February 9th / 42 min
Apple TV+ Home’s Doug Pray and Matt Weaver: Designing spaces that change behavior and create opportunity
Listen to PodcastFeaturing
Matt Weaver and Doug Pray
Executive Producers, Home on Apple TV+
About The Episode
Of the designed objects we interact with on a daily basis, our homes are probably the most influential on the way we live our lives. In Apple’s new series Home, the creators investigate the ways that some of the world’s most imaginative dwellings help their occupants reframe the way they live and work.
In this episode, we chat with Matt Weaver and Doug Pray, who are both executive producers for the show. Matt also produced several other notable documentaries, including Chef’s Table and Jiro Dreams of Sushi. In addition to directing several episodes of the Home, Doug has directed or produced a number of documentaries including The Defiant Ones, and collaborated with Doug on the documentary Surfwise.
We’re always curious how creative folks in different industries address challenging design problems, so we asked Matt and Doug about how the subjects of Home used their own stubbornness and resilience to push their projects forward, how constraints of location and material encouraged creative solutions, and about some of the common threads they see across creative disciplines.
Takeaways:
- How the creators profiled in Home think about seeing: seeing in detail, seeing the unseen, seeing opportunity where others don’t, seeing a better way.
- How design can shape behavior by building community, connecting us to nature, and calming and shifting emotions.
- The benefits of bringing professional life into personal life, and living an intentional life.
Bios
Doug Pray is best known as a director of feature documentary films about American subcultures and maverick individuals. He has also directed short films and documentary-style commercials for a wide range of major clients and causes. He received a BA in sociology from Colorado College and an MFA from the UCLA School of Film and Television. He recently wrote, edited, and executive produced The Defiant Ones (2017), a television documentary mini-series that aired on HBO and garnered a Grammy Award and five Emmy nominations.
Matt Weaver is an executive producer of Apple’s TV series Home, and also produced many other notable documentaries such as Chef’s Table, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, The First Monday in May, and Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Meet Your Hosts
Aarron Walter
VP of Design Education
Aarron Walter is Director of Product on the COVID Response team at Resolve to Save Lives. Previously, he was VP of Design Education at InVision, and founded the UX practice at Mailchimp where he helped grow the product from a few thousand users to more than 10 million. He’s the author of a number of books, the latest of which is a second edition of Designing for Emotion. Aarron’s design guidance has helped the White House, the US Department of State, and dozens of major corporations, startups, and venture capital firms.
Eli Woolery
Director of Design Education
Eli is the Director of Design Education at InVision. His design career spans both physical and digital products, and he has worked with companies ranging from startups (his own and others) to Fortune 500 companies.
In addition to his background in product and industrial design, he has been a professional photographer and filmmaker. He teaches the senior capstone class Implementation to undergraduate Product Designers at Stanford University. You can find Eli on Twitter and Medium.
Podcast
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