Designing for Emotional State Shifts

Suchi Parikh is a creative director and storyteller with a rare blend of design craft and business fluency. After a decade at Apple leading global sales content, she now serves as Director of Storytelling at PayPal, where she helps bring complex product innovation to life across agent commerce, Venmo, and global payments. Her work sits at the intersection of empathy, clarity, and persuasion - translating complexity into stories that move people to act.

In this conversation with TheyDo’s Jochem van der Veer, Suchi unpacks why every presentation is an act of persuasion, how teams unintentionally dump complexity on their audience, and what it really takes to transform someone from awareness to action. Together, they explore practical frameworks for simplifying stories, designing for emotional shifts in customer journeys, and building trust through intentional storytelling.

Guest Bio

Suchi Parikh is a creative leader and Director of Storytelling at PayPal, where she shapes how product innovation is communicated across global payments and commerce experiences. Previously, she spent over 10 years at Apple as a Group Creative Director, leading global sales content and executive storytelling.

With a background in animation, design, and business, Suchi specializes in helping organizations clarify their thinking, reduce cognitive load, and communicate ideas with conviction. She is known for bridging creative storytelling with strategic business outcomes, and for mentoring teams to become more confident, intentional storytellers.

Key Takeaways

• Every presentation is an act of persuasion, even routine business updates.
• Complexity is the storyteller’s responsibility, not the audience’s burden.
• Great business stories start with one clear intention, often anchored in a single word.
• Emotional state matters as much as functional clarity in customer journeys.
• Trust is built through simplicity, sequencing, and empathy, not more information.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and background

01:32 From design to business storytelling at Apple

04:28 Why business presentations fail despite good data

07:13 Every presentation as an act of persuasion

09:56 A simple structure for clearer business stories

12:58 Removing cognitive load and the one-word anchor

19:50 Why having a point of view matters

25:10 Audience Context Transformation (ACT) framework

28:50 Emotional states in everyday customer journeys

35:30 Operationalizing storytelling in large organizations

40:24 Why energy matters more than logic

44:10 Practicing storytelling in safe environments

47:25 The role of a Director of Storytelling

48:56 Rules, frameworks, and when to break them

50:55 Learning from unexpected great storytellers

LinkedIn Profiles

Guest - Suchi Parikh

Host - Jochem

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