Cap Watkins: Treat Your Life Like a User Experience Problem

Too often, the product design, product management, and engineering teams are thought of as three separate entities. This divide, according to Cap Watkins, the VP of Design at Buzzfeed, can lead designers to feel undervalued or even defensive when the product managers or engineers attempt to make suggestions to their work. Having realized this battle at Buzzfeed, Watkins proposed the question: “How do we create a culture of empowerment for design?”

In this 99u talk, Watkins provides a step-by-step process to blur the lines between the different product building teams in an effort to get feedback on not only the work being done, but also the process on how that work gets done. Change is complicated and creating the internal partnerships will adjust the way people work, ultimately for the better. “We have to realize that working together doesn’t mean we’re trying to take each others job,” says Watkins. “We’re just trying to be better collaborators.”

The Accidental Power of Design

Graphic designer Michael Rock, writing for The New York Times: 

The basic motivation for design is the very human desire for coherence. With so much designed in the world, we begin to take its results for granted. Often, what we have conjured assumes the sheen of inevitability, as if its results were inalienable facts in the world rather than the product of someone’s ideas and actions. In other words, design solidifies, and naturalizes, things that start off as opinions, stories and traditions, supplying form to the fictions by which we live. We rarely stop to consider the faith-based proposition represented by our paper money or the imagined national narratives engendered by borders. Unlike words, the meaning of which can be debated, the objective materiality of designed objects exudes a unique power. Once established, it’s difficult to think outside the systems and structures these objects represent.

My Mutant Brain

I've been somewhat obsessed with this short film by Spike Jonze since the moment I saw it first making its way through social networks. From the music and dance, to the filmmaking behind it, to the fact that it is an ad for perfume in the most non-traditional way possible. Mostly I keep re-watching trying to recapture the moments of surprise I experienced the first few times I saw it. That moment when your brain registers what is actually happening as she runs up those steps and there are reflections everywhere, was, is, so satisfying. 

The film is a creative relative to Jonze's music video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice." Both of those films make me wish for a collaboration between Jonze, Qualley and Walken.   

Client: Kenzo
Kenzo CD/EPs: Carol Lim and Humberto Leon
Written & Directed by: Spike Jonze
Actress: Margaret Qualley
VFX: Digital Domain
VFX supervisor: Janelle Croshaw
Costumes: Heidi Bivens
Song: Mutant Brain (feat. Assassin) by Sam Spiegel & Ape Drums
Production Design: KK Barrett
Director of Photography: Hoyte van Hoytema
Choreographer: Ryan Heffington

The Evolution of Stop-Motion

 Vugar Efendi:
With the release of Kubo and the Two Strings, it is a perfect moment to go back in time and see the evolution of stop-motion animation throughout the years.

The films included are:
- The Enchanted Drawing (1900)
-Fun at the Bakery Shop (1902)
-El Hotel Electrico (1905)
-Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)
-The Cameraman's Revenge (1912)
-The Night before Christmas (1913)
-Häxan (1922)
-The Lost World (1925)
-The Tale of Fox (1930 version)
-King Kong (1933)
-The New Gulliver (1935)
-The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
-It Came Beneath The Sea (1955)
-Earth vs Flying Saucers (1956)
-The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
-Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
-Closed Mondays (1975)
-Star wars IV: A New Hope (1977)
-Star Wars V: Empire Strikes Back (1980)
-Clash of the Titans (1981)
-The Terminator (1984)
-Robocop (1987)
-Beetlejuice (1988)
-Wallace and Gromit: A grand day out (1990)
-The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993)
-The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
-James and the Giant Peach (1996)
-Chicken Run (2000)
-Corpse Bride (2005)
-Coraline (2009)
-Mary and Max (2009)
-Fantastic Mr.Fox (2009)
-The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)
-Paranorman (2012)
-Frankenweenie (2012)
-Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
-The Little Prince (2015)
-Anomalisa (2015)
-Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

How to Work Alone

Paul Jun for 99u, introduces the idea of mastering skills for working alone:

Working alone is about creating the space where intense concentration becomes easily accessible. When finally alone, it’s easy to allow a wave of self-doubt and insecurities to begin to flood your mind. Sitting in solitude for even five minutes makes you get up to grab a snack. Or to check Twitter. And perhaps the most challenging of all, you don’t know when to call it a day; the constant polish and re-polishing when your energy is low masquerades as productivity — or so it goes if you’re not prepared.

If you begin to work alone with only the toolset you have from working in an office, you may run into some trouble. Thus, working alone requires mastering a few key skills...