Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Human Centered Design at Pixar

More inspiration from Pixar.

This comes to me through an excellent Groucho Reviews interview with Pixar's VP Creative, Andrew Stanton.

What really strikes me is Andrew and team are masters of "human centered design" yet they apply none of the usual methods suspects. Now I know Entertainment and Experience Design are diverse ventures, however they do typically share the practice of audience (user) testing. Pixar never does testing, instead they trust their gut.

Going with your gut sounds enviable, perhaps even easy, however what this means to Pixar is nothing short of hitting or raising their quality bar.

Pixar's principles encourage Creative people to earn permission to go with their gut. What this takes is vision, talent and commitment represented through a consistently excellent portfolio. Consistent is a key word here as it displays reliability which most clients and audiences demand and desire.