“Emotional Design” by Don Norman beautifully highlights the difference between a successful product and a magical product.

Successful Product – A product born out of prototype creation , repeated testing and re-design.This is the standard process of creating a product that sells and enables the maker to make profits.The recipe is very simple , follow the standard processes of product design.

Magical Product – Now there is no clear receipt for creating such a product for e.g. iPhone , iPod etc.The only pattern that we see is that such products have been created by visionaries and have involved high financial risks worth the final outcome when the product sell gathers momentum. Had there been a clear recipe , had these followed standard processes and been time boxed  all successful products would have become magical products.