I have attended some fairly cool lectures and talks while being in school, but perhaps one of the best ones so far was done by a woman named Mary Coleman. Mary is Senior Creative Development Executive at PIXAR Animation, and she was here as part of an invitation extended to her by a friend in the Drama Department. I being a fiendishly obsessed about Pixar, took this opportunity to see the strings behind the magic of one of my favorite companies and one i consider home to some of the most creatively sensitive people in the world. Why creatively sensitive? Because these people bring out the best in the work that they do, its not only technologically savvy, its not only visually rich and beautiful, its fun, it has heart.Mary Coleman @ CMU
I have been actively thinking about my thesis, and I have been struggling to talk about why designers are good at what they do… or better yet, why emotional content is so important to anything we design ( which is why i think designers contribute as much as they do). And the way that that gets achieved as designers is by developing that sensitivity which is not taught in school, it comes with personal reflection and and understanding that whim, magic and the unexplained, is as much part of human need as money , or food or task accomplishment. In another recent lecture by Haakon Faste, a HCI prospective faculty, I saw a lovely hierarchy system which caught my attention. It was a way of ordering human needs based on manslows views. 
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a succinct and incredibly simple way at seeing how our world works. Every major product that you have ever owned falls into one of these categories, and in some cases the higher you go up in the pyramid, the less the needs manifest themselves as something physical and the more it becomes something intangible. How does all of this wrap to Mary Coleman’s lecture? Simply put, at Pixar , story is king, and where does she work? she works in the department that develops these stories. And why do stories matter so much? well because the reason Pixar is so powerful in my eyes, is because they are in one of the higher places in the hierarchy of need, yet their impact emotionally on me is much grater than my need of having a piece of fruit or bread. Of course if i was a foodie you could argue that food could produce a similar high as a Pixar’s movie emotional charge.Mary Coleman @ CMU
I have always been incredibly curious as to the process by which these ideas get developed at Pixar, I had always envisioned brilliant minds coming up with these genius ideas by themselves in a dark room with a sketchbook, and a candle. Yet i was surprised to find that the majority of story ideas start out as one line pitches that plant a seed, and then get workshopped with a group of story developers to find the potential. And with time (almost 2 years) as a team they refine a carefully crafted story that has happy moments sad moments, humor beauty magic, but most importantly heart. Other major animation studios have tried to equal Pixar on many aspects, and in some cases I have seen movies that have come incredibly close (Kung Fu panda is at the top of my list. ), but for the most part they seem far from achieving the quality of emotion portrayed by Pixar.
Mary was simply fun, because she engaged us on the idea that Pixar is not a one man creative band its a iterative process ( also a trait heavily shared with design), but while entertainment may need to deal with emotions in a more explicit way, whats to say that our experiences and interactions should not carry that type of power an weight? Whats to say that what we do in prototyping is not equivalent to workshopping a story idea, and whats to deny that our goal should not be to improve an experience but to induce and experience….? who knew this would come out from a lecture about animated movies….
Image from Pixar's UP (Images TM & © 1986 - 2010 Pixar. All Rights Reserved.)
It all comes full circle because heart ( not love, but warmth and that positive vibe you get from movies with heart) is perhaps on the least important sections of maslows pyramid. My research is about the emotional value of design, and how we can consider it an equal or weighty aspect of the work we do. Pixar’s story development environment fascinated me because the exploration to find that string that pulls at your empathy nerve, is something that should be equally matched by designers, perhaps not in the final product, perhaps in the creative process perhaps even as a means to understand the problem, but it should be prominent rather than perhaps simply a sensitivity.
Article Source : Mary Coleman @ CMU
