Software (and life) lessons we can learn from Pixar

Watched Pixar's latest film "UP" yesterday. Over the last years, Pixar has become the undisputed leader in making cartoon movies (or what we now more sophisticatedly call as animated movies). Their claim to fame is that they haven't produced a single bad film till now, which is pretty amazing in the movie industry. When you look a little deep into how they've managed to pull this off, some consistent ideals surface, which I think is very apt for the software industry, presentations, and to an extent, to our daily activities.

Pace yourself: Pixar releases films once 1-2 years, fairly lengthy compared to other movie studios (while somewhat comparable to Dreamworks). Pixar seems to focus on the long-term gains than short-term ones, something that almost no one does in any industry. Their conviction that a great product, even if released after a long period, can produce greater returns, has paid off time and again.

Contrarily, software giants seem to focus on the short-term gains, releasing version after version in 6-month or sometime even 3-month gaps, little realizing that people want stable products than frequent releases.
I guess we can apply the same in life - no, not getting babies every 2 years - but to essentially 'take time and smell the roses'. I remember when I was on a trek at Kilimanjaro, the guide constantly used to tell us 'pole pole' (e pronounced as ey) meaning 'slowly slowly', meaning don't walk too fast or you're going to get exhausted fast. In most cases, we don't realize this until its too late.

Having stable, timed releases has enabled Pixar to make more money with less releases and increase credibility with its viewers.

Have a Story: Pixar doesn't produce cartoons - they make stories. More than the animation wizardry, what makes the movie stick is the story that it conveys. And in almost all cases, the story is very simple, is unexpected (or at least has opposing characters), and is emotional. Without the story, a movie falls flat (something that most Indian filmmakers can learn from!). When you watch a movie, you are so engrossed in the story that you barely notice the animation - and I think that's essential to the success of Pixar.

In software, this translates into business functions. If the software is not functional, any amount of technical wizardry is not going to help an application to succeed.

Be detail-oriented, but don't show it: I heard that in their latest film Up, Pixar implemented a special algorithm that makes the 10,000 balloons that powers the house move as if they would in real life (bumping, moving, etc.). While the viewer may never even notice this nuance, having these details taken care of, somehow completes the picture more. The key here is that even if the effort that went in to do this was tremendous, they did not make that feature prominent, primarily because it's supposed to be in the background, as a prop to the story.
Similarly, in a software, one needs to take care of all the nuances (error messages, logging, connection retries, etc.) so that it in essence, is not visible to the user but is there doing its job.
Contextual user interfaces effectively achieve this - by giving you only the actions you need based on the context and not the entire set.

Don't succumb to too much technology: This is probably a negative lesson we can possibly learn from "Up". It looks like Pixar seems to have focused a little too much on the 3D than the story by keeping a lot of action sequences, which I feel diluted the film's message. It's always tempting to use the latest and greatest technology whether it's needed or not. At the end, users are going to be happy not because it has AJAX, but because it meets all their needs, in a friendly way.

I am sure if I dig deeper, there will be a few more prominent lessons, but these are the ones I consider to be the most imprtant. In any case, this is a blog and not an essay - so I'll stop here!