbook Duolingo uses to double users. Turn your UX into a retention engine today.

I was watching a breakdown from Tim Gabe, a brilliant designer who’s spent the last decade in the trenches with both startups and tech giants.

He put a perfect name to a concept I’ve been obsessed with for years, and it’s the one thing that truly matters now: emotional design.

With no-code tools and AI co-pilots obliterating the technical barrier to entry, your competitor can copy your core feature set over a weekend.

So if features aren’t a defensible edge anymore, what is?

How your product makes people feel.

That’s it.

That’s the whole game now.

The hidden layer that separates forgettable tools from dopamine-fueled obsessions is the art of making your app feel alive, personal, and satisfying. And today, we are going to give you the playbook that top apps use to weaponize it for insane growth.

The New Battlefield: Function vs. Feeling

For years, we’ve been taught to focus on utility.

Does it solve the problem?

Yes?

Ship it.

But that’s table stakes in 2025. Just being useful is like a restaurant bragging that its food is edible. It’s the bare minimum.

Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix, nailed it when he said;

“The product has to be so good people want to talk about it”.

In a world where everyone has access to the same tech, “so good” doesn’t come from the code. It comes from the craft.

It’s the difference between an app that just works and an app that feels smooth, delightful, playful, or premium.

This isn’t about adding fluffy animations for the sake of it.

This is a cold, hard business strategy.

Let’s break down how the pros do it.