Treating your product design work like it’s a Pixar movie
Lessons Pixar teaches us in design.
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I remember the first time I saw Toy Story. I fell in love with the idea that my toys could be alive. Then years later I watched the movie again, this time I had a different experience. I fell in love with the animation and I was emotionally connected to the storytelling. Looking back at the movie today, I saw growth; the animation films have improved and the stories are getting even better. In this blog I’m going to share what Pixar teaches us and how we can put it towards our product designs.
I first would like to share a few resources that I found educational to read / watch.
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Developing an idea?
Like any product idea you find inspiration. John Lasseter said some of his ideas came from his family. We as designers always find inspiration; whether it’s going on a walk or taking a trip with the family. Inspiration is everywhere and it’s our way of coming up with an idea that we can be passionate about. So here’s my tip, carry a sketchbook with you at all time because you never know when inspiration will hit you.
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Another thing to think about is what do you want the film to be about? One of Pixar’s biggest strengths is to surprise us. For example, we expect sharks to be in Finding Nemo but vegetarian sharks? Pixar determines to avoid cliches in a film so this pushes them to make the stories more interesting. They even talk about writer’s block (in our case designer block) and the best way to avoid this is writing down what you don’t want the story to be about. For example, Pixar knew in Monsters inc they wanted to make lovable and not godzilla like monsters. This decision raised a few questions to the writers. Like what is the relationship of the monsters and humans? Why would they scare humans? What are monsters afraid of?
These are questions that can make a writer / artist think about when coming up with an idea. My tip for this is when designing a product idea, ask yourself questions regarding the problem to the solution.What do you not want the product to be? Why will this way be better? What will be the solution of making this product for the user?
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Create the Experience!
As a product designer experience is key but who better to understand experience then Pixar! Did you know Pixar pushes the creation team to experience the environment themself? How you may ask? Well remember A bug’s life or maybe Finding Nemo? Of course you do, they were amazing movies. Well when A bug’s life was created the team took a small camera on a cart to roll under plants. They did this to get a bug’s perspective of our world. Pretty cool huh? Then there was Finding Nemo, did you know Andrew Stanton (director of Finding Nemo) went to an aquarium with this son one day and that’s how the movie became to be? His experience was so amazing that he took the team to have that very same experience.
Pixar does this because to make a great product experience the creators need to experience the product them self. This is important because the creators start to learn more about character backgrounds and the environment details. Here let me paint a pretty picture for you to understand. Imagine your times being at the bank before mobile apps were a thing. People would wait in line, had to write checks, and let’s not forget walking to the bank / atm just to see a balance. As a creator you need to experience these user frustrations before creating a solution correct? We still use this method now but to make a pixar movie with your product you should take the extra step to experience the frustration instead of just writing. Experience is important in our industry, so important that sometimes we as designers need to be the users ourselves.
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Essence of story structure!
Now we all know Pixar is known for storytelling, they do a great job at making the audience feel connected to the characters and the world they live in. It’s not easy, it takes a long process to get that story just right but if you would like to see how pixar builds their stories click this link.
For this section I want to talk about sketching the essence of the story structure. Pixar was great about structuring their stories; they would write out small filler summaries like any other film but instead of just getting right into sketching they would go more in depth about the filler details. Here lets try it out ourselves;
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1. Once upon a time there was A HERO
Someone we can relate to such as a lonely robot, or an independent ant.
2. Every day IS A GLIMPSE INTO THEIR WORLD
Every day WALL-E would compact garbage into little boxes.
Everyday WALL-E would watch “Hello Dolly”, hoping to feel love.
Every day Flick and the other ants would gather food.
Every day Flick wanted to make a difference, to stand out within the colony only to meet failure.
3. One day A FAIRY TALE WAY TO CALL (the event that changes everything)
WALL-E meets a robot and falls in love with her
Flick is kicked out of the colony with the task of saving it from the grasshoppers.
4. Because of that A HERO MUST MAKE A DECISION TO FACE
Because Because Flick attempts to stand out, he ruins the offering.
Because of that, the grasshoppers threaten the colony.
Because of that, the colony sends Flick away.
Because of that, he recruits new bugs, entertainers he mistakes as warriors.
And so on and so on
5. Until finally, SOMETHING IRREVERSIBLE HAPPENS
WALL-E finds a true connection with EVE and returns to earth to live with her, and with a new generation of humans who renew the earth.
Flick manages to get rid of the grasshoppers for good and also changes the colony as they adopt his modern methods.
This was a great thing to learn because as a product designer we use a whiteboard or sticky notes to narrow down our users journey. So the tip with this is to dive in deeper when coming up with the users journey / flow. If you know what you want the ending to be like then build up the path on how you want the user to get there. Discover what are the possible frustrations the user will be going through. Go more in depth with your research to find a greater solution.
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Present with collaboration in mind.
Like any other process, you need to present what you have created. Why? Because your not going to get it perfect on the first try. I remember this part in The Pixar Story where the animators would share what they had in this theater to a group of directors and other members to the team. They were presenting scenes of Finding Nemo and this animator named Doug Sweetland had a scene of where Nemo was laying down after rescuing the fish in the net. This scene was suppose to be a moment where you see Nemo’s fin as a symbol of the movie. Marlin (the father) learns to accept his son and lets go of the past traumas. At that moment Marlin was a focus but Nemo didn’t look like he was part of the scene. So the animator went back to sketch out different emotions that can bring that scene to life with having the father and the son connect.
It’s important to test and share your work with the team because collaboration is what’s going to make the product great. Doug Sweetland even said he was mostly focusing on Marlin because he didn’t think of adding emotion to Nemo. After people were mentioning that Nemo didn’t look alive in the scene, he then realized that they were right Nemo needed to have some kind of connection with the father. Sometimes people can miss little details but that’s why we have presentation with in our team collaborations, so we can find any small details before rendering. My tip on this is, always collaborate and share your work. Having fresh eyes can really come a long way even if it’s not from someone who may understand.
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Back to the drawing board!
Fun fact, did you know that Toy Story 2 had technical problems and almost lost all of the files created for the movie? They had to go back and redo the whole movie. Now first off when they first started creating Toy Story 2 they didn’t really like it. They thought the story was just not as good, but Disney thought it was alright for a 2nd movie. The thing about Pixar is they would start over if they didn’t believe this was a story they want to make. John Lasseter came in to fix the movie and since that technical problem it was a good opportunity to start fresh. They went back on ideas they previously created and also added new ones. My tip for this is to never get rid of your ideas because maybe at the time you didn’t think it was useful but maybe later it will. If you don’t think the solution you created isn’t the solution then go back to the drawing board and find that solution.
Let’s render your Pixar movie!
Alright so you did the research, built the experience, and developed the movie; now it’s time to render. As a product designer I know technology constantly grows and we can come back to update the product; but with Pixar they rely on doing better on the next movie. What I’m taking from this section is take in everything you learned when creating the product; use the experience you learned and bring it to the next product you work on. Look at what people are saying and take notes on what you can do better the next time. For now celebrate yourself for making a product like a pixar movie and then share with everyone how you did it.
Pixar’s Secret Ingredient
“The important thing isn’t the idea, it’s the people. It’s how they work together, who they are, that matters more than anything else. They care about a product that they themselves would like to see” — Ed Catmull
“Our business depends on collaboration. The goal is plan and simple, we want everyone create and play under one roof.” -Steve Jobs
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Thank you everyone for reading! If you like this please leave a 👏🏻 and if you have any thoughts please leave a response!