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11 Star Experience: A framework to design beyond "Good enough"

  • design
  • frameworks
  • product

As design leaders, we spend most of our time getting products to "good." Five stars. No complaints. Task completed. But good is a ceiling most teams stop at — and it's the wrong ceiling.

The 11 Star Experience is a thinking tool coined by Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, first shared publicly in his conversation with Reid Hoffman on the Masters of Scale podcast, and I've come to treat it as one of the most useful frameworks in my product design practice. The exercise is simple: take any user experience and imagine rating it not on the usual 1-to-5 scale, but 1 to 11. What would a 1-star version of this look like? A 5-star version? What would it take to make it a 10 or an 11 — an experience so good it becomes a story people tell?

The value isn't in ever shipping the 11-star version (most of it is deliberately absurd — Chesky's own example involves Batman greeting you at the airport). The value is in the exercise itself. Once a team has articulated what 11 stars looks like, they can work backward and ask a much sharper question than "does this work?" — namely, "what is the actual value we're delivering at each level, and how do we compound it?"

That reframing matters for three reasons I keep coming back to with teams:

It separates features from value. Most teams default to listing features when asked what a great experience needs. The 11 Star exercise forces you to name the underlying value first — trust, delight, belonging, growth — and then ask what feature could deliver more of it. Features become a means, not the goal.

It builds a shared vocabulary for ambition. "Let's make this more delightful" means something different to every person in the room. Anchoring the conversation in a 1-to-11 scale gives teams a shared, almost playful language to calibrate how far to push — and permission to imagine beyond the roadmap constraints of this quarter.

It turns good design into compounding design. Once you can see the ladder from 1 to 11, you stop treating each release as a one-off. You start treating experience as something you build in layers — where this release's 6-star idea sets up next release's 8.

Below is a worked example I use to teach the concept — a sustainability lifestyle course platform (a personal project from a UX writing course). Each row imagines a different rating of the same product experience, the value it would need to deliver to get there, and what an actual piece of user feedback at that level might sound like. Read it top to bottom and watch how the "key value added" column evolves — that's the thing worth designing toward.

Rating Key value added Example user feedback
1⭐ No value Waste of time. I didn't learn anything new in this course. Instructor was boring and failed to arouse curiosity. The content was not practical.
2⭐⭐ Good content Course content was okay. Methods and practices mentioned were not practical for me. Instructor lacked the enthusiasm and hardly answered my queries.
3⭐⭐⭐ Improved content delivery. Community engagement. Course was informative but not practical to apply in day-to-day life. Instructor was clear and enthusiastic, but there was little personal interaction. Also, assignments could have been designed for more hands-on learning rather than test format. Liked the community interaction though.
4⭐⭐⭐⭐ Progressive and quick assignments. Improve communication with instructor. Informative course. It was eye-opener for me. Step-by-step practical assignments. Instructor was clear, motivating and always available for queries. Discussions and review among peers was one of the best part.
5⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Personalised instructions and content. Help users to take actions. The course was very informative and practical. It took into account various hurdles that I face in my daily life while trying to become eco-friendly. The resources provided are exactly what I was looking for. The instructor was clear, knowledgeable and inspiring. This course has helped me to kick start my journey into sustainable living. There was immense learning from other peers.
6⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Learning to self-reflection. Useful resources apart from course content. Peers to personal relations. The course was very informative, practical, and fun to take. It's not one fit for all courses. It offers actionable solutions based on the context. It has helped me to analyze and reflect on my hobbies that harm the environment. The resources provided throughout the course are extremely useful. The instructor was clear, knowledgeable, friendly, and has inspired me a lot. I have met awesome people via this course. My family has already started implementing learning of the course.
7⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Learning to making impact. Resources not just for learning but for action. A perfect combo of fun, learning, and making a positive impact. It didn't feel like a remote or online course. Learning from peers was a lifetime opportunity. The course team provided with all the digital and physical resources required for the coursework and learning.
8⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rewarding discipline and hard work. Help users grow their network. …I also got rewards for completing modules on time. I made great contacts through the course community. …my kids have started living sustainably too.
9⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Change of perspective. Engaging with local peers/volunteers. Learning → exploration. Lots of practical learning. It changed my perspective of waste and the problems associated with it. The weekly gathering of local teams and activities is the best part. Assignments have evolved into a mission at my house. The instructor always inspires and clears any query I have. I even got to visit a recycling plant run by rural women.
10⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Learning by working together. Inspire with field experts and not only instructors. Workshop/seminars beyond a course. Learning → Earning. This course made living eco-friendly not only possible but obvious and easy. Group assignments helped me to take the learning to the community level in my neighborhood. The instructor along with other field experts visited our neighborhood to help us set an example for the rest of the city. Their workshops and seminars are must attend. I started a small side-business of selling organic and home-grown items in my city. Everyone should take this course to do our duty towards our planet earth.
11⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Make users knowledgeable and resourceful to choose their own path. I am leaving my current job and joining the sustainable movement full-time. I know how to live happily, without damaging mother nature and make a living out of it.

For teams, the exercise works best as a workshop: pick a real user journey, fill in this table together, and use column two — key value added — as your actual backlog of ambition. It's rare that a team ships an 11-star idea whole. But naming it changes what a 6 or a 7 looks like, and that's where most of the real work — and the real bar-raising — happens.

References