Better Design Feedback

Braintrusts

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At Pixar they’ll frequently bring a director in his or her in progress film in with a group of other experienced storytellers. And they call this a brain trust.

The purpose of the brain trust is not to tell the director what to do. But to highlight areas that may be weak. Or to spark ideas for moving forward.

Brain trusts are excellent ways to solicit feedback on designs internally.

In the book, “Creativity, Inc”, which I highly recommend by the way, Ed Catmull shares a number of helpful tips around brain trusts and I’ll share a few of them here.

Ed says, quote:

  • “To understand what the brain trust does and why it is so crucial to Pixar, you have to start with the basic truth. People who take on complicated creative projects become lost at some point in the process.”
  • “The brain trust has no authority. This is crucial. The director does not have to follow any of the specific suggestions given. Brain trust meetings are not top-down and they are not ‘do this or else’ affairs.”
  • “Notably participants do not prescribe how to fix the problems they diagnose. They test weak points. They make suggestions. But it’s up to the director to settle on a path forward.”
  • “We don’t want the brain trust to solve the director’s problem because we believe that in all likelihood our solution won’t be as good as the one the director and his or her creative team comes up with.”
  • “Each of the brain trust participants, focus on the film at hand and not some hidden personal agenda. They’re not motivated by the kinds of things like getting credit for an idea, pleasing their supervisors, or winning a point just to say you did, that often lurk beneath the surface of work-related interactions. The film itself, not the filmmaker is under the microscope.”
  • “The most important characteristic was an ability to analyze the emotional beats of the movie without any of its members themselves getting emotional or defensive. To make a great film, its makers must pivot at some point from creating the story for themselves to creating it for others. The brain trust provides that pivot and it is necessarily painful.”
  • “Even the most experienced brain trust, can’t help people who don’t understand its philosophies, who refuse to hear criticism without getting defensive, or who don’t have the talent to digest feedback, reset and start again.”

    • End quote.

    There’s a great corollary here to design teams.

    In my experience. Everything Ed shared applies equally well to product design.

    And if you haven’t given them a try. Assuming you have the culture for it, I’d suggest giving brain trusts a go within your company.

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    Better Design FeedbackBy Dave Martin