A recent example from my own work: some people want to add an animated start screen to an application, to “enhance the branding”. This would be shown to all users.

For me this is a clear example where “wow” goes before “of course” – the “of course” solution would be displaying something immediately useful and preferably actionable.

That’s not to say that “wow” and “of course” has to be opposites, but in my experience, “wow” has to be fairly subtle in order to work in the long run. I’m loath to drag up yet another Apple example, but the bouncing scroll in iOS is a good example: it’s subtle, it’s delightful, and it has a function.