Design. Iterate. Repeat.

Back in 2012, I stumbled on a video that I still think about. It completely reframed how I approach interaction design — not by teaching me a new methodology, but by giving language to something I’d been feeling but couldn’t articulate. If you work in product design and you haven’t seen this, do yourself a favor and watch it now.

What is juice?

Juice is when an interactive experience feels alive and responds to everything you do; Cascading actions and responses for minimal user input.

That definition has lived rent-free in my head for over a decade. “Feels alive.” That’s the standard. Not “functional.” Not “usable.” Alive. An interface that responds, reacts, rewards — that makes you want to poke at it just to see what happens.

Most interfaces don’t feel alive. They feel like forms. Juice is the difference between those two things, and it’s the reason some products feel like a delight to use and others feel like you’re filing taxes.

The honest truth is that juice is hard to spec in a Figma file. It lives in the space between frames — in timing, easing, feedback, and the tiny moments of delight that nobody writes a requirement for. You have to prototype it. You have to feel it. And then you iterate until it feels right.