Four things film taught me about Product Design

Some Product suggestions from a career in Visual Effects.

The Audience is Always Right

The audience — or customer — is always right. I know you’ve heard this before, but this isn’t advice for your next UBER ride. “The audience is always right” is the thinking behind how visual effects should be made and how products should be built. It’s a design process centered around the end users and their perception.

One of my favorite terms in the film industry is “beautiful reality.” I first heard it during a talk by effects supervisor Brett Miller, who now runs the visual effects department at WETA. He said:

“Our job (as visual effects artists) is not to make reality. Our job is to make beautiful reality.”

What Brett was explaining is that there are many variants of any single event. The job of the visual effects designer is to create the most “beautiful” version of this event that will support the narrative. For instance, a cloud has many forms, a wave has many shapes, and the audience’s perception of these forms is based upon their experiences. So when creating visual effects, it is important not to design around a single concept, but to understand what the audience expects to see… and then manipulate it.

So if the audience rejects this version of reality as fake or insignificant, the fault lies with the visual effects designer. The needs of the audience have to be anticipated. After all, people see clouds and waves every day. The goal is to recreate what is familiar while making it “beautiful” to tell a story. And it’s the same for a product designer.

But for products, we could use the word “better” rather than “beautiful.” Using patterns familiar to the consumer, the goal of the product designer is to communicate a “better reality” through the use of a product or feature. The “better reality” might fix a pain point or present an alternative user flow. And if it’s rejected by the user, the job is then to offer any alternatives that would present that reality more effectively. It’s a product story where every feature should better the consumer, and every experience should support the product goals. So every reaction to this narrative should be a source of truth, which makes the consumer always right.

Don’t Pass Go (Know Where You Started)

Don’t be afraid to evaluate your product’s journey, and never be afraid to stop and remind yourself where you started. In visual effects, you do this with reference footage, which visually defines an idea or feeling. Concrete ideas can be difficult to visualize. Abstract ideas are obviously much harder. By using reference to create a visual language, ideas are more likely to be understood by the team. But these pictures are more than just a reminder of the job. They represent the vision and creative direction of the production.

Understanding the relationship between reference and creative vision synthesizes the goals of the production with the expectations of the audience. Not referring to reference would risk the loss of this composite vision. This is easy to do within the process of high iteration, as moving forward without looking back can quickly become routine. Similarly, in product design, rapid prototyping can leave behind good ideas as easily as bad ones. Designers that mark every version of the process are more likely to keep valuable features.

Keeping perspective like this can be difficult, as every designer, technical or artistic, can get mired in the details. And the details are important. But being able to pull yourself away from the iterative cycle is an important exercise. Getting a holistic view of the process can reveal insights and create a deeper understanding of the narrative in both film and product. Revealing why changes were made, and how those changes affect production, helps designers understand what they can create next to add value. For any product, the journey can be as important as the final delivery. So never be afraid to ask yourself, “How did I get here?”

Never Waste an Opportunity for Feedback

Like product design, visual effects production is littered with feedback sessions. Dailies, weeklies, director dailies, stand-ups, sequence reviews, technical checks… it all can get overwhelming and sometimes a bit annoying. But there’s a reason behind the organizational overkill. Everything that happens on a production, no matter how small, should have one purpose: to further the story of the film. Feedback sessions are scheduled to enforce this rule.

But feedback does more than just highlight the story. It also enforces the design process itself. In both film and product, even the most senior independent contributor will eventually pass their work to someone else. Understanding where work comes from and where it goes next can help inform design decisions and reinforce communication. Getting feedback from both the stakeholders that created your path and the sales team or engineers that will implement your design will save time and improve your work.

And since other designers are working towards the same goal, getting their perspective can be invaluable. Regardless of whether their work directly affects yours, feedback that cultivates an understanding of the entire product rarely ends in an unproductive meeting. These meetings will help you understand how other designers work which will give you insight into your own work and process.

All feedback, good or bad, leads to a shift in mindset. Hearing other points of view can be an opportunity for creativity, and the more diverse the feedback, the more likely we are to see alternatives. Organized sessions can be tedious, but it’s up to all the designers to seize those meetings and gain insights.

Leverage Your Own Experiences

The important takeaway from my career in visual effects is that the design process is everywhere. The same principles that have revolutionized product design have existed before. Visual problem solving, understanding the consumer, understanding the story, and dynamic creativity are all concepts that have helped industries innovate.

In film, the design language was defined by the production it evolved from. “Jobs to be done” is called “understanding the story.” Ideation and rapid prototyping is the same concept as wedge design and procedural systems. For me, understanding these relationships helped build upon my existing design patterns and helped me understand patterns that were new to me. And more importantly, translating my visual effects language into product design helped me welcome change and reinforce my desire to find better ideas and processes.

So, regardless of your background, take the time to leverage the experiences and patterns you already know. Then use that understanding to form a unique point a view. The strongest design teams are the most diverse in experience. They use their differences to adapt to any design challenge. Use your knowledge to increase your own flexibility. Teach others and learn in return. By doing so you will add value to any company and realize it’s not just about the skills. It’s about how and why you developed those skills, and what you will do next to contribute to the story.