Every great consumer product scores well on a metric I like to call "Time to Magic".

The notion of having a quick, powerful hook within a tight feedback loop obviously isn't a new idea. There are a ton of books, interviews, and anecdotes which describe the eternal efforts of product designers to maximize conversion and retention metrics.

However, the TTM is something a little different. It's much more of a visceral "holy shit" feeling you get when trying a new product for the first time. Specifically, I like to define the TTM as the time it takes to replace a user's expectations with a new sense of reality. I think it can be represented well by the following equation (in this case "time" is TTM):

magic = reality - expectations / time

There are a few products I've experienced in my life which have an amazing TTM value:

• Tesla Model 3: hitting the acceleration and instantly flying down the road past everyone else
• Uber: Tapping "confirm ride" and instantly seeing a little dot representing my car coming to my location
• Snapchat: Taking a photo and sending to my friend in 2 taps
• ChatGPT: Typing in a prompt and witnessing a perfect answer being generated before my eyes
• FSD: Tapping on my destination and having my car start driving itself

With all of these products, I used them for the first time and immediately thought "this is the future". They rewired my conception of reality and made me question how I had lived life before their existence. And ultimately, I think that's what makes TTM so important. A low TTM will shock your system quickly enough that your mental extremities are numb to any deficiencies or unsolved edge cases the product might have.

Another consequence of an extremely low TTM is that even if your reality of using the product closely matches any lofty expectations you had coming in, you still feel a sense of magic and wonder. For example, with Tesla FSD I expected the car to completely drive itself and not make any mistakes (which are fairly high expectations for someone who had never hopped in a self-driving car before). However, the fact that I got to experience this moment so quickly - I just had to tap my destination and press "Start" - made me feel like my world had changed forever.

Time to Magic is not a silver bullet that will make a product perfect - but it's the most important factor for showing you what's possible.