Building Product Sense with Comet: Part I
Part I: Learning through Deconstruction
Introduction
Have you ever sat in a product meeting where someone instantly identified what would delight the user, and you thought, “How did they see that ?” I experienced that exact eureka moment with one of the features I developed as a software engineer on the Medical Imaging product, an idea originally proposed by my Product Manager. That sharp instinct is known as product sense. It’s one of the most valuable skills a Product Manager can have and also one of the hardest to explain, let alone teach.
Not because it’s impossibly hard, but because it’s rarely talked about openly and often comes from years of pattern recognition. For some, it’s second nature; for others, it feels like a mysterious sixth sense. The good news? It’s not magic; you can still build it.
So how do you develop an instinct for something like this? As John Dewey once said, “We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.” And Malcolm Gladwell reminds us, “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”
That’s the key: product sense grows from a mix of experience and thoughtful reflection. And if you don’t yet have years of PM experience? You can still train it, just like a kid improves his soccer skills by kicking the ball every day to become a soccer player one day, you can sharpen product sense by repeatedly studying and breaking down real products.
That’s exactly what we’re going to do here. Instead of starting with theory, we’ll jump straight into a live example—Comet by Perplexity, one of the hottest new products in the market. But this isn’t going to be just another product teardown. We’ll use research-backed frameworks proven to create exceptional product experiences, reverse-engineer Comet’s decisions, and extract the lessons that will help you build your product intuition: one decision at a time.
The Two Core Drivers of Great Products
Research suggests two core factors make a product truly resonate with consumers:
Cognitive – how easy, functional, and efficient a product feels.
Affective – how pleasant, delightful, or emotionally engaging it feels.
In simple terms, the product should speak to both the brain and the soul. A PM who consistently builds products that do both has strong product sense.
So, does Comet by Perplexity speak to both the soul and the brain? And if so, what can we learn from it?
Affective Product Sense
Affective Product Sense focuses on the emotional understanding of user experiences and brand connections
Cognitive Product Sense
Cognitive Product Sense comes in—the “brain” side of the equation. It’s the rational understanding of user needs, market demands, and functional excellence.
Under Cognitive and affective sense, there are four broad categories. Let’s explore each of them here and see how Comet shines in each.
1. Visceral + Behavioral Sense: The Instant Connection
Visceral Affective Sense is the instant, instinctive feeling you have when you first encounter a product, before any rational analysis kicks in.
Behavioral Cognitive Sense is your instinctive judgment about how easy or hard the product will be to use.
Think of the first iPhone reveal or the moment you tried ChatGPT for the first time. The problems these products solved weren't unique, but the way they solved them was. They created both an emotional spark AND immediate confidence in usability.
Comet delivers a similar kind of visceral moment.
Its value proposition: "Browse at the speed of thought" is instantly clear and compelling.
The agentic browsing experience it offers feels like nothing before it.
The moment you land on the site, you start imagining a different kind of internet, one where browsing feels fluid, intelligent, and frictionless.
The Comet Assistant, tucked neatly into the top-right corner of every webpage, signals a quiet but powerful shift: you’re no longer browsing alone.
But here's what makes it powerful: that emotional promise is backed by rational usability signals.
It's AI-powered.
It's built with deep integration with the familiar search tool Perplexity. Even if you haven’t used Perplexity, if you've used AI tools before, you expect it to be as simple as chatting with ChatGPT, only now embedded directly into your browsing workflow.
Just by reading "Browse at the speed of thought," users can imagine the usability without touching the product.
What can we learn as PMs?
Understand your user deeply and paint a clear picture of "the world with your product" versus "the world without it."
Design for first impressions that excite, and first interactions that reassure.
Make sure your emotional promise aligns with clear usability signals—users need to feel excited AND believe it will be easy to use.
In Comet’s case, the traditional browsing pattern: Google search → open 10 tabs → hunt for the answer has remained unchanged for decades.
Comet condenses that into a single, relevant, AI-powered result, awakening a long-standing desire while signaling it will be effortless.
2. Aesthetic + Semantic Sense: Beauty Meets Understanding
Aesthetic Sense is the pleasure or displeasure triggered by a product's visual design, sound, and tactile elements.
Semantic Cognitive Sense is how clearly users understand what the product does and how it works.
The way a Hans Zimmer score elevates a film is how strong aesthetics elevate a product—they create an emotional layer that words can't explain. But that beauty must also communicate function clearly.
Comet taps into both beautifully:
When you first load the browser, you're greeted with a subtle astronomical soundtrack—a small detail that, for me, triggered a surprising sense of calm and even spirituality.
The interface borrows familiar design patterns from Chrome, reducing cognitive load for new users while layering in Comet’s unique touches.
The layout feels clean, modern, and intentional—nothing is excessive, everything feels placed with purpose.
Pleasure is further complemented by a semantic cognitive sense of the product and its features:
The placement of key features, like the Comet Assistant button in the top-right, feels exactly where you expect it to be.
Icons like voice chat and link copy are self-explanatory and intuitively positioned. The design communicates function without explanation.
Comet avoids feature creep. It adds only what directly improves usability, maintaining visual harmony and semantic clarity.
What can we learn as PMs?
Aesthetic sense isn’t about reinventing everything; sometimes it’s about blending familiarity with subtle novelty.
Your visual design should do double duty: create emotional appeal and communicate function clearly.
Comet makes a smart choice by using familiar browser layouts (reducing cognitive load) while amplifying them with AI-first elements that feel natural and discoverable.
Even the onboarding music “just feels right”—it’s a small touch that deepens emotional resonance without distracting from usability.
3. Symbolic Sense: The Deeper Emotional-Rational Connection
Both Affective Symbolic Sense (emotional associations) and Cognitive Symbolic Sense (how you mentally label functionality after reflection) deal with deeper meanings that emerge over time.
At first, you might think a new product like Comet wouldn't have deep symbolic associations. But it does, because it respects and integrates users' existing habits while offering something new, creating both emotional comfort and functional clarity.
For example: Not every query needs an AI answer, and Comet understands this.
If you type into the search bar, the default is a Perplexity search—but it also clearly shows you can press Shift + Enter to run a Google search.
This small design decision preserves the emotional comfort many of us have with traditional search, while inviting us into a richer, AI-assisted world.
After using Comet for a while, I started mentally labeling it as “functional, intuitive, delightful”—the same way I think about an iPhone or Airbnb. Let me explain how Comet delivers its own version of that intuitive delight:
I frequently perform repetitive tasks in a browser, summarizing podcasts, condensing daily emails, and deleting promotional mail.
In a traditional setup, I’d have to manually type prompts and run them each time.
Comet surprised me: right after I ran my first prompt, it offered to save it as a shortcut.
Now, typing / instantly brings up my saved commands, ready to execute with one click.
It didn’t stop there:
From the home page, Comet suggested trying the “Agents in action” option.
Clicking on it, I watched it plan a trip by integrating with Google Maps.
That simple nudge got me exploring entirely new agentic use cases: copy-pasting content, automating inbox cleanups, and more.
These agentic shortcuts quickly became part of my natural workflow.
Because of that, the value of this feature compounded. You can literally see how cognitive symbolic sense (mental modeling of usefulness) and affective symbolic sense (emotional resonance) come together. Big kudos to Comet shortcuts!
This progression from emotional comfort to functional delight shows exactly how symbolic sense works in practice.
What can we learn as PMs?
Symbolic sense often comes from respecting users' existing mental models and rituals while layering in new value.
A product can carry forward the emotional equity of past experiences while creating new positive associations.
Focus on creating compounding value—features that become more useful and emotionally satisfying over time.
4. Reflective Sense: The Lasting Soul–Brain Harmony
Reflective Sense is both the emotional evaluation (Affective) that happens after thinking (how a product fits with your memories, routines, and values) and the rational assessment (Cognitive) of long-term usability (is it still easy after the novelty fades?).
This is where all the earlier elements come together. When I first loaded Comet, I couldn't help but think about the hassle of setting up a new browser, logging in, syncing bookmarks, and restoring extensions. Chrome dominates the browser market partly because of how embedded it is in people's digital lives. So, Comet knew most of the users would be migrating from the Chrome browser if they were trying them. Comet understood this reality and removed that friction; it imported almost all my Chrome settings instantly, making onboarding feel effortless.
But Reflective Sense goes deeper. It's where all the subtle touches from earlier categories come back into focus, and rational evaluation meets emotional satisfaction. One example I love: sending an image to the Comet Assistant. The obvious part is the feature itself, but how it matters just as much.
I've never been a fan of the Windows Snipping Tool.
On macOS, I love the Shift + Cmd + 5 shortcut—it's intuitive and precise.
Comet replicates that level of elegance: a single click lets you drag and drop any part of your screen directly into the Assistant.
No external tools. No extra steps. Just smooth, intuitive interaction
At first, I didn't even consciously register how smooth the process was. But in reflection, I realized it's these tiny, frictionless moments that make a product irresistible.
To quote another example, if you’ve ever had 15 tabs open and couldn’t remember what those tabs were, you know the pain of identifying them. Comet solves this by introducing context-aware tab navigation.
You can type @ followed by the tab name to instantly recall its context, no hunting through tiny favicons.
This simple action turns tab management from a frustrating chore into a near-frictionless experience.
It’s not just a feature, it’s a sign of deep user empathy, addressing a problem most users tolerate but rarely talk about.
The rational side reinforces this. Comet doesn’t just make browsing smoother, it quietly transforms the browser’s role:
Reserve hotels or restaurant tables
Shop for products with in-line assistance
Access AI-powered research without opening a new tab or tool
The magic here is that these capabilities don’t make the product feel more complex. Instead, they quietly extend the browser’s role from “displaying the internet” to actively helping you get things done.
What can we learn as PMs?
The things users remember most are often the ones they don't notice right away, until they stop and think, "That was really well thought out."
Tackle accepted pain, every product category has friction that users stop complaining about because they assume nothing can fix it. Solving those is a fast track to lasting delight.
Integrate intelligence without overwhelming, and adding smart features shouldn't add complexity.
Final Thoughts: Building Your Product Sense
All the senses we explored share a common thread: they stem from a deep understanding of how people currently work with existing products and where their pain points lie. Once you tap into that understanding, microdecisions become the real differentiator.
People often overlook microdecisions, but they're what separate great products from merely good ones. Simply having an AI assistant embedded in a browser isn't exciting on its own. What excites users is how seamlessly they can leverage AI at every step.
That's exactly what Product Sense is about:
Understand how everyday users feel about existing solutions
Study their pain points and experiences in detail
Balance the trade-off between familiar experiences and bold new ones
Spend time observing users after they've adopted your product; many insights only surface after weeks of use
Identify friction that occurs repeatedly but silently—these are your "hidden high-impact" opportunities
Product sense is the ability to see how every detail—visual, functional, emotional—shapes the user’s experience. It’s the systematic skill of designing products that speak to both emotion and logic, creating experiences that feel inevitable once they exist.
The more you practice this kind of analysis, the sharper your product intuition becomes. But we’re not done yet. So far, we’ve broken down what’s available in Comet and mapped each feature to the corresponding sense—learning the right skills along the way.
But does that mean Comet is perfect?
Or is there a pain point to listen to, a moment to pay attention to, and further value to compound? Yes. That means there’s an opportunity to take this learning even further.
Stay tuned for Part II - Learning through Construction.
Sources
Tavares, D. R., Canciglieri Junior, O., Guimarães, L. B. de M., & Rudek, M. (2021). An ontological approach of the cognitive and affective product experience. Frontiers in Neuroergonomics, 2, 602881. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnrgo.2021.602881