Make Joy Your Design’s Source Code

Himanshu Bharadwaj: So this is where we all begin.

There is existence.

There are no constructs, there is curiosity, there is wonder, there is delight, and there is joy.

Fast forward today, all of us are professionals.

We are engineers, product managers, or designers, and we don't have these three things together at the same time.

We struggle to keep the math of how much to sleep, how much we should work, and how much social life we should have, and probably the sleep suffers the most, and a lot of us suffer from sleep deprivation or sleep related illnesses.

But this is not local to just us as professionals.

This is a worldwide problem.

Technology, while it has made our work simpler and easier, it has torn apart people.

There are more people lonely in the world than before.

In UK and Japan, there are ministers of loneliness.

One in five people in the US are on antidepressants.

There is a larger pandemic of porn, of anxiety, depression, addiction to digital devices.

I can go on and on.

If we look at our own calendars, this is how it looks like.

And we are proud of these kind of calendars.

We tell other people in our office, we are booked all day.

I can't have any meeting.

This is how it is.

So today's time management is not about time management.

It is.

It is about mind management.

We are inundated with these three letter words.

They are like hovering all around us.

Until recently, I did not know 'LSD' meant 'lean software development' I think the best three letter word is OMG.

Because even if you take out one word, it'll still mean the same thing.

Or if you really want some three letter word, KPI should just mean keep people interested.

That's it.

Why can't we make life simple?

I last week I saw this tweet from Elon Musk.

He was talking about hate speech being down on Twitter.

Why are we measuring hate speech?

Why can't we talk about love speech?

How much happiness has been increased on social media platforms?

We should be measuring that.

We should be working towards that.

Removing hate speech is not going to make people happy.

We live in a business world that uses metaphors of war.

We use headhunters.

We have a sales force.

We capture mind share.

We make a killing.

We destroy our competition, and we have deadlines.

Why can't we have simpler, joyful terms in our business language?

Why does it have to be so violent?

And on top of all this, when we work on projects, we are asked to deliver something amazing, extraordinary, something soothing, delightful.

Something that is unexpected, something that's different, something that's creative.

How can we do it when our world is so violent?

And violence doesn't mean physical violence.

Violence also means mental violence.

How we deal with other people, what kind of thoughts we have is all part of the inner nature.

Our thoughts create reality.

In our technology world, we have all these terms, dark patterns.

It only increases blood pressure.

How many of you have found it very difficult to cancel a subscription?

We have banner ads, popups.

Security loopholes.

We keep plugging them.

Spam in our email.

To give you an example, if you go to any website today, the first thing you'll see is, a at the bottom there is a call to action and it asks you to accept cookies.

There is nothing delicious about those cookies.

You have to, accept those cookies, and then you are on that website.

Then you see a popup, and then when you see that popup the close button is very hard to find.

So I call this 'digital torture'.

We all go through this digital torture every day in our life.

We can remove the history from our browser.

We can delete the cookies, but we cannot delete what is in our mind.

The history that it caused that is stored in our mind.

It's, very difficult to delete and nobody's thinking about it.

There was some study done in UK on the different aspects of websites and how much blood pressure it increases, and what they found is if a page loads slow, it causes the most blood pressure.

So if you are trying to book a flight, you are in a hurry, the page is loading slow, or you want to check the status of the flight, it would just increase the anxiety, the blood pressure.

So we are talking about blood pressure, but there is also mind pressure that we should be talking about.

And it's not just the blood pressure.

Blood pressure causes, coronary heart diseases.

Cardiovascular problem is very, prevalent.

70% of deaths in the world are from cardiovascular problems-more than cancer.

We are we, now, the pandemic has changed the situation, but we used to work in these cubicles even though we wanted to work in large offices, expansive areas.

Why did we have these cubicles?

When you work in cubicles, it constricts your thinking.

It restricts your creativity.

And these offices are drab, black and white offices.

Why can't they be colorful?

There is something called, cathedral effect.

If you have a high ceiling, your thoughts change.

You become more creative, you become more thoughtful.

You can think more abstract ideas.

If the ceiling is low, your thoughts become more focused on specific task.

You become more like a craftsman.

So these are small things.

Color of walls impact how we think.

If it is red in color, it stimulates thinking.

If it is blue, it creates relaxation.

These are very, small thoughts.

Why can't these being implemented?

Thoughts are very important for us to understand because everything that we do originates from desire . And that desire creates action.

Action creates experience.

Experience creates impressions, and those impressions that we have in our mind leads to new set of thoughts.

So if you pollute the thoughts, it changes everything.

This is how the vicious cycle is.

If you look at the digital devices today, the screen size has increased and that distraction has also increased with the screen size.

And we have also become very far apart from each other.

It's animals.

If you look at a dog, you know the dog is digging, looking for a bone.

They find a bone.

Then again, they're digging for something else.

This is how we are there is this infinite scroll these days.

You keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling on Instagram, trying to find something good.

You find it.

Then you scroll again in the hope that you'll find something interesting.

TikTok is doing the same thing.

So even though the size of the videos have decreased or the, length of the videos have decreased, the engagement have increased.

So I was reading some metrics.

YouTube has 40 billion views.

TikTok has 1 billion views per day.

That is how much and, that has increased because of the YouTube shorts.

If you look at our own families, people are working on their own devices and the devices are separating each one of us.

There was a time, I remember growing up, the whole family would watch movies together.

We will sit in front of a tv, watch the tv and enjoy.

Now everybody has their own Netflix account.

They'll watch their own tv and people don't even talk.

If I'm walking in, in a, in say for example, an airport, people are sitting at the airport, they're all with their cell phones and they are making virtual friends.

When real people are sitting next to them, they don't make them as friends.

They're trying to create virtual friends.

This is what world has come to.

This is all about dopamine.

Dopamine is free.

We are constantly after this, the next dopamine hit.

It's like the slot machines in Las Vegas or any casino.

The lights are down so that you can focus on the slot machine.

You don't know what the environment is outside, whether it's day or night, and you are constantly pressing that button, hoping that something will come out.

You'll hit a jackpot.

That's what we are doing right now, and this is called 'random intermittent rewards', and all this technology has shortened our attention span.

There was some study done that said our attention span is less than a goldfish.

It is eight seconds.

A goldfish probably has 10 seconds.

And when we are working on something and we get distracted through notifications, chat message, the cost of context switch is 23 minutes, which means you're working on a project, you're writing a code, and suddenly somebody sent a text message or a slack message, you start responding to that person.

You were in a focussed frame of mind.

Now you have moved your mind onto something else.

And in order to come back to that same state, it takes 23 minutes.

So we are wasting our time by not managing the devices, the notifications, the mind.

So I'll pause there and pro to demonstrate up the mind, I'll just hold this water.

The glass of water has no weight.

No real weight actually.

But if I keep holding this water for the next one hour, every minute I hold this water would increase the weight of the water.

So the weight of the water is dependent on how much time I'm holding the water.

It is the same with our stress.

When we hold onto stress, the stress continues to increase.

In the old days we used to have these cassette recorders and they used to move from left to this is how our stress is.

We have a negative experience.

We keep looping it, and it loops in the mind.

And it creates pathways, neural pathways in our mind, and they get stronger and stronger.

So the more stress we have, the more difficult it is to remove it.

And if we can't remove that stress, it gives us more stress.

This is a global problem.

People are, ...people are unhappy because of the stress they have to endure in every walk of life.

And stress is causing most diseases today.

The cost of healthcare has gone up.

As creative people as problem solvers, we should be thinking about it.

We have to go beyond the physical devices and think about the mind.

Our mind, and brain are the best hardwares and softwares.

The brain is the best hardware we've got.

Mind is the best software we've got.

We talk about artificial intelligence taking over, but we have the best hardware and and software.

To really illustrate this mind, the analogy of an iceberg might be very helpful.

What we see on the top of the iceberg is only a tip of the iceberg.

That is our conscious mind.

Most of the mind is below.

80% of our mind is unconscious mind.

15% is subconscious, and only 5% is conscious mind.

We can only understand the conscious mind.

We can only feel the conscious mind.

Sometimes when we are unhappy, we don't even know why we are unhappy.

Because that unhappiness originates from our unconscious mind, which we cannot see.

It may have been through some pre previous experience in the past many years ago that is stored in the unconscious mind that is coming up.

At the same time, when we are creating something, if we can understand our unconscious mind, we can come up with brilliant ideas.

One of the analogy or one of the examples I can give about the unconscious mind, how great ideas can come from the unconscious is probably you if you have, if you're taking a shower in the morning, best ideas come during shower.

Why?

Because we are at peace with ourselves.

That is the time that we are giving to ourselves.

We are not giving that time to any devices.

We are not giving that time to any relationship, any chatter that is in the world, we are with ourself.

And when we are with ourself, extraordinary ideas are born.

Why can't we do it throughout the day?

We can be better creators.

So what exactly is joy?

So I have been on this topic for a very long time.

I in my career journey, I've been in advertising.

I saw people getting burnt out.

They left the profession.

We used to have lot of late nights.

Weekend work.

Client destroys the work.

Our senior management would destroy the work.

Or we go and do focus groups.

Our focus groups would destroy the work.

We go back all over again.

Continuous work.

Churning, There is no recognition.

I came into product design.

It is the same in product design.

Lot of startups fail.

Not every startup succeed, we come, we start a startup with a brilliant idea.

We think this is going to change the world, but there are a lot of factors in making success.

I've been with many startups, I've consulted with many startups, and many of them have failed.

So that got me thinking, what can we do to improve how creativity happens?

How we can change the mindset of people who work and how can we build great cultures to improve the overall happiness quotient in all the users that use our products?

So I looked at different definitions of happiness.

First one was, and people use these interchangeably.

Pleasure is something people use, but pleasure is a sense...

sensory sensation.

Pleasure is more like an itch.

When you itch, it feels pleasurable, but the more you itch, it leads to pain.

This is exactly what pleasure is.

So when pleasure goes away, it causes a void, and that void leads to pain because we are seeking the same pleasure over and over again.

A higher intensity of pleasure is delight.

Don Norman uses delight, which is a higher level of pleasure, but it does the same effect.

When delight goes away, there is a void.

You keep searching for that delight because it is more visceral, it's more superficial.

Happiness, on the other hand, is more long lasting.

Everything that we do in this world is to find happiness.

We are here to find happiness because we will know something new and that will make us happy.

We get married to find happiness.

We go to college to find happiness through education, to find a job.

We, look for a job to find happiness.

We seek promotions to find happiness.

We have children to find happiness.

Some people even commit suicide because they're unhappy with their life and they think by committing suicide they'll find happiness.

So everything we create, everything we do since the beginning of mankind is for happiness.

However, despite the whole human race, being in pursuit of happiness, has not been able to find happiness.

Neither technology has helped us, nor our evolution has helped us find happiness.

We are constantly seeking happiness because happiness is in the future.

We are seeking the future.

And forgetting the present.

And that is why we cannot find happiness.

We are chasing happiness.

Bliss, on the other hand, is long-lasting happiness.

It's the final destination for happiness.

It's long-lasting, it's forever.

It's very spiritual in nature.

If you can understand the concept of happiness, we can reach bliss.

So joy, on the other hand that I found is momentary experience of positive emotions.

It starts with senses, but it goes inwards.

And because it goes inwards, it does not leave a void.

And the more we seek joy, we are more in the present and we enjoy the present more.

Joy is like a candy with empty calories that is not harmful.

Pleasure has bad calories.

That is the difference between joy.

Joy is very, small moment of time that we can enjoy in the present.

It is calm, delight.

So when I started looking at what, how exactly does it fit in the overall scheme of things?

If you remember Brad Frost's atomic design system, it is very similar to that.

There are chemicals in our body, endocrine glands, all the chemicals.

We are basically a chemical soup.

The human body is a chemical soup.

Imagine those to be positive, positivity, and these chemicals give us comfort.

And because of the combination of positivity and comfort, we have what I call, molecules of joy.

These are small packets of joy that exist, and many of these molecules of joy create happiness and happiness leads to bliss.

It is time we embraced joy because that is the starting point to find everlasting happiness.

There is a technique where if you can hold onto joy for a slightly longer period of time, you may accelerate your happiness and find bliss, which means, for example, if you are watching a really nice sunrise, instead of taking a camera out and or your cell phone out and taking a picture and immediately sharing on Instagram or Facebook, enjoy the sunrise.

If you are eating something, every piece that you eat, enjoy that instead of talking politics with your friend.

So you are extending the time period of your joyful moment as much as possible.

And if you can extend it for a longer period of time, you'll understand that stability of that joy and peace that you get inside will also trigger many ideas within you.

You will be able to tap into the unconscious because you will be calm.

It's like calm water.

The moment if, you, if I give the analogy of the ocean, if there are constant waves of ocean.

High tides in the ocean.

You won't be able to go deep and understand what's deep within your unconscious.

But if the water is placid, you can observe everything below.

So that is what joy can do for you, just enjoying the moment.

So I found some of the clues to finding an understanding joy in Indic philosophy and one of the things that I found is there are no bad people or good people.

People are either learned or ignorant.

And that's a very profound statement because we view the world as black and white.

We see world as evil and good.

That's our own context, subjective context.

We see somebody inferior to us and somebody superior to us based on our own evaluation.

But, If we just see the world as learned or ignorant, which means you may be good in music, I may be bad in art.

I somebody may be good in physics.

So they are, everybody has something good in them.

Some something that we can learn from.

Nobody's completely bad.

So there are people who are ignorant, there are people who are learned it, and no, nobody knows everything.

And all of us are evolution, evolving.

The human life is a long journey of evolution.

We have evolved for many thousands of years, and we are continuing to evolve as metahumans, which is what I'm proposing in this talk, how to evolve.

So respecting each other for who they are is going to bring a lot of joy within us because a lot of unhappiness comes because of relationship problems, how we deal with other people.

The other interesting fact that I found is in the highlighted sentence for the joyful, there arises a zestful tranquil mind, which is a clue for us that joy will lead us inside.

So now, that we understand joy, how can we incorporate joy in the products that we create?

How can we connect feelings with feature?

And that is a big question.

So I looked at different models, how joy could be incorporated into our design.

And I found this blue check's wheel where, you know if you combine joy and anticipation, you get optimism.

So based on these attributes, you can mix and match and try to figure things out, but it's still very superficial.

These emotions are very superficial.

You need to go deep within.

Then there is another model, which is the Junis Institute model, which is more nuanced, but it is still trying to do mix and match of different emotions.

So I came up with this new idea, which is basically when we build products, we talk about functional products, reliable products, and usable products.

How about extending it further?

We bring in sensual joy, mental joy, intellectual joy, and spiritual joy.

Just start getting subliminal, all the way to the spiritual joy.

Which is more transcendental approach to how we design products.

It is taking us from user experience to user transformation.

So far we talk about ux.

I feel this is an old concept.

People have moved from user experience.

We are we are running with Strava strapped on us, which is measuring how many are are, running and helping us become better runners.

We are on various certification courses online.

We are evolving, we are transforming ourselves.

We are on duolingo trying to learn a new language.

So everything that is now being created is transformational in nature.

Products are transformational, so the experiences are transformational.

So we, need to think about transformation and then what is beyond transformation?

Transform people into a joyful being.

So it is time that we move from "why, how, what", in our definition of new products to 'wow'.

Every time we have a customer journey, think about what would be the wow experience that we can add to it.

Anytime we create an create a persona, think about the wow factor.

What would wow this user, what would wow this customers?

We have to also think of customers differently, users differently, and there are three things that I would propose.

One is whenever you build a product, don't think that you are building a product.

You're building a customer.

It changes your perspective.

So all of us are basically creating customers, not just products.

Product is one of the steps into building a customer.

Second thing, whenever we sell a product, people are buying product, which is what we think, and we create a pricing for a product.

Product managers create pricing structure for it.

But if you take it a little further and think that anybody who buys your product is buying with their life, which means the money that they are paying to buy the product equals to the life they have spent to earn that money.

Anytime a person is spending half an hour on your website, they're giving you half an hour of their life.

It changes your perspective.

You start respecting life.

You don't see a monetary transaction between yourself and the user, a business and a user.

Life being involved.

You are playing with people's lives.

It changes the perspective.

The third thing I would propose as we build products, is to go beyond empathy empathy is often used everywhere, and empathy is our superpower.

This is what the books say, but I'm proposing not to be empathetic.

Go beyond it.

Become compassionate.

Empathy is a starting point, but become compassionate because as you become compassionate, there is more action oriented work in compassion.

When there is empathy, you could be a little biased because now you are in the mindset of the user.

You could get a little biased.

Think like a mother.

If a child is asking for chocolate, a mother would be judgemental.

A mother would be careful in deciding whether to give a chocolate or not, because it is bad for teeth.

A mother is at the same time, very compassionate.

Something happens to the child.

Mother would run and pick the pick up the child.

That is what compassion is.

So think about compassion.

Go beyond the empathy.

And that would help us move our users ourself from frustration to fulfillment.

Our life is full of frustration.

We need to move ourself from frustration to fulfillment, and that will trigger curiosity, more rationalization, deep thinking, understanding things that are visible and things that are not visible.

So to understand the mind, I'll ask you to do a small exercise because in order to change things, you need to change patterns of behavior.

All of us are working with users, and users have certain behaviors.

So cross your hands like this.

Now, observe which hand is on the top.

, and which hand is at the bottom?

Is it right hand on the top?

Just remember it.

Now.

Put your hands down, shake them a little bit, and then whatever hand was on the top.

Now put that hand at the bottom.

Do a reverse of that.

So how is it?

A little difficult?

This is such a trivial thing, but now you can understand.

Human beings are creatures of habits and it is very difficult to change habits.

Even a small thing like this is somehow uncomfortable and we are trying to change human behavior.

And these are patterns of the mind.

And the reason is our brain is very lazy.

It doesn't want to do, doesn't want to have cognitive load, even though brain utilizes 20% of the oxygen that we inhale and it weighs only 6.5% of compared to the human body.

So it have to work very hard.

So it tries to be lazy.

So it follows a pattern and whatever makes it easy for it, it just follows it.

So since we are talking about pattern, let me now explain what is creativity and what is innovation.

We are always asked to be innovative in our work, and most companies are unable to innovate.

Why is that?

It has to do with the brain.

So creativity is...

so Inno I'll, start with innovation.

So innovation is following a pattern and predicting a pattern.

Creativity is breaking a pattern and, creating a new pattern.

So we, are asked to create new products, but we hire intelligent people.

So intelligence is following a pattern.

People are very intelligent because they're following a pattern, but creativity is breaking a pattern.

So we are hiring intelligent people and asking them to be creative.

And innovation is basically taking that creativity and monetizing creativity that is innovation.

So you need a organized enterprise.

To monetize that creative idea.

So all of us have creative ideas, but innovation is monetizing a creative idea.

Intelligence is following a pattern and predicting a pattern.

Creativity is breaking a pattern.

So now with the artificial intelligence, there will be more intelligence available in machines.

So intelligence is not going to be our superpower.

Our superpower would be creativity, and creativity comes from breaking patterns.

So I'll talk about three things.

How we can implement these three things in our products to make the products joyful.

So the first thing is senses.

Our brains love multisensory experiences.

And to explain this, a memorable experience is something that is, that involves more number of senses.

For example, all of us remember our marriages.

Why is that so?

In, in a marriage event, you wear nice clothes.

So you are those clothes touch the skin.

There are different kinds of clothes.

There are flowers, so there is lot of fragrance.

So you are smelling fragrance.

There is lot of decoration.

So there are, there is a feast for the eyes, there is music for the ears.

So every sense organ is involved.

That's why the experience is memorable.

So any experience that you create, especially with virtual reality, the more number of senses you can involve, it's going to be more memorable and joyful.

At the same time, if one sense sensation is negative, it will destroy the whole experience.

For example, you may be at the darling harbor here.

It's a sunny day, and then you know the, there is a nice breeze, beautiful scenic beauty.

The sun is rising, everything is good, but the bench you are sitting on is very hot.

So you will feel a lot of discomfort in sitting there.

So you will not be able to enjoy the sun, the clouds, the breeze, everything.

So our brain focuses more on negative experiences than the positive experiences.

Nine out of 10 is the ratio.

So you know, for every nine positive experience, if there is one negative experience, brain will remember that one negative experience more than the other.

But the key point here is joy begins with senses.

So I'll ask a question.

These are some images I found of cultures around the world that are present right now and they're all enjoying.

Are they uncivilized or exuberant?

And then these are another other pictures of offices.

Do you find them civilized or repressed?

Why do we have to wear black and white clothing in the offices?

Why do we wear, have to wear tie that constricts our blood flow going to the brain?

Simple things.

Why offices have to be drab, black and white like this.

So let's start with the eyes, which is the main sense organ that we have.

60% of our perception happens through the eyes.

Design is basically understanding perception and sensation.

This is all designers to create good products.

Just understand the perception and sensation we'll create good products.

So visual design is one aspect that is very often overlooked when we build products.

We think about functional products, bringing the product into market, but visual design makes a big difference and to under to see good, to see beauty, all you need is good pair of eyes.

So there, there was some this is a small example, how we see how we perceive things.

If we are under stress, our pupil dilates, it's like more aperture increases our depth of field changes.

So we only see what's in front of us.

It has to do with our primal instinct.

So in the back in the day when there was a lion in front of us, so either we and we were scared of for our life, we only see the lion in front of us.

Everything became blurry and monochromatic and we would either fight with the lion or run away from lion.

So there is more focus.

So in the stressed mode, we are more focused.

When we are calm, we see everything.

So our vision expands.

So imagine you are building a website and you want better heat map experience.

If your users are in a calm state of mind, you will be able to target all the different areas you want for the users.

You'll get better in engagement if you can change the user behavior.

We are doing it in our company.

We are using concepts from neuroaesthetics, moving the experience from primal circuits to frontal cortex or to different areas of the brain through the design.

The other example that I want to talk about is Apple.

I iMac when Steve Jobs wanted iMac, his brief to to the designers was to create the most joyful Mac.

That is how you know joyful became noticed in products.

Nike also uses these joyful design principles in the products.

The other sense organ I wanna talk about is skin.

It's a very interesting sense organ because all of us are separated by skin.

We see differences between each other through skin.

Skin is what separates us.

Skin is also a point of conflict over the years, but if you remove the skin, we all look the same.

And when we are in love with somebody, we want to touch that person and want to be one with that person.

So the sensation of the skin also vanishes.

We become one.

That is how beautiful skin is.

In fact, a visual experience can be forgotten in three months.

The audio experience also is soon forgotten-within six months.

The taste, smell, lasts and skin lasts longest.

So even when we become old, we still remember the love of our mother, how a mother would hold us.

When a baby is born, the first time you hold a baby, you still remember that moment.

This is what skin does to us.

Skin has memory.

So using skin to our advantage in our design is so important.

When we look at colors, every color is not just a color.

Every color has emotions to it.

Every color can be tasted, every color can be heard, every color can be smelled there is, there are sensations in every color, every shape or form.

There is...this is all scientific.

We just have to understand this and use it to our advantage.

There was some experiment done with products using hand with the product next to it and hands touching the product.

And what they found is when you have a product being touched by the hand, your number of likes increase by 65% and people are likely to buy that product 33 per...

35% more if there is a hand touching the product.

It's an interesting idea.

Why do we have e-commerce sites where we just have a cutout of a product?

Why are we selling things just with this product picture?

Maybe it has a beautiful lighting, why can't we have somebody holding the product?

It changes the perception because there is something called 'ownership effect'.

When you see somebody's hand holding the product, you feel you are holding the product.

Apple uses this to its advantage.

If you go to any Apple store and you look at the Apple computer, it has a weird angle on the screen.

So in order to look at the product screen, you have to move the screen a little bit towards you.

And this is by design.

And Apple wants you to touch the product and adjust the screen.

And by touching the product, you feel the sensation of the metal Apple's computer metal is a different kind of metal.

You feel that it is actually very close to the skin sensation, a moist skin.

That is their USP.

That is why we love Apple.

We feel the sensation even in night if you touch the Apple computer, you know this is the Apple computer and that is some other computer, Dell or some other computer.

So when you go to the Genius Bar to get your computer fixed, the person on the other side of at the Genius Bar would not touch your computer.

They would actually ask you permission to touch the computer.

This is all in the training manual, and the reason is you are the owner of the computer.

You did not purchase the computer.

You own the computer.

So when you are asking permission, so you are basically asking permission from the owner to get the computer so that ownership creates loyalty.

This is how you build brand loyalty.

Every sensation that we experience should be part of our brand guidelines.

Brand guidelines should not be just a logo and colors and fonts.

Brand guidelines should not be just components and libraries of components.

It has to have these elements of different sensations of senses.

How does the brand feel like?

How does the brand taste like?

How does the brand smell like?

All those things.

Bring it into every, then you, can transform it into how you work with the sales teams, how you do customer service, implement it across the board in the company.

Designers should not be just designing a product and going away.

The value for designers is across the board in every department.

That is what the beauty of designer is.

Design as a profession has been here for 1,000 years, but why is it when there is recession, when there are layoffs, designers are quickly laid off?

Why?

Why haven't we, why haven't we been able to create our value so that we are indispensable, we are problem solvers, we should be doing a little more so that we become indispensable in the industry.

Disney uses smell to their advantage.

So if you are in a Disney world, you can feel, you can smell different things.

There might be a smell of an oven coming from one place or some fragrance coming, so you start enjoying the experience because of smells.

Coke uses it in their advertising, so they had this billboard on a bus.

So every time a bus stops, there is a certain sound that a bus makes.

They equated that sound with the sound of opening of a can.

So now, every time you hear the bus applying a brake, you think it is a Coke can opening.

So you associate sound with a brand.

The Coke bottle design is also very sensory design.

So the next idea that I want to propose is novelty and surprise.

To illustrate this example, let us say you are with your wife or your girlfriend watching a movie at home on an evening and a doorbell rings.

You open the door and a high school friend comes in.

Now, who would you pay more attention to?

Your wife or your high school friend?

High school friend, most probably because there is surprise there.

There is novelty and surprise.

So novelty and surprise beats love.

However, for example, your wife has gone for a month, some in some town far away, and then she comes to the airport.

It is a winter evening.

There is a lot of snow.

You drive through the snow, you go and pick up your wife.

Your wife sees you after one month.

There is surprise and there is love.

What do you think would be the reaction?

There will be more joy.

So when you combine surprise, novelty, and love, you get a lot of joy.

So in our experiences, think about this, how we can infuse joy into these, into products, experiences, services that we create?

Services can be how we talk to the clients.

How we talk to our team members.

It's difficult to do this all the time because our mind is constantly wandering.

At this moment of time, 60% of the world has a wandering mind.

This is how much our mind keeps wandering.

So there is a wandering mind state and that there is a focused mind state.

So in order for these ideas to be successful, we have to bring our users from a wandering mind state to a focused mind state.

There is an example, superhuman-it's an email application.

They have done this beautifully.

They have used all these elements of joy in their application.

It's a simple email application.

You should try it out.

The other thing I wanna talk about is when we feel joy, there is a slight split second of blankness or emptiness that we feel.

I would say quietness, not really emptiness.

So that feeling of quietness, stillness is associated with joy.

So joy creates a split second of quiet mind.

Imagine you are sitting and you won an award.

It's a surprise to you.

You are so overjoyed in that moment of overjoy, your mind goes quiet.

So if we can extend that moment in time a little more, we can experience joy more.

Even in our breathing, when we breathe in and we breathe out between the two breaths, there is a small moment of time where there is quietness, emptiness.

If we can be observant of that time gap between the two breaths, we'll be more mindful of every moment of time and we can understand joy.

In fact, I'll give you a small tip.

If you breathe in, if you do a deep breath, it'll make you more alert.

If you do a long exhale, it'll make you relax.

Simple technique.

If you, every time you breathe in, you feel that this breath that's coming to you is a gift.

Every time you breathe out, you feel grateful for the moment that you have lived, life becomes joyful.

Simple thing.

You live, start living in the present.

It's just a small gratitude exercise.

If you are really unhappy, there's another tip.

It's a neuroscience protocol where some, when somebody is really unhappy, all they do and they're not they, want to be more alert.

Do a double inhale, very simple exercise.

You know when, kids are crying, they're sobbing.

After they stop sobbing, they nature allows them to do double sobbing like that.

Which means you are inhaling more oxygen.

When you inhaling more oxygen, you become more alert.

When you become more alert, you are more in the moment.

When you're more in the moment, you forget your past.

Because we are suffering from our past and we are suffering from our future.

We are an anxious about our future, and we are unhappy what happened in the past.

We need to be in the present.

So if you do double exhale, a double inhale, you'll be more in the present.

You'll be more alert.

Dogs constantly sniff sniff, Wh why are they so alert?

Because of how they breathe.

This observant of all these things, insects, animals, you learn so much.

Nature is the best teacher.

So the next concept I want to talk about is flow.

Flow is when we are in unity, our body and mind is in unison.

We forget the sense of time.

We forget what is happening all around us.

We are very, focused on what we are doing, and this is something that we are missing in our daily life.

When we are working, we want best output.

We want to accomplish a task as soon as possible, but we are so much distracted.

We need to be in a flow state.

Likewise, when we want users to work, use our products, we want users to be in a flow state.

How do we do it?

There is some experiment that found where they found that if you are in a flow state, you are five times more productive, which means if you work only on Monday, you can do full weeks of work and you can enjoy your rest of the week.

That's what it comes down to.

But that is how powerful flow state is.

So to explain this flow state, let's take an example of somebody playing a video game.

The person is playing the video game.

There is some reward, then they play further.

There is some reward.

So they're chasing a reward.

It's random, intermittent reward.

That's what gaming is.

So they are not focused as much as, say somebody playing a violin.

So the person playing a violin is not worried about the reward.

They are worried more about enjoying the moment.

They're just enjoying every time they are playing the violin.

It's a very different state of mind.

There is more focus while playing the violin.

There is no expectation of a reward while playing the violin.

There is loss of sense of time while playing the violin.

So this is how we should be working.

And if if I have to explain it in a graph, the middle area is what the flow state is.

Before towards the left side is where the effort is very easy.

So it's easy to handle, doable.

So you get bored when when, you are working on any application and the application is super easy, you lose interest, you get bored.

But if there is a right amount of complexity, you are learning while doing and you are improving yourself, you feel good that you are improving.

That is flow state.

But if it is too hard, then you lose interest and it becomes impossible for you to work on an application.

So finding the right balance between complexity and simplicity is very important as we build products.

Make products that are easy to begin with, but as the users are built, are using the products, they become complex, So for example, we use Figma.

It's very easy to start with Figma or Canva.

So easy to learn.

But as you start using it, you start to uncover so many hidden features, new things within the application.

You enjoy that application more and more because there is some learning involved, there is some challenge to overcome.

And as you overcome those challenges, there are new things to that you want to learn.

So expertise is incremental.

This is why every software creates a new version, but they forget about this flow state while doing it.

There is a small hack.

If if you decide that you want to do your work in one hour, increase the load of work and try to do that work in one hour, say 20% of the time, you'll be in the flow state because there is some amount of pressure that you are applying on yourself.

So let me also explain in a real life example, I am standing in front of you.

I'm speaking, this is my flow state.

So there are three things that make it a flow state, fun, fear, and focus.

It is fun because it's a rich environment.

It's an amazing crowd.

I enjoy talking about the topic that I love.

I'm talking to people who love this topic, who are keenly listening to me.

So it is fun.

There is fear in me because what if I forget a slide?

What if I don't speak what I've prepared.

What if people don't clap after I've completed my presentation?

People don't give me a standing ovation, for example.

Or for example, people walk away while I'm talking.

So there is fear.

There is focus because I'm aware of myself.

I am having eye contact with everybody.

I am seeing.

I'm walking on the stage.

So I'm focused on what I'm doing.

I'm very much aware of what I'm doing, and also I'm now opening up my insecurities, my vulnerabilities to all of you.

Which means I'm also opening up my unconscious mind.

And since I've opened up my unconscious mind, I can go off script, I can think on my feet, I can be more creative.

So there are advantages, of being in the flow.

So this is what the flow state is like.

So let's do a small thing why don't we sit straight?

And when we are straight, we can trick our brain that we are alert.

Because when we are slouching like this, we are unhappy.

When we are happy we, do this when we are trying to fall asleep we do this.

When we are awake, we are like this.

So if we sit straight, we are telling our brain that we are awake, we are alert, so we can trick our brain through that.

And it, works with the mobile devices too.

So if you are wa if you have a mobile device and you are watching like this and you know you are putting your chin down, it is telling the brain that you are either unhappy or tired.

So you'll get bored easily.

But if you have a monitor si above like this, you'll be more alert.

So if you're creating a e educational application, it's better to do it on a desktop versus a mobile device.

Or if you are watching a mobile phone, something on a mobile phone, keep it at the eye level.

You'll be able to be more alert and attentive if you're reading a book on a mobile phone.

And also smile all the time, it increases your face value.

Joy is contagious.

There was an experiment done where they compared faces of models versus normal faces and model faces were not smiling and normal faces were smiling and people found smiling faces more attractive.

So one of the things that we, when we work in teams, happy people create happy products.

We have to generate happiness within our teams.

It'll improve our productivity.

It will, we become more cognitive, flexible, and more creative.

One of the rituals we do in our team is every time we start a meeting, we start a meeting with a joke.

It lets people's guards down.

We become more closer to each other.

There is a gravitational pull when people laugh.

So there was some experiment done on Instagram by Time Magazine to find out what people find as joyful.

And what they found is normal real life experiences were joyful.

So joyfulness is not something abstract.

It is here and now, and we can experience it right now.

And this is very small exercise that we'll do is if you can close your eyes and visualize every word that I'll speak, how every word will touch you.

Put your feet flat on the ground.

So: joy is beginning a morning with a smile.

Learning to lose yourself in silence.

Listening to the heart, smelling the wet earth after the first rain of the season, multicolored arc of a rainbow, the rustle of the wind through the trees.

The sound of the sea, a barefoot run on the beach.

A runner close to the finish line.

Your first vehicle, a hand waving from the window, the breeze on top of the hill, the wind making your hand stand up like the Sydney Opera House, sharing a smile with a stranger.

Two people look into each other's eyes and laugh.

The warmth of holding hands of a loved one, stretching your arms to meet someone special.

The first kiss that felt like the shortest distance to the moon.

Your third date.

Old friends finishing your sentences before you can.

Silly puns from friends.

Gossip sessions at your neighbors.

Joy is being silly, feeling beautiful.

Being kind and learning something new.

Someone to receive you at the airport on a cold winter night, seeing the person you love return home.

A tight hug.

Brushing the hair of someone's forehead tenderly.

Your partner's tummy being the world's first, best pillow.

Watching the child sleep soundly.

Enjoying a baby's laughter.

Watching your child take the first steps.

A cake rising in the oven.

It's aroma filling every corner of your home.

Your mouth starting to water in.

Anticipation.

Ice cream cones, especially the ones with sprinkles.

Joy is a good sneeze, a prayer, a good night's sleep.

Sleeping longer on weekends being just lazy, living slowly, your normal breathing, a pause.

Enjoy this moment.

This second is your life, all of it.

If you are enjoying this very second, you are enjoying life.

Joy is as simple as that.

You can open your eyes now and I'll leave you with these three questions.

Should we aim to be someone who has it all or doesn't need it all?

Should we simplify life or complexify?

If there is so much joy in abundance everywhere, how can these experiences be put in our products and services we create?

Thank you.