Creativity knows no limits. When tools fall short, artists innovate, crafting their own tools. But how can we empower this ingenuity sustainably and at scale?

I spearheaded the product and design efforts to create a new platform that empowered over 900 artists across Pixar and Walt Disney Animation to write and manage Python code snippets, build custom tools, and extend their workflows. This platform consolidated over 1,000 scattered scripts, centralizing plugin development and establishing a cohesive base for all existing extension workflows.

The Context and Ask

At Pixar, in-house tools evolve alongside every film, fueling innovation across teams. Presto, our animation software, now includes over 156 specialized editors designed to empower artists with flexibility and creative control. But not every tool can address unique workflows and needs of artists spread across departments.

To bridge this gap, artists often create custom scripts stored in personal folders or embedded in widgets, making them difficult to share or maintain.

The Ask: How might we design a sustainable scripting framework that enables seamless creation, management, and collaboration on custom plugins.

Solution

A scripting and widget building platform that helps artists to write store, publish and use custom scripts, that can be used independently as an extension or serves as a backed for the other extensions

Design Decisions: Navigation, Content and Action

When designing the Xscripts experience, I had to make key decisions around navigation, content, and actions to ensure ease of use, discovery, and collaboration.

1. Navigation: From Folders to a More Discoverable Tags System: Navigation was the most challenging aspect. Presto’s asset management traditionally relied on a file-folder structure divided by departments or categories. While users mainly interacted with their department folders, many scripts and assets remained hidden, making it difficult to share, find, or discover relevant scripts across teams, shows, or use cases. I ideated on a new system for tags

• Context-Aware Defaults – If you’re in the Animation department working on a show, the system automatically favorites Animation and Show tags, helping you quickly find relevant scripts.

• Advanced Filtering – Beyond simple filtering, we explored advanced search and filtering based on script tags to enhance script discovery across departments and projects.

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2. Content: Keeping Metadata Simple & Version Control

To start, we kept metadata minimal yet useful:

• Name, Description, Tags (optional), Author, and Revision History.

• Version Selector: A key feature was allowing users to run different script versions as needed, with the latest version as the default.

3. Actions: What Users Can Do with Scripts

We identified the core actions users needed:

• Run a Script – The primary action.

• Edit & Update – Modify scripts as needed.

• Favorite & Share – Quickly access frequently used scripts and collaborate with others.

• Check-In to Shared Space – A critical step where scripts move from personal storage to a shared repository, making them accessible to all.

These decisions laid the foundation for a more efficient, discoverable, and collaborative scripting workflow.

Research Spike: Is it okay for the users to have a delayed response time to get updates?

To identify the best place for the scripts to live, we did a survey to understand what user needs might be based on the limitations of all of our approaches. We got over 55 responses, with more than 60% haveing an extensive scripting experience.

Early Research

How do artists write scripts right now?

I began by gaining a thorough understanding of the current extensions landscape for artists, exploring the tools available to them and how they are utilized. To inform my initial insights, I interviewed over 15 artists and engineers who create custom tools and write scripts to automate their workflows, identifying a spectrum of editors they rely on from simple python scripts hidden behind buttons to advanced editors that require great technical expertise.I found a variety of tools and workflows of scripting across departments, some of which are highlighted below.

Opportunities: Design Sprint

Next, I developed a strategy and defined key goals for the project. I organized a design sprint, bringing together stakeholders from Pixar and Disney, including designers, engineers, and leads. Over the course of seven days, we collaborated to brainstorm key goals, user stories, and ideas.

Features and Design Decisions

Testing and Looking Ahead

With the core features in place, we are now rigorously testing Xscripts with artists to validate our minimum viable release. Our focus is on gathering artist feedback to ensure that Xscripts seamlessly integrate into artists’ workflows, support rapid iteration, and provide reliable storage and deployment options.

Testing post release?

Over the years, I’ve realized that true user testing for artists goes beyond barely functional prototypes. To gather meaningful insights, workflows must be integrated seamlessly into their natural environment. Our intensive research helped us identify a strong starting point, and by leveraging existing patterns, we maintained familiar mental models allowing us to collect real, actionable feedback.

We really focus on the following

• Usability – Are artists able to create, edit, and publish Xscripts with ease?

• Performance – How well does the system handle rapid script execution within Presto and Xpad?

• Stability – Do published Xscripts remain functional across different Presto versions?

• Adoption – Are artists finding Xscripts useful enough to replace existing workarounds?

What's next

As we finalize testing, we are preparing for the official Xscripts 1.0 release. Key improvements we’re exploring based on early feedback include:

• Streamlining the publishing process to reduce friction for new users.

• Improved discoverability of Xscripts within Presto’s UI.

• Faster API update handling to prevent breakages when core tools evolve.

This is just the beginning! I’ll be coming back soon with final results and insights from our testing phase, along with the next steps for expanding and refining Xscripts.