BUF
Intro
BUF is one of France’s longest-established VFX studios. Based in Paris, it was founded by Pierre Buffin in 1984 and has produced visual effects for major Hollywood and French films. One of BUF’s key differentiators is its proprietary, end-to-end 3D creation toolset, covering modeling, animation, rendering, paint, and compositing. This control over the entire production pipeline enables BUF to create innovative and highly distinctive visual effects that, in some cases, only the studio is able to produce within the industry. It also allows BUF to remain independent from external software solutions and their often costly subscription models. For this project, I worked as a Product Design expert and market analyst, assessing the potential to make BUF’s proprietary tools available to external users and exploring the opportunities and requirements for developing them into a SaaS offering.
Deliverables:
Brand Strategy
Product Design
UI/UX Design
Modernization and addition of node suggestions, an essential and central element in VFX creation.
Creating the “Node” component in Figma with support for interactions.
Organizing and facilitating a discovery workshop to map the compositing workflow, uncover the teams’ needs and pain points, and identify opportunities for improvement throughout the production process.
Modern engineering tools now make it possible to support multiple tonalities within the same interface, allowing the UI to adapt to ambient light conditions or simply to the user’s preferences. Here, I explored this approach by going a step beyond the traditional light/dark mode: a finer control over grayscale levels makes it possible to progressively adjust the interface’s contrast and overall tone depending on the context. The goal: a more flexible, comfortable, and context-aware UI.
Creation of a UX/UI recommendations deck to support the engineering team in improving the product. The goal was to introduce UX/UI best practices in a context where the engineering team had never worked with a designer or adopted user-centered design methodologies. The deck also highlights several areas for improvement to help bring the product closer to current standards in user experience, interface design, and design systems.
UI design exploration focused on simplifying and modernizing the Node Control Panel, while improving its overall information architecture and usability. The work explores how a more structured and intuitive interface could reduce complexity, improve navigation, and create a more efficient workflow for users. This exploration also highlights the potential for broader UI improvements across the product, demonstrating how a more cohesive design system and information architecture could elevate the overall user experience.
Prototype of a new AI-powered search experience designed to help BUF users navigate and retrieve information from 30 years of accumulated documentation. The feature leverages AI to understand users’ queries and surface the most relevant information across a vast and complex knowledge base, making decades of technical knowledge more accessible, intuitive and actionable. The goal is to help users find the information they need faster, while reducing the effort required to navigate and explore BUF’s extensive documentation.
Conducted and presented a competitive benchmark of compositing tools to better understand the current market landscape, key product patterns, and user expectations. The analysis helped identify market opportunities, common UX approaches, and areas of differentiation, ultimately informing a clear product strategy and helping define a relevant design direction and approach to the market.