Good design works. Great design feels.

  From Pixar to performance capture, why modern animation is the most emotional collaboration between art and algorithms. Introduction I’ll confess something.... In the movie Up, I never made it to the talking dogs or the flying house. Because every time, I’d reach that silent montage...the montage where Carl and Ellie fall in love, build dreams, lose their dreams, and grow old together. There’s no dialogue. Just gentle music, quiet glances, fading colors, and time slipping away like it never existed. and this breaks me; That scene wasn’t filmed on rolling hills with golden hour light. It wasn’t performed by actors. It was drawn and modeled, rigged, lit, and coded. Crafted frame by frame by hundreds of artists, the people who might have been sitting alone at their desks late at night, adjusting a blink here, a tear there, and a wave to say “Hi.” And yet, somehow, it feels more human than many live-action performances ever do. We often think of animation as “kids’ stuff” or a sideki...

I recently met an old friend for coffee and we struck up a conversation about our interests. Something she said that day changed the way I saw designing. She said, “ designing isn’t just about what you create, but who you’re creating it for.” Imagine this, You’re filling out an important form online, maybe applying for your dream opportunity or booking tickets for a night out with friends, and suddenly something pops up:- “Errors in this form.” You start to feel frustrated, maybe even a little stupid and annoyed. The coldness of that message makes you question and feel anxious about it Now imagine instead it said: “Looks like we missed something. Let's recheck.”  It's genuinely the same problem isn't it? But a completely different feeling. One makes you feel alone in your mistake. The other feels like someone reaching out their hand and saying, they are with you and it's okay. That’s the power of emotional design. Because in the end, whether it’s a product or a person, ...