Himanshu Bharadwaj on Joyfulness and Storytelling
Today on The X-Mentor it’s Himanshu Bharadwaj on Storytelling, Joyfulness and connecting with nature for inspiration and innovation.
Himanshu uses joyful design to inspire teams to create scalable, compassionate products. He is a Joyful Design Thinking Leader, Speaker, Entrepreneur, and Yogi and calls himself a 4/3 πr³ designer.
Himanshu is currently a VP of Experience Design at Centime, Inc., a B2B SaaS FinTech focused on Cash Management and Banking solutions, which was awarded Commercial Banking Fintech of the Year by AiteNovarica.
The X-Mentor: Welcome to The X-Mentor, Himanshu! Thank you so much for being with us today and I really appreciate what I've recently learned about your background. You've got a great story to share with us, so let's jump right in and talk about your design career origin story. As I understand, it started in a Himalayan monastery where you were spending time living and learning among other monks. Tell us a little bit about your experiences during that time.
A Higher Perspective
Himanshu: Greg, thank you for inviting me and asking this question. It is an unusual question. Not many people ask this, but I will go way back to my childhood.
I grew up in New Delhi, a big city with pollution, tall buildings, and not enough trees. I craved some fresh air and new scenery. Several times, I traveled to small towns in the foothills and then went up the mountains where there were hardly any human beings or interference with nature. What intrigued me the most were the clear skies and, at night, many stars. Just like zooming out to a galaxy in the movie Power of 10' by the designer Charles Eames, this context made me humble and small in the larger scheme of things of the universe. When I saw so many stars in the sky, my vision broadened, my aspirations improved, and I could dream big. Looking at the universe teaches us how parts impact the whole, how systems nest within each other, how to look for connections, context, and meaning, and how to see the familiar in a new way. And then, through meditation, we look at the same vast universe with a nested system within us.
"When you live your life by a compass instead of a clock, you open yourself to various experiences that seem like fantasy."
Another aspect of living in the Himalayas was I had no schedule. I followed a process and a goal that the gurus and the monks taught me. When you live your life by a compass instead of a clock, you open yourself to various experiences that seem like fantasy.
One can learn to bypass the circadian rhythm by living in caves due to darkness. Circadian rhythms are physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a 24-hour cycle influenced by the sun. We close our eyes during meditation and do not speak, taste, or smell anything. Thus, the four senses are out of business. The remaining sense of hearing was taken care of by the nearby river. The river sound acts as a white noise that drowns all other sound frequencies and helps in meditation. My meditation practice has continued in my design profession and life so far.
I saw the river as an inspiration. Our life is also like a river carrying us from its source all the way until it reaches its destination, the ocean. There are obstacles along the way, like stones. Sometimes, these stones are significant; sometimes, someone would play politics in the job and put a dam to block our progress, but water always finds a way despite heat or cold and reaches the ocean. As Edward de Bono said in his book Water Logic, "Water always finds a way." That is what progress is. It is how one must keep going on in life despite all obstacles.
My meditation practice did involve a lot of breathing techniques. Regulated breathing helps arrange and restrain thoughts that could be entangled, thereby controlling errors in cognition. Learning experience design at a very fundamental level is understanding the perception and sensation that make up our cognition. The same science applies to marketing, branding, and even leadership.
When we are alone in a jungle, there is vulnerability and fear. Adaptability is the survival skill there. It is the same in the jungle of corporate life. I agree when people say creativity is being fearless, courage is a decision, and fear is a reaction. Creativity is to feel fully alive and aware, being alone in a no man's land, and to savor the freshness of each new moment.
Living close to nature also taught me harmony with nature and deep reverence for the environment. There is a sacred interconnectedness with all beings, living and nonliving. Sometimes, I would communicate with plants and animals around me and get deeper insights into design, art, marketing, business, and sociology.
For example, I am reminded of this quote by Rory Sutherland, who said, "A flower is a weed with an advertising budget."
I could feel that every plant was important, but most were waiting for a rebranding. I could see that the bees were customers of the flower. And they kept coming back. They worked as a team on a systems design project. Marketing is the art of pollination, spreading ideas like seeds and watching them blossom.
I learned lessons on economics, governance, and taxation. For example, how should taxation happen? The government should collect taxes like bees collecting nectar from flowers without hurting or disturbing the flowers. The flower does not even realize something has been taken away from its essence. Like raindrops nourish the soil, customer feedback feeds the roots of product improvement. We become very aware and sensitive when we are one with nature. Such wisdom cannot be found in textbooks or corporate jobs but in the silent whispers of nature and by listening to the echoes of our hearts.
Another revelation that I had was about human-centered design. You know, we call ourselves human-centered designers and being human. Have we ever wondered what it means to be human? Words like customer focus and user-centered in our industry discard all universal values and focus on consumption, environmental damage, and profitability at all costs. Is this also being individual-centered? Being human-centered has assumed we are at the center and everything else around us is a resource to be consumed and monetized. We all create using technology, but the batteries in our devices are made of cobalt, and if you google how it is mined, the human-centered bubble will burst. The word human comes from humus, the fertile organic topsoil, the source and destination for all of us. It means being grounded, being humble. We have forgotten this in human-centered design.
We consider everything a resource to be used and thrown away after use. Is HR - Human Resource department the right word to use? Even in marketing, if you look at Philip Kotler, the father of marketing, he had these 4P's of marketing. Later, it became the 8P's of marketing. The word "People" in the 8P's came late in marketing. Initially, it was just Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. So human, human-centeredness has been missing in modern business for some time. No wonder work-related stress is a significant stressor in life, and 83% of Americans suffer from it. Workplace stress even affects personal relationships.
So, it was an experience of personal transformation for me, and it helped me become simple and minimalistic in my lifestyle. As I grew from there, I entered the advertising profession and came to the US, which was the opposite of what I had experienced while in The Himalayas.
" When I came to the United States, it was like a giant casino because everybody was playing to win."
When I came to the United States, it was like a giant casino because everybody was playing to win. The stakes were extremely high. But nobody realizes that in the end, everybody loses. The House always wins. If we have a job, everything seems reasonable because we have money. But the day we lose our job, everything collapses. We still must pay the insurance, mortgage, and bills. And so, the stakes are incredibly high living in a culture like this. If we all must lose in the end, and death is inevitable, why can we not enjoy the journey?
When I started designing digital products, the stakes were high there too. Life, technology, digital products, everything is giving us stress, anxiety, sleep disorders, loneliness, addiction, etc. It is a sad and lengthy list! Life is too short to be humorless and too serious, creating boring designs and bland experiences. We should spice things up, add a dash of creativity, and watch the world come alive. There is a need for joyfulness.
So, I came up with 'Joyful Design' to solve an all-caps poly-crisis. I started to codify Joyful Design so it could be an operating system for businesses seeking profits, startups struggling to find a product market fit, employees struggling to solve problems, leaders under pressure to deliver, and all personal relationships that go through suffering. I needed to think differently, do things differently, and at the same time share this insight and whatever I have learned over the years with the world.
Joyfulness & Joyful Design
The X-Mentor: Let's talk about this idea of joyfulness. What does it mean to be joyful, and how are you integrating that into your design practice?
Himanshu: I see joy as the best makeup. Just like a lady puts on lipstick to look beautiful, Joy is the best makeup for body, mind, and soul. Joyfulness enhances our lives. The glow shines from within and makes everything bright and beautiful. It is not only the state of being filled with happiness and fulfillment but is an active choice, a conscious choice that we make when we engage with the world and how we engage with ourselves. From a cognitive science perspective, it creates optimal brain functioning and emotional regulation to succeed in relationships, creativity, and business. I do not think joy depends on external factors like material possessions or achievements. It is a simple moment of connection, beauty, and inner peace, appreciating the richness of life despite its ups and downs. And it is different from happiness and quite different from pleasure. Pleasure is more sensual. Happiness is elusive that happens in the future, and everybody is chasing that happiness. I do not give too much credence to happiness because happiness implies sadness as its opposite. But Joy is independent. Joy is our fundamental nature. Joy is always in the moment and comes from within. When we learn to experience joy over an extended period, it turns into bliss.
The aim of life is to experience bliss, which is what everybody wants to have.
Joy creates an open heart, harmony, inner peace, gratitude, and an ability to reframe challenges as opportunities for growth, finding beauty, meaning, and purpose in everything. Joyfulness thrives in environments that stimulate our innate sense of curiosity, creativity, and playfulness. And I would say that we can apply it in any aspect of our life. When we give joy, we receive it in return. It is a magnetic superpower for the world and boosts our well-being from the inside out.
The X-Mentor: So those experiences we're talking about are fundamentally human experiences, and those are satisfying fundamental human needs, right? And even in the case where you encounter challenges, you still find a place for joyfulness, too. And you mentioned connections, this is something that I wanted to drill down on. How do we create those Human connections in design practice? How can we have more empathy and build trust with other people?
Himanshu: Cultivating human connections and genuine expressions of empathy and kindness requires a mindset shift. We must create environments that stimulate curiosity, creativity, and playfulness- the ingredients of joy. We need to understand what happens in our brains when we are joyful. It is a symphony of neurotransmitters dancing in the brain. All the happy hormones, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins, party together and take us to cloud nine. Just as iron is drawn to a magnet, consumers are drawn to brands that radiate joy and positivity. Such brands create an emotional resonance that transcends product features or service offerings, fostering loyalty and advocacy. Likewise, when people are delighted, they become magnets for others. In designs, we can spark joy, strengthen connections, and elevate the human spirit by adding playfulness, surprise, and beauty.
"Look at the emotional resonance and transformative impact of products and experiences rather than the functionality and aesthetics of that experience."
Now, I would go all the way back to founding a company. If the core values of the company's mission and vision statement, employee culture, and business goals align with joy, that is a good starting point. Employee culture is essential because happy people create happy products. A joyful workplace is a productive workplace. Step 2 is the product creation. Whatever product you are making, rather than designing for efficiency, which many people do, we could design for joy. Look at the emotional resonance and transformative impact of products and experiences rather than the functionality and aesthetics of that experience. As Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This is because joyful experiences activate reward pathways in the brain, promote well-being and happiness, and encourage gratitude and brand loyalty.
If we are creating a marketing piece or website, define how it would evoke consumers' joy, excitement, and inspiration and how it would promote well-being and happiness in a consumer. Do not just show a screenshot of an application on the left. Describe the features and benefits on the right and expect customers to click the Call-To-Action button. What we mostly do today is create targeted marketing to find customers simply. We are not designing communication to convert or to create customers. We need to ignore what customers say and instead focus on what they feel.
I have this philosophy that happy people create happy products. A joyful workplace is a productive workplace.
I do several things with my teams to create a joyful environment. One is encouraging creative collaboration and co-creation and hiring people with diverse viewpoints. I believe creativity happens through experimentation and cross-pollination. The best ideas emerge at the intersection of disciplines. So, I always try to hire people with divergent talents, backgrounds, and experience. We make fun of ourselves to keep us grounded. Within the design, there are ways in which you can incorporate joy. For example, micro-interactions are pretty standard. I conduct joyful design workshops and mindfulness practices with teams to think outside the box, cultivate focus and clarity, embrace playfulness, and explore unconventional solutions. By infusing designs with playfulness, surprise, and beauty, we can create experiences that spark joy, foster connection, and elevate the human spirit.
We could do something called multi-sensory design, allowing multiple senses to interact with any product, even if it is a digital product, even if you are only interacting with your eyes. But the eyes are not the only sense organ when interacting with any design; you also have multiple sense organs interacting. We can combine auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli through colors, shapes, textures, and text content.
Let me give you an example that uses emotions, multiple senses, and memories. One of the best ways to win someone's heart is to be the first to provide an experience in life or product or marketing communication. There is always a fondness for the first time in everything, even if it is not the best. Can you remember seeing the love of your life for the first time and holding her in your gaze? Can you remember the first kiss on soft lips? Can you remember the first heartbreak and thinking it was the end of the world and you would never love again? Remember when you first saw ocean water and wet beach sand caressing your feet? Can you remember the first time you ate ice cream dripping off your hands and chin as a child? Can you remember the happiness of holding your baby for the first time? Life is like a long, continuous movie on a giant cinema screen. But the stories that stand out, with the highest likes, visits, clickthrough, and shares, are such small moments of firsts.
Using neuro-aesthetics, we can design products that resonate with users subconsciously and stimulate brain pleasure centers to evoke feelings of joy. There is something called joyful gamification, where you can make mundane tasks more enjoyable and engaging. However, I carried the biophilic design philosophy from the Himalayan experience because nature teaches many things. Life on earth has evolved over 3.8 billion years through its research, development, and a process of perfection. So, drawing design ideas from nature by integrating elements such as natural light, greenery, and organic shapes can reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance cognitive functions. Even if we do not get into any of the complexity I mentioned, at a simplistic level, we can achieve a lot if we only prioritize features and functionalities that evoke feelings of joy and delight.
Storytelling
The X-Mentor: Yes, the nature of things. This is another perfect example of the fundamental human nature of who we are today and who we have always been. We heavily rely on storytelling for our survival because it’s how we create connections with others. We can turn that storytelling inward in our organizations to motivate, persuade, and help everyone remember why they decided to work for a company. It's that overall mythology that the organization has with its mission and vision, but also how it improves customers' lives. It improves people's lives. Selling that myth happens both inside and outside the organization.
Let's talk about how we can benefit from storytelling.
Himanshu: The world is saturated with information, and stories are not information. Stories are the currency of human connection. Storytelling is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history for sharing knowledge, preserving culture, and developing societies. Stories weave threads of emotion and meaning. Neuroscience research shows that storytelling activates multiple brain areas responsible for processing emotions, memories, and social cognition.
But before we get into storytelling. Let us understand how storytelling originates, where it begins, and how it works.
Have you ever felt that you may be constantly talking to yourself in your mind?
The X-Mentor: Yes, we call that our "inner roommate."
Himanshu: What if there is a story going on in our heads? We could be conversing with ourselves in our waking state and our dreams. Even now, as you are listening to me, you might be analyzing and having an internal dialog. This dialog may stop in deep sleep, and when we wake up, we may say we had a joyful sleep.
So, what exactly is happening?
Our mind is talking with the ego mind. Let us first understand the mind. Our mind has several layers. There is a vacillating mind constantly thinking of different thoughts in different directions, sometimes even opposite directions. There is an intellectual mind that makes decisions. There is a layer of memory of the past in the mind. And then there is an ego in the mind, which is our own identity. These are the different layers of the mind. Storytellers need to understand this, and designers need to understand, every marketer, communicator, and manager needs to understand this. Due to worldly influences, our mind becomes conditioned as we grow. I call it a polluted mind because of our various experiences throughout our lifetime. Now, within this conditioned mind, remarkable stories cannot emerge because of so many vacillations of the mind, past unhappy memories, indecisive nature, and a huge ego. It is the ego that stops us from being creative. But if we go behind the story in our minds, on the screen of awareness, there is unconditioned bliss, the source of all creativity and our fundamental state: joy.
Behind this is a screen of awareness. And that is the seat of all creativity and has the seeds of stories. This screen of awareness, I would equate in straightforward language with the baby, being childlike, innocent, loving, spontaneous, and curious. That is where you can start to create stories.
Good stories come from childlike innocence because a child is full of joy, and it is a top-down approach. Start from the joyful nature, which is our original and fundamental nature. Here, the imagination will be creative. The image in our consciousness is what I call imagination. Try to clean your mind by altering perceptions, and then we will find that even our physiology changes. We can change our physiology with the way we think, and we will physically radiate out into the world joyfully. That can happen when we have acceptance, appreciation, affection, and gratitude in our behavior.
I feel these three should come together for an excellent story to emerge.
Love – The fundamental truth of the heart.
Beauty – The aesthetics of everything.
Joy – Turning inwards towards positivity.
The combination of these three is called 'Creative Intelligence.' So, in Artificial Intelligence, love, beauty, and joy are things machines cannot do. Creative Intelligence is our human superpower.
Why Storytelling Works
The X-Mentor: And the point of storytelling here is to motivate, right? The CEO or whoever the leader might be is trying to convince people to align and pursue a specific business outcome or goal. Often, you have that goal within organizations, or the objective is measurable, such as an OKR (Objectives and Key Results). But it's also the case that we see many more stories inside of organizations about business value. Seldom do we hear stories about human values that connect to business value.
How do we balance out those business value stories with more human value stories?
How might that yield more cooperation inside the organization?
Himanshu: The storyteller is said to be the most influential person in the world. Leadership's job is to create a story, set vision, values, and agenda that motivates and inspires people in the organization to think of something much more significant than themselves. When we share stories, we invite others to see the world through our eyes, which means the leader must have a vision and ability to unlock others' potential and carry the people on a journey to see the same world.
Human beings are wired for stories. We grew up listening to stories. It is how we became communities, and that is how we invented things. That is how we work together, especially nowadays when everything is cross-disciplinary.
"You mentioned OKRs and metrics, but you know facts can only tell things,
but stories can sell things."
You mentioned OKRs and metrics, but you know facts can only tell things, but stories can sell things. To sell something, you need stories, not facts. And stories can bypass the mind and speak directly to the heart. Facts cannot do that. Stories can convert apathy to empathy, indifference into action, and resistance to resolve. That is what leadership is all about.
In designing storytelling through visual metaphors, sensory stimuli, nostalgia, wonder, awe, emotions, and interactive simulations, we can facilitate cognitive processing and comprehension to make it easy for people to understand complex concepts and retain information. Joyful storytelling is the secret ingredient that transforms ordinary products into extraordinary experiences.
In my design leadership practice, I use jokes and humor to create stories and improve creativity. As George Orwell said, “every joke is a tiny revolution.” To me, every joke is also a tiny truth. The fear of offending others has made our personality and expression bland and serious. Jokes allow us to speak our minds, challenge the status quo, expose the absurdity of a situation, reveal hypocrisy, and creatively provide a fresh angle to any topic. Good products are also like jokes. They surprise you, make you think, and leave you wanting more.
The X-Mentor: There is a book called Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life. And it's exactly about what you were just saying. I highly encourage people to check it out.
Back to why stories work. How can stories cut through the noise when there are so many different things going on at work that are competing for our attention?
Himanshu: Great stories solve for individuals such that the individual can relate to them. The human brain is always craving stories and can get emotionally invested. Stories activate the brain's limbic system, which is used for memory, emotions, and social cognition.
I have been doing something interesting in my work. I use brain entrainment techniques to enhance emotional resonance, activate the brain's mirror neuron systems for empathy and social learning, and align teams or individuals to a common set of values, stories, missions, or goals.
I tell my UX designers there is no 'I' or the ego in 'UX.' Understanding this is liberating and creates a collaborative culture. If we realize that we are living in cages with the door open, it helps us get out through the door of innovation and take the flight of the mind. For individuals in my team, I have tried a few cognitive behavior therapy techniques, mindful meditation, and creating a psychologically safe environment within the department. If I cannot change the entire organization's culture, I can at least try to make an island of joy in my team. Happy teams are more creative, motivated, innovative, and resilient, leading to higher-quality product experiences.
Creativity Killers
The X-Mentor: In most Product-driven organizations these days, Agile and Sprints are the norm. Agile is about getting stuff out the door, according to Karen Holtzblatt.
How can we stop that Agile train long enough to be able to inject some of that creative thinking that you were just sharing?
Himanshu:
You cannot have an Agile Sprint or Agile process without having an agile mind. The 1st order of business is to have the right mindset and create the right mindset.
Today's agile process has become a feature factory process to do work ASAP. As a leader, one needs to know how to change the mindset of one's people, and that happens through cognitive flexibility. There are various processes to create cognitive flexibility in an organization from the top and down. This can only happen when people are receptive to these ideas, and I have, in my experience, found several C-suite leaders who are interested because it helps them be more efficient.
A recent publication by the World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report, listed top skills for the future, and creativity was among the top 5. Creativity happens when we are flexible. So, we need to get back to the fundamentals. I believe in joy becoming the sprint process. Joy is a better KPI for success and the only measure of well-being.
Today, the industry struggles with creativity regarding brand, product, marketing, sales, and operations. The Head of Marketing tenures are getting shorter when they fail to meet the yearly goals despite budget increases. Most startups are failing. Large corporations are unable to innovate despite having the funds and people. Agencies are figuring out whether to sell themselves as a consultancy or a creativity shop, whether to sell process or talent. Many products are unable to find a market fit. The Head of Sales cannot meet sales targets and is let go. The Head of Design is unhappy because they have no seat at the C-Suite table.
Today, managers are trying to focus on well-designed processes using squares, circles, arrows, and diamond shapes and convert creative work into a factory assembly line process. Even with the best methods and AI tools, nobody can guarantee outcomes. Successful stories are a roller coaster of emotions, full of twists, turns, and the occasional loop-de-loop with happy endings. But we are so data-driven and fearful that we forget the story plot and use data as a crutch.
“The human brain likes messiness because it is through messiness that BIG ideas can emerge.”
We are trying to codify everything into a process and selling process, not ideas. However, the human brain does not think linearly in rigid diagrams and processes. The human brain likes to make cross-connections between things. As Rory Sutherland says, “Solving problems using rationality is like playing golf with only one club.” The human brain likes messiness because it is through messiness that BIG ideas can emerge. Try to solve an idea through a process. You may be able to get a solution called X. Conversely, if you create messiness, you can have happy accidents that can elevate the idea or amplify your solution 20X.
Storytelling cannot be a commodity and easily codified for the masses. If that were possible, we could have made every movie into a blockbuster, every book into a bestseller, and every product a market fit. Good storytelling cannot fit a square or a circle as defined in a linear process map. It is always outside these defined shapes and steps.
The X-Mentor: What is it that AI brings to the table to augment some of that human activity that we're talking about in the creative design process?
Himanshu: AI technology brings a lot of IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and can drive transactional behavior, but it severely lacks EQ (Emotional Quotient). So, Interactions with any technology would be very transactional, superficial, and lacking human sensitivity.
These days, there is something called 'Emotional AI' in the news. Neurocognitive testing tools are available to measure your heartbeat, skin conductance, facial expressions, vocal tone, gestures, and body posture using biometric sensors like eye tracking tools, EEG, or fMRI. Information about context and environment can give insight into people's reactions, emotions, and state of mind. Suppose we can measure how a customer is thinking, feeling, and doing. In that case, we might be able to create a hyper-personalized emotional experience that has been missing so far in digital products. Technology will soon enable non-linear, interactive, transmedia, and personalized storytelling across multiple platforms and media.
The future of storytelling, marketing, and product design combines 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'Inspired Intelligence' of human creativity.
Human creativity will always be the currency of the future. Those who invest wisely in creative skills can see their ideas compounded with AI.
The X-Mentor: There's not a lot of instrumentation that directly measures incoming signals to the human brain. Today’s Experience Management Dashboards are mostly filled with proxies of these signals, but not the actual signal itself. As a result, they are all error prone and often don’t deliver the ROI promised.
You mentioned the neuropsychology aspects of behavior and how we motivate people to change. One of those chemicals you mentioned was oxytocin, and oxytocin has been studied quite a bit. In fact, there was a Harvard Business Review article that took a deep look at the levels of oxytocin found in people's blood once they were engaged in certain kinds of tensions and emotions of a central character-based story (e.g., watching a James Bond film). Researchers would literally take a sample of subjects' blood before watching the stimulus, and then another sample of their blood after watching the film, and what they found was increased saturation and integration of oxytocin in the blood. That is a very direct signal about the chemical commonly known to be involved in influencing a person’s emotional state. It’s also a very invasive way of collecting data, literally taking blood.
Oxytocin shows us there's a direct correlation between the emotional state and empathy. And we know that empathy is what drives human motivation. It persuades people. It also helps people remember what happened, to a point where people have a higher recall even a week later, according to what these studies show.
Like you, Himanshu, I too believe technology will soon enable us to do more. From my side, I’m hoping we will be able to measure a person’s state of mind and emotions more directly, and in a far less invasive way.
The X-Mentor: Thank you so much, Himanshu. It's been a joyful experience listening to your story and discussing the art of storytelling and joyful design with you.
Himanshu: It was an enjoyable conversation. You have asked some good questions, and I hope I was able to answer them. Thank you for the opportunity, Greg!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Himanshu Bharadwaj is an Experience Design and Strategy Leader. He uses Joyful Design to inspire teams to create scalable, compassionate products for startups and large enterprises.
Greg Parrott is The X-Mentor and publisher of The X-Interviews.