Blog

Humility, a writer’s most important quality, has a great circle to it. What about sincerity, an business manager’s important value? Or a doctor’s? Or a teacher’s? They all have fantastic sounds. When humility is our guiding light, the course is usually available for fulfillment, development, relation, and commitment. We’re going to discuss why in this book.

That said, this is a guide for developers, and to that conclusion, I’d like to begin with a story—well, a voyage, actually. It’s a personal one, and I’m going to render myself a little prone along the way. I call it:

The Absurd Pate of Justin: A Tale

When I was coming out of arts school, a long-haired, goateed novice, write was a known quantity to me, design on the web, however, was riddled with complexities to understand and learn, a problem to be solved. Although I had formal training in typography, layout, and creative design, how could these fundamental skills be applied to a developing electric landscape was what piqued my interest. This theme may eventually form the rest of my job.

But I drained HTML and JavaScript publications until the early hours of the morning and self-taught myself how to code during my freshman year rather than student and go into write like many of my friends. I wanted—nay, needed—to better understand the underlying relevance of what my design decisions may think when rendered in a website.

The so-called” Wild West” of website layout existed in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Manufacturers at the time were all figuring out how to use layout and visual connection to the online environment. What were the guidelines? How may we break them and also engage, entertain, and present information? How was my values, which include modesty, respect, and connection, coincide with that on a more general level? I was eager to find out.

Even though I’m referring to a different time, those are amazing factors between non-career relationships and the world of layout. What are your main passions, or ideals, that elevate medium? The main elements are all the same, basically the same as what we previously discussed earlier on the immediate parallels between what fulfills you, independent of the visible or online domains.

First within tables, animated GIFs, Flash, then with Web Standards, divs, and CSS, there was personality, raw unbridled creativity, and unique means of presentment that often defied any semblance of a visible grid. Splash screens and “browser requirement” pages aplenty. Usability and accessibility were typically victims of such a creation, but such paramount facets of any digital design were largely (and, in hindsight, unfairly) disregarded at the expense of experimentation.

For instance, this iteration of my personal portfolio site (” the pseudoroom” ) from that time was experimental if not a little overt in terms of visualizing how the idea of a living sketchbook was conveyed. Very skeuomorphic. On this one, we would first sketch and then pass a Photoshop file back and forth to trick things out and play with various user interactions. I co-founded the creative project organizing app Milanote and my dear friend, fellow designer Marc Clancy. Then, I’d break it down and code it into a digital layout.

Along with design folio pieces, the site also offered free downloads for Mac OS customizations: desktop wallpapers that were effectively design experimentation, custom-designed typefaces, and desktop icons.

GUI Galaxy was a design, pixel art, and Mac-centric news portal that graphic designer friends and I developed from the beginning.

Design news portals were incredibly popular at the time, and they now accept tweet-sized, small-format excerpts from relevant news from the categories I previously covered. If you took Twitter, curated it to a few categories, and wrapped it in a custom-branded experience, you’d have a design news portal from the late 90s / early 2000s.

We had evolved into a bandwidth-sensitive, award-winning, much more accessibility-conscious website using web standards. Still ripe with experimentation, yet more mindful of equitable engagement. There are a few content panes here, with both Mac-focused news and general news (tech, design ) to be seen. We also offered many of the custom downloads I cited before as present on my folio site but branded and themed to GUI Galaxy.

The presentation layer of the website’s backbone was made up of global design + illustration + news author collaboration. The backbone was a homegrown CMS. And the collaboration effort here, in addition to experimentation on a’ brand’ and content delivery, was hitting my core. We were creating a larger-than-anyone experience and establishing a global audience.

Collaboration and connection transcend medium in their impact, immensely fulfilling me as a designer.

Why am I going down this design memory lane with you, now? Two reasons.

First of all, there’s a reason for the nostalgia for that design era ( the” Wild West” era, as I put it ): the inherent exploration, personality, and creativity that dominated many design portals and personal portfolio websites. Ultra-finely detailed pixel art UI, custom illustration, bespoke vector graphics, all underpinned by a strong design community.

The web design industry has experienced stagnation in recent years. I suspect there’s a strong chance you’ve seen a site whose structure looks something like this: a hero image / banner with text overlaid, perhaps with a lovely rotating carousel of images ( laying the snark on heavy there ), a call to action, and three columns of sub-content directly beneath. Perhaps there are selections that vaguely relate to their respective content in an icon library.

Design, as it’s applied to the digital landscape, is in dire need of thoughtful layout, typography, and visual engagement that goes hand-in-hand with all the modern considerations we now know are paramount: usability. accessibility. Load times and bandwidth- sensitive content delivery. A user-friendly presentation that is relevant wherever they are. We must be mindful of, and respectful toward, those concerns—but not at the expense of creativity of visual communication or via replicating cookie-cutter layouts.

Pixel Issues

Websites during this period were often designed and built on Macs whose OS and desktops looked something like this. Although Mac OS 7.5 is available, 8 and 9 are not very different.

How could any single icon, at any point, stand out and grab my attention? This fascinated me. In this example, the user’s desktop is tidy, but think of a more realistic example with icon pandemonium. Or, let’s say an icon was a part of a larger system grouping ( fonts, extensions, control panels ): how did it maintain cohesion within a group as well?

These were 32 x 32 pixel creations, utilizing a 256-color palette, designed pixel-by-pixel as mini mosaics. Under such absurd constraints, this seemed to me to be the embodiment of digital visual communication. And often, ridiculous restrictions can yield the purification of concept and theme.

So I started doing my homework and conducting my research. I was a student of this new medium, hungry to dissect, process, discover, and make it my own.

I wanted to see how I could use that 256-color palette to push the boundaries of a 32×32 pixel grid while expanding the concept of exploration. Those ridiculous constraints forced a clarity of concept and presentation that I found incredibly appealing. I was thrust into the digital gauntlet because of it. And so, in my dorm room into the wee hours of the morning, I toiled away, bringing conceptual sketches into mini mosaic fruition.

These are some of my creations that I made using ResEdit, the only program I had at the time, to create icons. ResEdit was a clunky, built-in Mac OS utility not really made for exactly what we were using it for. Research is at the center of all of this work. Challenge. Problem-solving Again, these core connection-based values are agnostic of medium.

There’s one more design portal I want to talk about, which also serves as the second reason for my story to bring this all together.

Kaliber 1000 is short for K10k. K10k was founded in 1998 by Michael Schmidt and Toke Nygaard, and was the design news portal on the web during this period. It was the place to be, my friend, with its pixel art-fueled presentation, ultra-focused care given to every aspect of every detail, and many of the more influential designers of the time who were invited to be news authors on the site. With respect where respect is due, GUI Galaxy’s concept was inspired by what these folks were doing.

For my part, the combination of my web design work and pixel art exploration began to get me some notoriety in the design scene. K10k eventually added me as one of their very select group of news writers to the website’s content.

Amongst my personal work and side projects —and now with this inclusion—in the design community, this put me on the map. Additionally, my design work has started to appear on other design news portals, as well as be published in various printed collections, in domestic and international magazines, and in various printed collections. With that degree of success while in my early twenties, something else happened:

I really changed into a colossal asshole in just about a year of school, not less. The press and the praise became what fulfilled me, and they went straight to my head. They inflated my ego. I actually felt somewhat superior to my fellow designers.

The victims? My design stagnated. My evolution has stagnated, as is its evolution.

I felt so supremely confident in my abilities that I effectively stopped researching and discovering. When my first instinct was to sketch concepts or iterate ideas in lead, I instead leaped right into Photoshop. I drew my inspiration from the smallest of sources ( and with blinders on ). My peers frequently vehemently disapproved of any criticism of my work. The most tragic loss: I had lost touch with my values.

My ego almost destroyed some of my friendships and blossoming professional relationships. I was toxic in talking about design and in collaboration. But thankfully, those same friends gave me a priceless gift: candor. They called me out on my unhealthy behavior.

It’s true, I initially didn’t accept it, but after much reflection, I was able to accept it. I was soon able to accept, and process, and course correct. Although the realization made me feel uneasy, the re-awakening was necessary. I let go of the “reward” of adulation and re-centered upon what stoked the fire for me in art school. Most importantly, I returned to my fundamental values.

Always Students

Following that temporary decline, my personal and professional design journey advanced. And I could self-reflect as I got older to facilitate further growth and course correction as needed.

Let’s take the Large Hadron Collider as an example. The LHC was designed” to help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity”. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Around fifteen years ago, in one of my earlier professional roles, I designed the interface for the application that generated the LHC’s particle collision diagrams. These diagrams are often regarded as works of art unto themselves because they depict what is actually happening inside the Collider during any given particle collision event.

Designing the interface for this application was a fascinating process for me, in that I worked with Fermilab physicists to understand what the application was trying to achieve, but also how the physicists themselves would be using it. In order to accomplish this, in this role,

I cut my teeth on usability testing, working with the Fermilab team to iterate and improve the interface. To me, their language and the topics they discussed seemed foreign. And by making myself humble and working under the mindset that I was but a student, I made myself available to be a part of their world to generate that vital connection.

I also had my first ethnographic observational experience, where I observed how the physicists used the tool in their own environments, on their own terminals. For example, one takeaway was that due to the level of ambient light-driven contrast within the facility, the data columns ended up using white text on a dark gray background instead of black text-on-white. This made it easier for them to pore over a lot of data during the day and lessen their strain on their eyes. And Fermilab and CERN are government entities with rigorous accessibility standards, so my knowledge in that realm also grew. Another crucial form of connection was the barrier-free design.

So to those core drivers of my visual problem-solving soul and ultimate fulfillment: discovery, exposure to new media, observation, human connection, and evolution. Before I entered those values, I had to check my ego before entering it, which opened the door to those values.

An evergreen willingness to listen, learn, understand, grow, evolve, and connect yields our best work. I want to pay attention to the phrases “grow” and “evolve” in particular. If we are always students of our craft, we are also continually making ourselves available to evolve. Yes, we have years of practical design experience behind us. Or the focused lab sessions from a UX bootcamp. Or the monogrammed portfolio of our work. Or, ultimately, decades of a career behind us.

However, remember that “experience” does not equate to “expert.”

As soon as we close our minds via an inner monologue of’ knowing it all’ or branding ourselves a” #thoughtleader” on social media, the designer we are is our final form. There will never be a designer like us.

I have a creative side. Alchemy is what I do. It is a secret. I don’t perform it as much as I let it be done by me.

I have a creative side. Certainly all aspiring artists approve of this brand. Not everyone see themselves in this manner. Some innovative individuals incorporate technology into their work. That is the way they are, and I take that into account. Perhaps I also have a little bit of fear for them. However, my thinking and being are unique.

Apologizing and qualifying in advance is a diversion. My mind uses that to destroy me. I’ll leave it alone for today. I may regret and be qualified at any time. after I’ve said what I should have. which is difficult enough.

Except when it is simple and flows like a beverage valley.

Sometimes it does go that approach. Maybe what I need to make arrives right away. I’ve learned to avoid saying it right away because they think you don’t work hard enough when you realize that sometimes the idea really comes along and it is the best plan and you know it is the best idea.

Maybe I work and work and work until the thought strikes me. It occasionally arrives right away, but I don’t remind people for three weeks. Sometimes I get so excited about something that just happened that I blurt it out and didn’t stop myself. like a child who discovered a reward in a box of Cracker Jacks. I occasionally manage to get away with this. Yes, that is the best plan, per some observers. They don’t usually, and I regret losing my joy.

Passion should be saved for the meeting, where it will matter. not the informal gathering that two different gatherings precede that appointment. Nobody understands why these conferences occur. We keep saying we’re going to get rid of them, but we end up really trying to. They occasionally also excel. Sometimes they detract from the real function, though. Depending on what you do and where you do it, the ratio between when conferences are valuable and when they are a sad distraction vary. And who you are and how you go about doing it. I’ll go over it once more. I have a creative side. That is the design.

Often, a lot of diligent and individual work ends up with something that is barely useful. Maybe I have to accept that and move on to the next task.

Don’t inquire about the procedure. I have a creative side.

I have a creative side. My ambitions are not in my power. And I have no control over my best tips.

I can nail ahead, fill in the blanks, or use images or information, which occasionally works. Often going for a walk is what I may do. There is no connection between sizzling fuel and bubbling pots, and I may be making dinner. I frequently have a plan for action when I wake up. The idea that may have saved me disappears almost as frequently as I become aware and a part of the world once more as a thoughtless wind of oblivion. For ingenuity, in my opinion, originates in that other world. the one that we enter in ambitions and, possibly, before and after dying. But authors should be asking this, and I am not a writer. I have a creative side. Theologians are encouraged to build massive armies in their artistic globe, which they insist is real. That is yet another tangent, though. And it’s sad. Possibly on a much bigger issue than whether or not I am creative. But this is still a departure from what I said when I came below.

Often, the outcome is evasion. And suffering. You are familiar with the adage” the tortured designer”? Even when the artist ( this place that noun in quotes ) attempts to write a sweet drink jingle, a call in a worn-out comedy, or a budget request, it’s true.

Some individuals who detest being called artistic perhaps been closeted artists, but that’s between them and their gods. No offence intended. Yours is also real. My needs are own, though.

Creatives understand artists.

Negatives are aware of cons, just like queers are aware of queers, just like real rappers are aware of true rappers. Artists are highly revered by people in the world. We respect, follow, and nearly deify the excellent ones. Of course, it is horrible to revere any person. We have been given warning. Better is what we are. We are aware of this. They argue, they are depressed, they regret their most critical decisions, they are weak and hungry, they can be violent, and they can be as ridiculous as we can if, like us, they are clay. But. But. However, they produce something incredible. They give birth to something that may never occur without them and did not exist before them. They are the inspirations ‘ mother. And I suppose I should add that they are the mother of technology because it’s just lying it. Ba ho bum! Okay, that’s all said and done. Continue.

Creatives denigrate our personal small accomplishments because they are compared to those of the wonderful people. Wonderful video! I‘m not Miyazaki, so I‘m not. That is glory right then. That is brilliance straight out of the mouth of God. This unsatisfied small thing I created? It essentially fell off the turnip trailer. And the carrots weren’t actually new.

Artists is aware that they are at best Salieri. Also Mozart’s original artists believe that.

I have a creative side. I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 years, but my previous artistic managers have been the ones who make my decisions. And they are correct to do so. When it really counts, my brain goes flat because I am too lazy and simplistic. No medication is available to treat artistic difficulties.

I have a creative side. Every project I create has a goal that makes Indiana Jones appear older and snoring in a balcony head. The more I pursue my creative endeavors, the faster I progress in my work, and the more I slog through lines and gaze blankly before beginning that task.

I can move ten times more quickly than those who aren’t imaginative, those who have just been creative for a short while, and those who have just had a short time of creative work. Only that I spend twice as long putting the work off as they do before I work ten times as quickly as they do. When I put my mind to it, I am so confident in my ability to do a wonderful career. I am completely dependent on the excitement scramble of delay. The climb also terrifies me.

I don’t create art.

I have a creative side. hardly a musician. Though as a boy, I had a dream that I would one day become that. Some of us criticize our abilities and like our own accomplishments because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. That is narcissism, but at least we don’t practice politicians.

I have a creative side. Despite my belief in reason and science, I make decisions based on my own senses and instincts. and accept both the successes and the calamities that come with them.

I have a creative side. Another artists, who see things differently, will find every word I’ve said irritate me. Ask two artists a topic and find three opinions. No matter how we perhaps think about it, our debate, our passion for it, and our responsibility to our own truth, at least in my opinion, are the best indications that we are artists.

I have a creative side. I lament my lack of taste in the areas of human knowledge that I know quite little, that is to say about everything. And I put my preference before all other things in the areas that are most dear to my soul, or perhaps more precisely, to my passions. Without my passions, I’d probably have to spend the majority of our time looking ourselves in the eye, which is something that almost none of us can do for very long. No seriously. No really. Because living is so difficult to handle when you really look at it.

I have a creative side. I think that when I’m gone, some of the good parts of me will stay in the head of at least one additional person, just like a family does.

Working frees me from worrying about my job.

I have a creative side. I worry that my little present will disappear unexpectedly.

I have a creative side. I spend way too much time making the next thing, given that almost nothing I create did achieve the level of brilliance I conceive of.

I have a creative side. I think approach is the most amazing mystery. I think I have to think it so strongly that I actually made the foolish decision to publish an essay I wrote without having to go through or edit. I swear I didn’t do this frequently. But I did it right away because I was even more scared of forgetting what I was saying because I was as scared as I might be of you seeing through my sad gestures toward the gorgeous.

There. I believe I’ve said it.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes … and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m not trying to reject any of what he’s saying, but rather to give some context to initiatives and options where AI may produce real, positive impacts on people with disabilities. To be clear, I want to take some time to speak about what’s possible in hope that we’ll get there one day. There are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday.

Other text

Joe’s article spends a lot of time addressing computer-vision types ‘ ability to create other words. He raises a number of legitimate points about the state of affairs right now. And while computer-vision concepts continue to improve in the quality and complexity of information in their information, their benefits aren’t wonderful. He argues to be accurate that the state of image research is currently very poor, especially for some graphic types, in large part due to the lack of context-based analysis that exists in the AI systems ( which is a result of having separate “foundation” models for text analysis and image analysis ). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant ( should probably have descriptions ) and those that are purely decorative ( couldn’t possibly need a description ) either. Nonetheless, I still think there’s possible in this area.

As Joe points out, human-in-the-loop publishing of ctrl text should definitely be a factor. And if AI can intervene to provide a starting place for alt text, even if the rapid might say What is this BS? That’s not correct at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that’s a win.

If we can specifically station a design to examine image usage in context, this may help us more quickly determine which images are likely to be elegant and which ones are likely to be descriptive. That will clarify which situations require image descriptions, and it will increase authors ‘ effectiveness in making their sites more visible.

While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way ( even for humans ), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s say you came across a map that was simply the description of the chart’s title and the type of representation it was: Pie map comparing smartphone usage to have phone usage in US households earning under$ 30, 000 annually. ( That would be a pretty bad alt text for a chart because it frequently leaves many unanswered questions about the data, but let’s just assume that was the description in place. ) If your website knew that that picture was a pie graph ( because an ship model concluded this ), imagine a world where people could ask questions like these about the creative:

• Would more people use smartphones or other types of phones?
• How many more?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these pots?
• What number is that?

For a moment, the chance to learn more about images and data in this way may be innovative for people with low vision and blindness as well as for those with different forms of color blindness, mental disabilities, and other issues. It could also be helpful in education settings to help people who can see these figures, as is, to understand the data in the figures.

What if you could request your website to make a complicated chart simpler? What if you asked it to separate a single line from a range graph? What if you could request your website to transform the colors of the various lines to work better for variety of colour blindness you have? What if you asked it to switch colors in favor of patterns? That seems like a possibility given the chat-based interfaces and our current ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. Perhaps it could convert that pie chart (or, better yet, a series of pie charts ) into more usable ( and useful ) formats, like spreadsheets, for instance. That would be incredible!

Matching algorithms

When Safiya Umoja Noble chose to call her book Algorithms of Oppression, she hit the nail on the head. Although her book focused on the ways that search engines can foster racism, I believe it to be equally accurate to say that all computer models have the potential to amplify conflict, bias, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A large portion of this is attributable to the lack of diversity in those who create and shape them. There is still a lot of potential for algorithm development when these platforms are built with inclusive features in mind.

Take Mentra, for example. They serve as a network of employment for people who are neurodivers. They employ an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on more than 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. On the employer side, it takes into account each work environment, communication strategies for each job, and other factors. Mentra made the decision to change the script when it came to typical employment websites because it was run by neurodivergent people. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in, reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

When more people with disabilities are involved in the development of algorithms, this can lower the likelihood that these algorithms will harm their communities. Diverse teams are crucial because of this.

Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For instance, if you were to follow a group of non-disabled white male academics who talk about AI, it might be advisable to follow those who are disabled, aren’t white, or aren’t men who also talk about AI. If you followed its recommendations, you might learn more about what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward ) those groups.

Other ways that AI can assist people with disabilities

If I weren’t attempting to combine this with other tasks, I’m sure I could go on and on, giving various examples of how AI could be used to assist people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round. In no particular order:

preservation of voice You may be aware of the voice-prescribing options from Microsoft, Acapela, or others, or you may have seen the announcement for VALL-E or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS ( Lou Gehrig’s disease ) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This technology can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so it’s something we need to approach responsibly, but the technology has truly transformative potential.
• Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively seeking out people who have Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they intend to expand this list as the project develops. More people with disabilities will be able to use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as a result of this research, which will result in more inclusive data sets that will enable them to use their computers and other devices more easily and with just their voices.
• Text transformation. The most recent generation of LLMs is capable of altering already-existing text without giving off hallucinations. This is incredibly empowering for those who have cognitive disabilities and who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions, or even text that has been prepared for bionic reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

We must acknowledge that our differences matter. The intersections of the identities that we exist in have an impact on our lived experiences. These lived experiences—with all their complexities ( and joys and pain ) —are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences must be reflected in the data we use to develop new models, and those who provide that valuable information must be compensated for doing so. More robust models are produced by inclusive data sets, which promote more justifiable outcomes.

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that the training data includes information about disabilities written by people with a range of disabilities.

Want a model that doesn’t speak in ableist language? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. Despite this, AI models won’t soon replace human copy editors when it comes to sensitivity reading.

Want a copilot for coding that provides recommendations that are accessible after the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

I have no doubt that AI has the potential to harm people today, tomorrow, and long into the future. However, I think we should also acknowledge this and make thoughtful, thoughtful, and intentional changes to our approaches to AI that will also reduce harm over time with an emphasis on accessibility ( and, in general, inclusion ). Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for supporting the development of this article, Ashley Bischoff for providing me with invaluable editorial support, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

The same holds true for those of us who are currently employed in design and development. Having worked on the web for about three years at this point, I’ve seen the typical wax and wane of concepts, strategies, and systems. Every day we as developers and designers get into a routine pattern, a brand-new concept or technology emerges to shake things up and completely alter our planet.

How we got below

I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

online standards were born.

At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

Server-side language like PHP, Java, and.NET took Perl as the primary back-end computers, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the garbage bin. With these improved server-side software, the first period of internet programs started with content-management methods (especially those used in blogs like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress ) In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened gates for sequential interaction between the front end and back close. Websites now no longer needed to refresh their pages ‘ content. A grain of Script frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and ruby arose to aid developers develop more credible client-side interaction across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement enable skilled designers and developers to use fonts of their choosing. And technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and even more interactivity.

These new methods, standards, and technologies greatly reenergized the sector. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. However, we still relied on numerous hacks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes ( such as rounded or angled corners ) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks ). All kinds of nested floats or absolute positioning ( or both ) were necessary for complicated layouts. Flash and image replacement for custom fonts was a great start toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. Additionally, JavaScript libraries made it simple to add a dash of interaction to pages without having to spend the money to double or even quadruple the download size for basic websites.

The web as software platform

The front-end and back-end symbiosis continued to improve, leading to the development of the modern web application. Between expanded server-side programming languages ( which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others ) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Along with these tools, there were additional options, such as shared package libraries, build automation, and collaborative version control. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

Mobile devices increased in their capabilities as well, and they gave us access to the internet in our pockets at the same time. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

The development of social media and other centralized tools for people to connect and use resulted from this combination of potent mobile devices and potent development tools. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media made connections on a global scale, with both positive and negative outcomes.

Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? ” Of Time and the Web” was written by Jeremy Keith. Or check out the” Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. A fun tour of” Internet Artifacts” is also available from Neal Agarwal.

Where we are now

It seems like we’ve been at a new significant inflection point over the past couple of years. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. From the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators and content management systems of all kinds, there are many different ways to create websites. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other IndieWeb tools can be useful in this regard, but they’re still largely underdeveloped and difficult to use for the less geeky. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

Especially with efforts like Interop, browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other standards like web components has increased. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. I frequently find out about a new feature and check its browser support only to discover that its coverage has already exceeded 80 %. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

We can now prototype almost any idea with just a few commands and a few lines of code. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. However, as we upgrade and maintain these frameworks, we eventually pay the upfront costs that these frameworks may initially save in terms of our technical debt.

If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks, which previously made it easier to adopt new techniques sooner, have since evolved into obstacles. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail ( whether due to poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors ), there is frequently no other option, leaving users with blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Hacks of today help to shape standards for tomorrow. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks —for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we refuse to acknowledge that they are hacks or when we refuse to take their place. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. weigh the price of those user-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What does each user pay? To future developers? To adoption of standards? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. It’s occasionally just a hack that you’ve gotten used to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.

Start with standards. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. Not all third-party frameworks are the same. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the’ 90s still work just fine today. The same can’t always be said of websites created with frameworks even after a few years.

Design with care. Consider the effects of each choice, whether it is your craft, which is code, pixels, or processes. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Use the time saved by modern tools to think more carefully and make decisions with care rather than rushing to “move fast and break things”

Always be learning. If you’re constantly learning, you’re also developing. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. Even if you were to concentrate solely on learning standards, you might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year. ( Remember XHTML? ) However, ongoing learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the techniques you learn in one day may be used to guide different experiments in the future.

Play, experiment, and be weird! The ultimate experiment is this web we created. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be brave and try something new. Build a playground for ideas. In your own bizarre science lab, conduct absurd experiments. Start your own small business. There is no better place for being more creative, risk-taking, and expressing our creativity.

Share and amplify. Share what you think has worked for you as you go through testing, playing, and learning. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.

Go ahead and create.

As designers and developers for the web ( and beyond ), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s incorporate our values into the products we produce, and let’s improve the world for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then, share it, improve it, re-create it, or create something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Everything will change whenever you believe you have the ability to use the internet.

The personalization space is real, between the dream of getting it right and the fear of it going wrong ( like when we encounter “persofails” in the spirit of a company that regularly asks regular people to buy more toilet seats ). It’s an particularly confusing place to be a modern professional without a map, a map, or a strategy.

Because successful personalization is so dependent on each group’s skill, technology, and market position, there are no Lonely Planet and some tour guides for those of you who want to personalize.

But you can ensure that your group has packed its carriers reasonably.

There’s a DIY method to increase your chances for victory. You’ll at least at least disarm your boss ‘ irrational exuberance. Before the group you’ll need to properly plan.

We refer to it as prepersonalization.

Behind the song

Take into account Spotify’s DJ element, which debuted this year.

We’re used to seeing the polished final outcome of a personalization function. A personal have had to be developed, budgeted, and given priority before the year-end prize, the making-of-backstory, or the behind-the-scenes success chest. Before any customisation have goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a delay of valuable ideas for expressing consumer experiences more automatically.

How do you decide where to position personalization wagers? How do you design regular interactions that didn’t journey up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve discovered that several budgeted programs initially needed one or more workshops to join key stakeholders and domestic customers of the technology to justify their continuing investments. Make it count.

We’ve closely monitored the same evolution with our consumers, from major software to young companies. In our experiences with working on small and large customisation efforts, a program’s best monitor record—and its capacity to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and manage its design and technology efforts—turns on how successfully these prepersonalization activities play out.

Effective workshops consistently separate successful future endeavors from unsuccessful ones, saving countless hours of time, resources, and overall well-being.

A personalization practice involves a multiyear effort of testing and feature development. It’s not a tech stack switch-flip. It’s best managed as a backlog that often evolves through three steps:

1. customer experience optimization ( CXO, also known as A/B testing or experimentation )
2. always-on automations ( whether rules-based or machine-generated )
3. mature features or standalone product development ( such as Spotify’s DJ experience )?

This is why we created our progressive personalization framework and why we’re field-testing an accompanying deck of cards: we believe that there’s a base grammar, a set of “nouns and verbs” that your organization can use to design experiences that are customized, personalized, or automated. These cards won’t be necessary for you. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

Set the timer for your kitchen.

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The activities we suggest including during the assessment can ( and frequently do ) last for weeks. For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Details on the essential first-day activities are included in a summary of our broad approach.

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

Kickstart: This specifies the terms of your engagement as you concentrate on both your team’s and your team’s readiness and drive.
1. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
2. Work your plan: This stage consists of making it possible for team members to individually pitch their own pilots that each include a proof-of-concept project, business case, and operating model.

Give yourself at least a day, split into two large time blocks, to power through a concentrated version of those first two phases.

Kickstart: Apt your appetite

We call the first lesson the “landscape of connected experience“. It looks at the possibilities for personalization at your company. A connected experience, in our parlance, is any UX requiring the orchestration of multiple systems of record on the backend. A marketing-automation platform and a content-management system could be used together. It could be a digital-asset manager combined with a customer-data platform.

Give examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike, as examples of consumer and business-to-business examples. This should cover a representative range of personalization patterns, including automated app-based interactions ( such as onboarding sequences or wizards ), notifications, and recommenders. These cards contain a catalog, which we have. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

It’s all about setting the tone. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? Here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework for a broader perspective.

Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature ( or something similar ). In our cards, we break down connected experiences into five categories: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to draw attention to both the benefits of ongoing investment and the difference between what you currently offer and what you intend to deliver in the future.

Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is crucial because it emphasizes how personalization can affect your own ways of working as well as your external customers. It’s also a reminder ( which is why we used the word argument earlier ) of the broader effort beyond these tactical interventions.

Each team member should decide where their focus should be placed for your product or service. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. Here, the goal is to demonstrate how various departments may view their own advantages over the effort, which can be different from one department to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

The third and final KickStart activity is about filling in the personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will ensuring data and privacy is a major challenge too much? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? ( We’re pretty sure you do; it’s just a matter of acknowledging the magnitude of that need and finding a solution. ) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. For instance, our Detractor card lists six intractable stakeholder attitudes that prevent progress.

Effectively collaborating and managing expectations is critical to your success. Consider the potential obstacles to your upcoming progress. Press the participants to name specific steps to overcome or mitigate those barriers in your organization. According to research, personalization initiatives face a number of common obstacles.

At this point, you’ve hopefully discussed sample interactions, emphasized a key area of benefit, and flagged key gaps? Good, you’re ready to go on.

Hit that test kitchen

What will you need next to bring your personalized recipes to life. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. Their capabilities are broad and potent, and they give you a variety of ways to organize your company. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

What’s crucial here is to avoid treating the installed software like a dream kitchen from some imaginary remodeling project ( as one of our client executives memorably put it ). These software engines are more like test kitchens where your team can begin devising, tasting, and refining the snacks and meals that will become a part of your personalization program’s regularly evolving menu.

Over the course of the workshop, the ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together. And creating “dishes” is the way that you’ll have individual team stakeholders construct personalized interactions that serve their needs or the needs of others.

The dishes will be made from recipes, which have predetermined ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

You’ll ensure that you have everything you need to create your desired interaction ( or that you can determine what needs to be added to your pantry like a good product manager ) and that you have validated with the right stakeholders present. These ingredients include the audience that you’re targeting, content and design elements, the context for the interaction, and your measure for how it’ll come together.

Not just discovering requirements, it is. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team:

1. compare findings to a unified approach for developing features, similar to how artists paint with the same color palette,
2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar,
3. and establish parity among performance indicators and key performance indicators as well.

This helps you streamline your designs and your technical efforts while you deliver a shared palette of core motifs of your personalized or automated experience.

Create a recipe.

What ingredients are important to you? Consider a who-what-when-why construct:

• Who are your key audience segments or groups?
• What kind of content will you provide for them, what design elements, and under what circumstances?
• And for which business and user benefits?

Five years ago, we created these cards and card categories. We regularly play-test their fit with conference audiences and clients. And there are still fresh possibilities. But they all follow an underlying who-what-when-why logic.

In the cards in the accompanying photo below, you can typically follow along with right to left in three examples of subscription-based reading apps.

1. Nurture personalization: When a guest or an unknown visitor interacts with a product title, a banner or alert bar appears that makes it easier for them to encounter a related title they may want to read, saving them time.
2. Welcome automation: An email is sent to a newly registered user to highlight the breadth of the content catalog and convert them to happy subscribers.
3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

We’ve also found that sometimes this process comes together more effectively by cocreating the recipes themselves, so a good preworkshop activity might be to think about what these cards might be for your organization. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

The workshop’s later stages could be characterized as shifting from focusing on a cookbook to a more nuanced customer-journey mapping. Individual” cooks” will pitch their recipes to the team, using a common jobs-to-be-done format so that measurability and results are baked in, and from there, the resulting collection will be prioritized for finished design and delivery to production.

Better architecture is necessary for better kitchens.

Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. Beware of anyone who contradicts your advice. With that being said,” Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes“.

When a team overfits: they aren’t designing with their best data, personalization turns into a laughing line. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. For instance, your AI’s output quality is in fact impacted by your IA. Spotify’s poster-child prowess today was unfathomable before they acquired a seemingly modest metadata startup that now powers its underlying information architecture.

You can’t stand the heat, in fact…

Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a disciplined and highly collaborative approach can achieve the necessary concentration and intention. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, head to the test kitchen to save time, preserve job security, and avoid imagining the creative concepts that come from your organization’s masters. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

This framework of the workshop gives you a strong chance at long-term success as well as solid ground. Wiring up your information layer isn’t an overnight affair. However, if you use the same cookbook and the same recipes, you’ll have solid ground for success. We designed these activities to make your organization’s needs concrete and clear, long before the hazards pile up.

Although there are costs associated with purchasing this type of technology and product design, time well spent on sizing up and confronting your unique situation and digital skills. Don’t squander it. The pudding is the proof, as they say.

I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the heroes and the excitement—but most of all the reports. I aspired to be an artist. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on exciting activities. I also came up with concept films that my friends and I could create and sun in. But they never went any farther. However, I did end up in the user experience ( UX) field. Today, I realize that there’s an element of drama to UX— I hadn’t actually considered it before, but consumer research is story. And you must tell a compelling story to entice stakeholders, such as the product team and decision-makers, to learn more in order to get the most out of consumer research.

Think of your favorite film. It probably follows a three-act narrative architecture: the layout, the conflict, and the resolution, which is prevalent in literature. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to understand the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two sets the scene for the fight and introduces the behavior. Here, difficulties grow or get worse. And the solution is the third and final work. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This structure, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about consumer research, and it might be particularly useful for explaining user research to others.

Use story as a framework for conducting analysis

It’s sad to say, but many have come to view studies as being inconsequential. Research is typically one of the first things to go when expenses or deadlines are tight. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may get groups a little bit out of the way, but that approach is therefore easily miss out on resolving people ‘ real issues. To be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. User study improves style. It keeps it on record, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of problems with your goods and taking corrective actions can help you be ahead of your competition.

In the three-act structure, each action corresponds to a part of the process, and each part is important to telling the whole story. Let’s take a look at the various functions and how they relate to customer research.

Act one: layout

Fundamental analysis comes in handy because the setup is all about comprehending the background. Basic research ( also called conceptual, discovery, or original research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. Just like in the movies, you’re learning about the difficulties customers face, what options are available, and how those challenges impact them. To do basic research, you may conduct situational inquiries or journal studies ( or both! ), which may assist you in identifying both problems and opportunities. It doesn’t need to get a great investment in time or money.

Erika Hall discusses the most effective anthropology, which can be as straightforward as spending 15 hours with a customer and asking them to” Walk me through your morning yesterday.” That’s it. Current that one ask. Locked up and listen to them for 15 days. Do everything in your power to keep yourself and your pursuits out of it. Bam, you’re doing ethnography”. According to Hall, “[This ] will probably prove quite fascinating. In the very unlikely event that you didn’t learn anything new or helpful, carry on with increased confidence in your way”.

This makes sense to me in all its entirety. And I love that this makes consumer studies so visible. You can simply attract individuals and carry out the recruitment process without having to make a lot of paperwork! This can offer a wealth of knowledge about your customers, and it’ll help you better understand them and what’s going on in their life. Understanding where people are coming from is what action one is really all about.

Maybe Spool talks about the importance of basic research and how it really type the bulk of your research. If you can supplement what you’ve heard in the fundamental studies by using any more user data that you can obtain, such as surveys or analytics, to make recommendations that may need to be investigated further, you might as well use those that can be drawn from those that you can obtain. Together, all this information creates a clearer picture of the state of things and all its inadequacies. And that’s the start of a gripping tale. It’s the place in the story where you realize that the principal characters—or the people in this case—are facing issues that they need to conquer. This is where you begin to develop compassion for the heroes and support their success, much like in the movies. And finally participants are now doing the same. Their concern may be with their company, which may be losing money because people are unable to complete specific tasks. Or probably they do connect with people ‘ problems. In either case, action one serves as your main strategy to pique the interest and interest of the participants.

When partners begin to understand the value of basic research, that is open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making approach. And that can help product team become more user-centric. This rewards everyone—users, the goods, and partners. It’s similar to winning an Oscar in terms of filmmaking because it frequently results in your item receiving good reviews and success. And this can be an opportunity for participants to repeat this process with different products. The secret to this method is storytelling, and knowing how to tell a compelling story is the only way to entice participants to do more research.

This brings us to work two, where you incrementally review a design or idea to see whether it addresses the problems.

Act two: issue

Act two is all about digging deeper into the problems that you identified in operate one. This typically involves conducting lateral study, such as accessibility tests, where you evaluate a potential solution ( such as a design ) to see if it addresses the problems you identified. The issues may contain unmet needs or problems with a circulation or procedure that’s tripping users away. More issues may come up in the process, much like in action two of a movie. It’s ok that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this work.

According to Jakob Nielsen, five users should be normally in usability tests, which means that this number of users can generally identify the majority of the issues:” You learn less and less as you add more and more users because you will keep seeing the same things over and over again… After the second user, you are wasting your time by constantly observing the similar findings but no learning much new.”

There are parallels with storytelling here too, if you try to tell a story with too many characters, the plot may get lost. With fewer participants, each user’s struggles will be more memorable and accessible to other stakeholders when presenting the research. This can help convey the issues that need to be addressed while also highlighting the value of doing the research in the first place.

Usability tests have been conducted in person for decades, but you can also do them remotely using software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing software. This approach has become increasingly popular since the beginning of the pandemic, and it works well. You might interpret in-person usability tests as a form of theater watching as opposed to remote testing. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Usability research in person is a much more extensive experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. You also get real-time feedback on what they’re seeing, including surprises, disagreements, and discussions about them. Much like going to a play, where audiences get to take in the stage, the costumes, the lighting, and the actors ‘ interactions, in-person research lets you see users up close, including their body language, how they interact with the moderator, and how the scene is set up.

If conducting usability testing in the field is like watching a play that is staged and controlled, where any two sessions may be very different from one another. You can take usability testing into the field by creating a replica of the space where users interact with the product and then conduct your research there. Or you can meet users at their location to conduct your research. With either option, you get to see how things work in context, things come up that wouldn’t have in a lab environment—and conversion can shift in entirely different directions. You have less control over how these sessions end as researchers, but this can occasionally help you understand users even better. Meeting users where they are can provide clues to the external forces that could be affecting how they use your product. Usability tests in person offer a level of detail that is frequently absent from remote testing.

That’s not to say that the “movies” —remote sessions—aren’t a good option. Remote training sessions can reach a wider audience. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. And they make access to a much wider range of users in their own country. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working.

The advantage of usability testing, whether conducted remotely or in person, is that you can ask real users questions to understand their reasoning and understanding of the problem. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Additionally, you can test your own hypotheses and determine whether your reasoning is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. Act two is where the excitement is at the heart of the narrative, but there are also potential surprises. This is equally true of usability tests. Unexpected things that participants say frequently alter the way you look at things, and these unexpected revelations can lead to unexpected turns in the narrative.

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. Usability testing is often the only method of research that some stakeholders believe they ever need, especially in this regard. In fact, if the designs that you’re evaluating in the usability test aren’t grounded in a solid understanding of your users ( foundational research ), there’s not much to be gained by doing usability testing in the first place. Because you’re narrowing the scope of what you’re receiving feedback on without understanding the needs of the users. As a result, there’s no way of knowing whether the designs might solve a problem that users have. In the context of a usability test, it’s only feedback on a particular design.

On the other hand, if you only do foundational research, while you might have set out to solve the right problem, you won’t know whether the thing that you’re building will actually solve that. This demonstrates the value of conducting both directional and foundational research.

In act two, stakeholders will—hopefully—get to watch the story unfold in the user sessions, which creates the conflict and tension in the current design by surfacing their highs and lows. And in turn, this can encourage stakeholders to take action on the issues raised.

Act three: resolution

The third act is about resolving the issues from the first two acts, while the first two acts are about understanding the background and the tensions that can compel stakeholders to take action. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That includes the entire product team, including developers, UX experts, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other interested parties who have a say in the coming development. It allows the whole team to hear users ‘ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. And it gives the UX design and research teams more time to clarify, suggest alternatives, or provide more context for their choices. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

This act is primarily told through voiceover with some audience participation. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like given the things that the team has learned. They provide the stakeholders with their suggestions and suggestions for how to create this vision.

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. The most effective presenters” set up a conflict that needs to be resolved” using the same methods as great storytellers, Duarte writes. ” That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently”.

This type of structure aligns well with research results, and particularly results from usability tests. It provides proof for “what is “—the issues you’ve identified. And “what could be “—your recommendations on how to address them. And so forth and forth.

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be as visual as quick sketches of a potential solution to a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the session is over, when you’ve concluded by bridging the gaps and offering suggestions for improvement. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage provides stakeholders with the next steps, and hopefully, the motivation to take those steps as well!

While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. The three-act structure of user research contains all the components for a good story:

Act one: You meet the protagonists ( the users ) and the antagonists ( the problems affecting users ). This is the plot’s beginning. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. These techniques can produce personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards as output.

Act two: Next, there’s character development. The protagonists face problems and difficulties, which they must overcome, and there is conflict and tension. In act two, researchers might use methods including usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and heuristics evaluation. Usability findings reports, UX strategy documents, usability guidelines, and best practices can be included in the output of these.

Act three: The protagonists triumph and you see what a better future looks like. Researchers may use techniques like presentation decks, storytelling, and digital media in act three. The output of these can be: presentation decks, video clips, audio clips, and pictures.

The researcher plays a variety of roles, including producer, director, and storyteller. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters ( in the research ). And the audience is the audience, as well. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users ‘ stories through research. By the end, the parties should leave with a goal and an eagerness to address the product’s flaws.

So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. User research is ultimately a win-win situation for everyone, and all you need to do is pique stakeholders ‘ interest in how the story ends.

Weekday Favs April 12th, written by John Jantsch, are available for viewing at Duct Tape Marketing.

My trip blog post program includes posting references to a handful of equipment or great glad I ran across during the week. B2B social selling platform Teamfluence was created to enhance Linked In-based sales strategies. PhantomBuster offers technology tools to collect data and implement actions across several platforms, aiding in direct generation and mentoring. Replit is an online ]…]

Read more about Jarret Redding‘s book Bridging the Courage Gap in your company at Duct Tape Marketing.

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Margie Warrell

Dr. Margie Warrell, bestselling author, management coach, and international authority on confidence and risk-taking, was interviewed in this instance of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. We unpacked the main ideas from her latest text The Courage Gap: Five Steps to Braver Action—a must-read for everyone navigating the often uncomfortable choices that come with running a business.

From Fortune 500 newsrooms to little consulting organizations, Margie has helped officials overcome anxiety, self-doubt, and the idiot symptoms that hold them back from realizing their full potential. Our conversation focused on the psychological factors that prevent businesspeople from raising their charges, making strong decisions, or having difficult conversations. Her tips? Firm confidence is not about being afraid; it is about being afraid. Whether you &#8217, re a single investor or leading a staff, closing the fortitude distance could be the distinction between surviving and thriving.

Dr. Margie Warrell’s insight offer an meaningful platform for overcoming anxiety, boosting your investor thinking, and leading with dignity. Your most effective method for expanding your small business might be to bridge the confidence gap.

Important Restaurants:

The Courage Gap is true: Fear and reluctance fill the gap between what you should do and what you really do.
• Bravery in Leadership Starts Small: Margie emphasizes that courage is like a body. Regular habits like journal, exercising, and intentional stops help improve it.
• Delay or postponement? : Learn to distinguish between a proper pause and fear-based pause. Action is a result of quality.
• Idiot Syndrome Affects People: While female entrepreneurs often face a unique set of challenges, courage spaces affect all officials —especially when it comes to pricing strategy and self-worth.
• Boost Your Rates With Confidence: Quit questioning your price. Think about what your company will cost them as opposed to only what you’ll be willing to charge.
• Walk Through the Unknown: Waiting for clarity leads to stagnation. Small, brave actions give you the speed to decide your next best move.

Chapters:

• ]00: 09 ] Introduction to Margie Warrell
• ]01: 01] What is the Courage Gap?
• The Difference Between Fear-Based and Strategic Pausing [02: 57]
• ]05: 06 ] What Role Does Imposter Sydrone Play?
• Finding the Confidence to Fee Your Worth [09: 48]
• ]12: 15 ] Habits to Build Courage
• ]14: 35] Dealing with Fear of Rejection
• Being Couragous Through the Mysterious [17: 10]

More About Margie Warrell:

Test out Margie Warrell’s Website.
• Connect with Margie Warrell on LinkedIn

Warning: contains trailers for Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution. Doctor Who is up and feeling pretty confident despite widely exaggerated accounts of its demise. The season premiere successfully establishes new companion Belinda Chandra ( the excellent Varada Sethu ) and her compellingly spiky dynamic with the Doctor, though the surrounding story – in which a seemingly ]… ]

The initial assessment of Doctor Who Series 15 Episode 1: The Robot Revolution appeared initially on Den of Geek.

It’s usually good to hear pleasant information, even when it arrives 97 decades later. The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday that an Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design will be given out every starting in 2027. Or: there may eventually become an Oscar for Best Feats beginning at the 100th yearly Academy Awards.

This is truly glad tidings given that feats and derring-do have always been the norm in the history of film since Harold Lloyd hung ostensibly from a clocktower in Safety Last! ( 1923 ) or Douglas Fairbanks shimmied up literal draw bridge chains in Hollywood’s first Robin Hood movie circa 1922. The Academy has, in fact, abandoned the bikers that generate the biggest tentpoles in the box office today. It’s amazing to see that changing, but we would like to recognize a baker’s dozen or so efforts that have stood the test of time and deserved Awards in their day.

Charlie Chaplin ends up a cog in the modern-day machine ( 1936 ).

When Charlie Chaplin decided to retire his Little Tramp persona with one beautiful bird melody in Modern Times, his form of physical comedy and exquisite stunt work were presently things of the past. In the 1930s, audio placed an emphasis on kooky and musical comedy and brought film. But for all intents and purposes, Modern Times is a passive movie, and one of Chaplin’s best as he got to do everything that made him a celebrity 20 years earlier —now with an explicit political bent.

Take a look at one of the most visually stunning puns ever written to criticize capitalism and modernization. Midway through Modern Times, Chaplin’s Small Hobo ends up swallowed by the precise system of a mill that grinds him through its wheels where he is expected to perform basic maintenance. Although it is not the most lethal trick on this list, it is an example of natural stunt work that achieves a humorous and creative grace that makes movies richer. The prank created an indelible image that almost a 100 years after packs allegory punch.

In Stagecoach ( 1939 ), Yakima Canutt jumps between horses.

So much of our imagined picture of the Old West, both as a traditional building and as a film genre, is derived from the imagery of John Ford. Several of Ford’s best movies are defined by mythic images of men riding horses and apparently thornier depictions of Native Americans pursuing. And 1939’s Stagecoach is great among them. This was Ford’s first movie collaboration with his on-screen artist John Wayne in Monument Valley, and it exemplified the motifs that many Westerners still acquiesce to. What is Light if no Joss Whedon’s Stagecoach in place?

The” horses and Indians” chase scene on Stagecoach features the definitive” cowboys and Indians” and features Apache raiders rushing up and down the titled carriage as it makes a frantic run across Indigenous country. The fight features two memorable feats executed by the show’s stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt. Canutt plays an Apache hero who jumps from his horse to the stagecoach’s group of steeds in the first of which, only to fall beneath the wildlife and the coach’s tires. It’s like a stunning image that Steven Spielberg remade it 40 years afterward in Raiders of the Lost Ark, minus the horses. The even more remarkable stunt occurs when Canutt, who is now made up to look like Wayne, leaps between the two horses pulling the carriage to take the reins from the controlling leader and protect both man and beast. It’s also amazing nearly a century later.

In Ben-Hur, there is a Chariot Race ( 1959 ).

Ben-Hur became the first video to ever get 11 Academy Awards. No movie has ever surpassed that amount ( though some have tied it ). Also, it would have been 12 if there was an Oscar for daredevil work. There are few patterns as astounding as the Roman horse race, which serves as the core of this gigantic Biblical epic, 65 years later. Running at 11 minutes in length, the race was never actually directed by Ben-Hur director William Wyler, but rather second product executives Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt (yes, him once ). The series is stunning eye candy to merely stare at, adorned with beautiful 65mm cameras and 72 horses under a radiant Roman sun. But the daredevil function is itself so lovely that to this day industrial traditions persist that either a artist or horses died while making it.

There is no historical evidence for either to occur, but a close contact can be seen in the movie, in which Judah Ben-Hur is flipped over his own carriage as it travels past a barrier along the arena wall. That wasn’t scripted, and the actor who performed it roughly died: Joe Canutt, Yakima’s child. However, he didn’t, and the scene’s script was altered as a result, with Charlton Heston being forced to pull himself up in.

Rick Sylvester Skis Off a Glacier in The Spy Who Loved Me ( 1977 )

Actually, the James Bond film series would have probably won close to a dozen Oscars by now if there had been any Oscars for feats in the last 100 years. There are so many to&nbsp, choose from: Bill Suitor operating a real-life jetpack in Thunderball ( 1965 ), Wayne Michaels performing the highest bungee jump ever captured on film in Goldeneye ( 1995 ), everything Sebastien Foucan did in the Madagascar parkour sequence of Casino Royale ( 2006 ).

However, if there is only one item on this list, it must be Rick Sylvester’s skied off a mountain atop a French rock for$ 30,000. It’s still the determining 007 prank which opens one of the line ‘ best movies where Bond, in a ridiculous bright “undercover” snow even, escapes Russian assassins by launching himself into an abyss where he does nothing but fall for a frantic 20 seconds. Then he strikes the chord with a fantastic and absurd Union Jack parachute. Way to keep a low-profile, James. It’s all captured in one incredible long shot that cuts just before one of Sylvester’s skis nearly punctured his parachute, sending him plummeting.

Outrunning a Boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark ( 1981 )

One of the more challenging ones to include was this. There are so many great stunts in the Indiana Jones pictures, so how do you pick just one? In Temple of Doom ( 1984 ), we believe Vic Armstrong might be the best for pure adrenaline spectacle. He is wearing a fedora and torn shirt hanging from a rope bridge. And Spielberg’s homage to Stagecoach where Terry Leonard again is dragged beneath and behind the wheels of a jeep in Raiders is probably the most complex set piece performed in the first Indy flick.

Great stunts aren’t just about real-world danger, though. It can also be about aesthetics, originality, and indelible iconography. The sight of the ragged archaeologist outrunning a boulder by the skin of his teeth, a stunt performed without a stuntman, is still the first thing that comes to mind when you read” Indiana Jones.” That is clearly Harrison Ford outrunning the boulder! It’s a still horrifying 300-pound prop made of fiberglass, of course, but it’s not really a boulder. It is also on a track, hence why Ford was able to do the stunt. One of the greatest movie moments of all time still has the audience on their end as a clearly visible movie star stumbles his way into an enormous spider’s web, making it seem like he’s within inches of becoming a pancake. &nbsp,

Jackie Chan’s 1985 Explosive Slide in Police Story

A performer who should have a whole collection of stunt Oscars, Jackie Chan made a career out of pushing his body to the limits one insane stunt ( and many more broken bones ) at a time. In almost all of his Hong Kong movies, we could pick a trick he performed or a choreographed sequence. But his character’s bizarre choice to chase bad guys at a shopping mall in the first Police Story remains a personal favorite.

Instead of following in close pursuit down a crowded escalator, Jackie decides the most effective way to catch them is to lunge at a near pole and slide four stories down—for real and without wires—while smashing every string of Christmas lights in his path before crashing through a real partition of glass and wood at the bottom. Reminiscing years later about the stunt, Chan said,” I made my jump, grabbed the pole, and watched the twinkling lights crack and pop all the way down, in an explosion of shattering glass and electrical sparks. Then I hit the glass. And then I hit the floor. With a number of unpleasant bruises &#8230 and second-degree burns on the skin of my fingers and palms, somehow I managed to survive.

Michelle Yeoh Catches a Train in Police Story 3 ( 1992 )

Given that this was Michelle Yeoh‘s own jaw-dropping moment in Police Story 3, I was reluctant to include it because we are trying to keep this list limited to one entry per franchise. However, given that this was her own jaw-dropping moment in Police Story 3, it seems appropriate to include the moment where she literally jumped a dirt bike onto a moving train.

The moment comes at the end of the movie when Yeoh’s young Interpol agent is attempting to catch up and help Jackie save the day. Yeoh rode the bike nearly the entire length of the train cars ‘ rooftops before crashing off after losing control of her character. However, even that last bit is somewhat for real since Yeoh, who had never before ridden a dirt bike before making this movie, was unable to cleanly escape the vehicle. So she actually kicked the train off while its wheels are still spinning, right?

Tree Fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ( 2000 )

Another instance of the stunt work achieving a gracefulness and artistry that surpasses pure adrenaline, Hidden Dragon’s fight between Chow Yun-fat and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger is still one of the most surreal and achingly beautiful “fight scenes” in film.

Admittedly, calling it a fight scene is almost a misnomer. Really, this is a chance for two protagonists in direct conflict to properly introduce themselves to one another. As such, there is a serene peacefulness to the ostensible violence occurring between two martial arts masters gliding between treetops. The stunt choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, whose stunt team is probably best known in the West for popularizing wire-fu in movies like The Matrix, helped with the sequence after director Ang Lee had a dream. Yet the wirework in Crouching Tiger is better, and it really is Zhang and Chow up in that wilderness, dancing in the green.

Rotating Hallway Fight inception ( 2010 )

A case can be made that the sequence where Joseph Gordon-Levitt and several members of stunt coordinator Tom Struthers ‘ team fought in a rotating hotel was just doing a more elaborate version of that time Fred Astaire wowed’ em by dancing on the walls and ceilings of his own hotel room in Royal Wedding ( 1951 ). Which is accurate, but it’s not less impressive given how incredibly complex director Christopher Nolan created his action-based adaptation of the showstopper.

Choreographed on a rotating set in an air hangar outside London, this sequence was the culmination of months of training by Gordon-Levitt and Nolan’s teams to create the sense that gravity was a fluid, sputtering resource in a dream world where the only limits was your knowledge of kung fu. It’s hypnotic.

Tom Cruise Scales World’s Tallest Building in Mission: Impossible 4 ( 2011 )

Once more, we have a stunt legend, and it’s difficult to decide which sequence to include. Tom Cruise has had a late career renaissance as a modern day Douglas Fairbanks. His most recent appearances in films over the course of 15 or so years are a near-guarantee for you to witness some death-defying hijinks. So should it be the time he hung from a real plane as it took off in Mission: Impossible &#8211, Rogue Nation? Or how about in Mission: Impossible &#8211, Fallout, where he performed hundreds of HALO jumps from 25, 000 feet? The last movie in the series was pretty much marketed around him trying to one-up Rick Sylvester’s TSWLM stunt by riding a motorcycle off a mountain with a parachute as his only salvation.

In the end, we made the decision to pursue the stunt, which so clearly indicated this phase of Cruise’s career. It was in December 2011’s Mission: Impossible &#8211, Ghost Protocol that Cruise revitalized his career by playing a real-life Spider-Man along the sun-kissed glass of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It’s essentially the same trick that Harold Lloyd performed 90 years ago, but this time it’s higher, and in Cruise’s case, he has safety harnesses in place. Yet they don’t even digitally remove that element. They skillfully incorporate it into the narrative, arguing that both the harness and his character’s glue gloves only have a set amount of time to keep him safe. Afterward he’s street pizza. It combines the charisma of movie stars with excellent visual storytelling and traditional derring-do captured in massive IMAX cinematography.

Bane Hijacks a Plane in Midair in The Dark Knight Rises ( 2012 )

Another Christopher Nolan stunt sequence, this one from the director’s Batman trilogy is also favorites. A bit of a riff on a similar scene in the James Bond movie Licence to Kill, Nolan improves on his influence by recording in eye-popping IMAX photography how a team of aerial stuntmen, coordinated by Tom Struthers again, literally jump from one massive plane to smaller charter flight, and commandeer it with little more than wires, explosives, and guts. The effect of the wings coming off is digital. Almost everything else is not.

In Mad Max: Fury Road ( 2015 ), Pole Cat Craziness

We were tempted to just include all of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road as a single entry. This insane fantasy of gas-guzzling grandeur is woven together into a feature-length chase scene to reach a level of cinematic Valhalla where everything is shiny and chrome. But if we must narrow it to one scene that the Academy can point to and go,” Witnessed”! most likely the pole cat spectacle, of course.

With Miller’s gang of Australian lunatics &#8230, er, stuntmen trained by the acrobats of Cirque du Soleil, these blokes really swayed in the breeze ( purely because it looked cooler ) on poles above cars going anywhere between 30 and 60 MPH in the Namibian desert. Then they swung on the aforementioned poles over movie stars, including Zo Kravitz, who is actually swept away by a pole-catter while driving at a speeding car and having nothing but hard desert earth beneath their feet. God Bless George Miller. Actually, that must have been the case because the fact that nobody died makes this something of a miracle.

The Last 40 Minutes of John Wick 4 ( 2023 ), All of It

The John Wick movies are an embarrassment of riches for stunt work and spectacle, much like the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises. Begun by former stuntmen-turned-directors Chad Staheleski and David Leitch, and with every film in the mainline series so far still directed by Staheleski, the John Wick movies are a chance for those who know the intricacies of stunts to translate that into pure cinema.

Which might explain why the series isn’t ending after what was obviously intended to be John Wick: Chapter 4‘s grand finale. Everything about this entry acted like it was embracing the kitchen sink mentality, including an epic climax of stunt work that begins with one of the most impressive oner action sequences ever conceived—this one taking an overhead, godseye view to the carnage as Keanu Reeves shoots his way through enemy territory—and culminates in an even more impressive, seeming series of oners where Reeves and Donnie Yen fight their way repeatedly up a long, outdoor Parisian staircase in Montmartre filled with assassins who want old Johnny boy dead. It’s a visual crucible of Mr. Wick’s struggles distilled into a masterpiece of carnage.

The post 13 Movie Stunts That Deserved Oscars appeared first on Den of Geek.

Even when it arrives 97 years later, it’s always good to hear pleasant information. So it was Thursday when the Academy of Movement Picture Arts and Sciences ‘ Board of Governors announced that starting in 2027 they did every prize an Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design. Or: there may eventually get an Best Picture award…

The article 13 Movie Stunts That Deserved Oscars appeared second on Den of Geek.

Even when it arrives 97 years later, it’s always good to hear pleasant information. So it was Thursday when the Academy of Movement Picture Arts and Sciences ‘ Board of Governors announced that starting in 2027 they did every prize an Oscar for Achievement in Stunt Design. Or: The 100th yearly Academy Awards does bring home an Oscar for Best Stunts.

This is truly glad tidings considering stunts and derring-do have been the hallmarks of why folks have gone to the film since the glory days of the silent time when Harold Lloyd hung awkwardly from a clocktower in Safety Last! In Hollywood’s first Robin Hood film in circa 1922, ( 1923 ) or Douglas Fairbanks shimmied up literal draw bridge chains. However, the Academy has bizarrely ignored the bikers that make their biggest tentpoles to this day field office draws. Although it’s great to see that changing, we would like to recognize the accomplishments of a baker’s dozen or so that have stood the test of time and merit Awards.

Charlie Chaplin Ends Up a Cog in the Machine of Modern Times ( 1936 )

Charlie Chaplin’s physical comedy and exquisite stunt labor were presently things of the past when he made the decision to leave his Little Tramp persona with one beautiful bird song in Modern Times. In the 1930s, sound brought films and an focus on humor of the kooky and artistic variety. Modern Times is a silent film, which is one of Chaplin’s best because it does anything he did to become famous 20 years ago, but with a clear political bent.

Consider one of the most visually impressive puns ever conceived as a critique of capitalism and modernization. Midway through Modern Times, Chaplin’s Little Tramp is swallowed by the real equipment of a factory, where he is expected to carry out mediocre inspection. It is far from the most death-defying method on this listing, but it is an example of natural stunt work reaching a funny and creative grace that makes cinema richer. The stunt produced an unwavering image that is now nearly 100 years old.

Yakima Canutt Jumps Between Horses in Stagecoach ( 1939 )

The iconography of John Ford accounts for a large portion of our idealized depiction of the Old West, both as a historical setting and as a film genre. Mythic compositions of men on horses, and perhaps thornier depictions of Native Americans in pursuit, define many of Ford’s best films. And Stagecoach, from 1939, is one of them. This was the first film in which Ford worked with his onscreen muse John Wayne in Monument Valley, and it set the tropes that many Westerns still follow. If not Joss Whedon’s Stagecoach in space, what is Firefly?

Stagecoach also has perhaps the definitive” cowboys and Indians” chase sequence where Apache raiders descend on the titular stagecoach as it makes a frantic dash across Indigenous territory. Two renowned stunts were carried out in the chase by the film’s stunt director, Yakima Canutt. The first of which sees Canutt play an Apache warrior who jumps from his horse to the stagecoach’s team of steeds—only to fall beneath the animals and the wheels of the coach. It’s such a stunning image that Steven Spielberg remade it in Raiders of the Lost Ark without the horses. Yet the even more impressive stunt is when Canutt, now made up to resemble Wayne, leaps between each pair of horses pulling the stagecoach in order to take the reins of the out-of-control leader and guide man and beast to safety. It’s still breathtaking almost a century later.

Chariot Race in Ben-Hur ( 1959 )

The first movie to ever win 11 Academy Awards is Ben-Hur. To this day, no film has bested that number ( though several have tied it ). If there had been an Oscar for stunt work, it would have been 12 or so. Even 65 years later, there are few sequences as astonishing as the Roman chariot race that proves to be the centerpiece of this monumental Biblical epic. The race, which lasted 11 minutes, was actually not actually directed by Ben-Hur helmer William Wyler, but rather by second unit directors Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt (yes, him again ). Filmed with luscious 65mm cameras and 72 horses beneath a vibrant Italian sun, the sequence is gorgeous eye candy to just stare at. However, the stunt work itself is so amazing that to this day, urban legends claim that either a stuntman or horse perished while creating it.

There is no historical evidence of either occurring, however there was a close call that you can watch in the film: the shot of Judah Ben-Hur getting flipped over his own chariot after it strikes a barrier along a wall of the arena? The stuntman who performed it almost died, Yakima’s son, Joe Canutt. That wasn’t scripted. He didn’t though, and it changed the scripting of the scene with the filmmakers adding a beat of Charlton Heston being forced to pull himself back in.

In The Spy Who Loved Me ( 1977 ), Rick Sylvester skis off a glacier.

Really if there had been Oscars for stunts in the last 100 years, the James Bond franchise would have probably collected close to a dozen by now. There are so many options to choose from: Sebastien Foucan’s performance in the Madagascar parkour sequence of Casino Royale ( 2006 ), Wayne Michaels ‘ highest bungee jump ever recorded on film in Goldeneye ( 1995 ), and Bill Suitor’s operation of a real-life jetpack in Thunderball ( 1965 ).

Yet if we are only going to pick one for this list, it has to be when Rick Sylvester skied right off a glacier atop a Canadian mountain for a sum of$ 30, 000. One of the series ‘ best movies features Bond, in a ridiculous yellow “undercover” ski uniform, escaping Soviet assassins by launching himself into an abyss where he does nothing but fall for a breathless 20 seconds. This is still the defining 007 stunt. He then pulls the chord on an absurd and terrific Union Jack parachute. How to maintain a low profile, James. It’s all captured in one unbelievable long shot that cuts just before one of Sylvester’s skis nearly punctures his parachute, which would have sent him plummeting.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark ( 1981 ), a Boulder was outrunning.

This was one of the trickier ones to include. How do you pick just one of the many outstanding stunts in the Indiana Jones movies? For pure adrenaline spectacle, we suspect Vic Armstrong in a fedora and torn shirt dangling from a rope bridge in Temple of Doom ( 1984 ) might be the winner. And Spielberg’s homage to Stagecoach, in which Terry Leonard is once more dragged beneath and behind a jeep in Raiders, is probably the most complicated set piece ever performed in the first Indy film.

Still, great stunts aren’t only about real-life danger. It might also be about indelible iconography, originality, and aesthetics. Hence why the first thing that pops in your mind when you read the words” Indiana Jones” is still probably the sight of the ragged archaeologist outrunning a boulder by the skin of his teeth—a trick done without a stuntman. Harrison Ford is undoubtedly outsmarting the boulder in that regard! Of course it’s not really a boulder, but a still gruesome 300-pound prop made of fiberglass. Ford was able to perform the stunt because it is also on a track. Nonetheless, it remains one of the all time great movie moments that gets the hair to stand on end as a visible movie star appears to be within inches of becoming a pancake as he stumbles his way into an enormous spider&#8217, s web. &nbsp,

Jackie Chan’s Explosive Slide in Police Story ( 1985 )

Jackie Chan, a performer who should have won numerous stunt Oscars, made a career out of pushing his body one insane stunt ( and many more broken bones ) at a time. We could pick a trick he did, or sequence he choreographed, in almost any of his Hong Kong films. However, his character’s odd choice in the first Police Story to chase bad guys at a mall continues to be a personal favorite.

In the sequence, his prey is escaping down at the lower levels of massive mall, so instead of following in close pursuit down a crowded escalator, Jackie decides the most efficient way to catch them is to lunge at a not-so-near pole and slide about four stories down—for real and with no wires—while shattering every string of Christmas lights in his path before crashing through a real partition of glass and wood at the bottom. In an explosion of shattering glass and electrical sparks, Chan said,” I made my jump, grabbed the pole, and watched the twinkling lights crack and pop all the way down. Then I hit the glass. And then I hit the ground. Somehow I managed to survive with a collection of ugly bruises &#8230, and second-degree burns on the skin of my fingers and palms”.

In Police Story 3 ( 1992 ), Michelle Yeoh Catches a Train.

I was conflicted about including this one since we are trying to keep this list to one entry per franchise, however given that this was Michelle Yeoh‘s own jaw-dropping moment in Police Story 3, it seems safe to include the moment where she literally jumped a dirt bike onto a moving train.

The incident occurs at the conclusion of the film when Yeoh’s young Interpol agent tries to catch up and assist Jackie in saving the day. Not only did Yeoh successfully land the bike onto the train but she rode it the near length of the train cars ‘ rooftops before jumping off after her character loses control. Even that final scene, however, is a little real because Yeoh couldn’t cleanly escape the car before making this movie, despite having never before ridden a dirt bike. So that’s really her kicking it away and off the train while its wheels are still spinning!

Hidden Dragon, Hidden Dragon, and Tree Fight in Crouching Tiger, 2000

Another case of the stunt work achieving a gracefulness and artistry that supersedes just pure adrenaline, this duel among the trees between Chow Yun-fat and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon remains one of the most surreal and achingly beautiful “fight scenes” in cinema.

It’s true, but calling it a fight scene almost sounds silly. This is really a chance for two protagonists in direct conflict to properly introduce themselves to each other. The ostensible violence between two martial arts masters gliding between treetops has a serene peacefulness to it. The sequence came to director Ang Lee in a dream and was realized by stunt choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, whose stunt team is probably best known in the West for popularizing wire-fu in movies like The Matrix. The dancing in the green in Crouching Tiger is actually Zhang and Chow dancing in the wilderness.

Rotating Hallway Fight in Inception ( 2010 )

In the film Royal Wedding ( 1951 ), Joseph Gordon-Levitt and several members of Tom Struthers ‘ team engaged in a fight in a rotating hotel, it can be demonstrated that Fred Astaire wowed audiences by dancing on the walls and ceilings of his own hotel room. Which is true, but it’s no less impressive given how dizzyingly complex director Christopher Nolan made his action version of the showstopper.

This sequence, which was choreographed on a rotating set in an air hangar outside London, culminated Gordon-Levitt and Nolan’s teams ‘ months of training to give the impression that gravity was a fluid, sputtering resource in a dream world where your only limit was your knowledge of kung fu. It’s hypnotic.

In Mission: Impossible 4, Tom Cruise scales the tallest building in the world ( 2011 ).

Once again, we come to a stunt legend where it is difficult to choose which sequence to include. Tom Cruise has a late-life renaissance as the contemporary Douglas Fairbanks. His appearance in a movie over the last 15 or so years is a near-guarantee you’ll see some death-defying hijinks. So should it have been his time to hang from a real plane in Mission: Impossible &#8211, Rogue Nation as it took off? Or how about when he performed hundreds of HALO jumps from 25, 000 feet in 2018’s Mission: Impossible &#8211, Fallout? He attempted to outwit Rick Sylvester’s TSWLM stunt in the final movie, which was largely marketed as his only chance of survival by riding a motorcycle off a mountain using a parachute.

We ultimately decided to go with the stunt which really signaled this transition in Cruise’s career. Cruise revived his career by playing a real-life Spider-Man along the sun-kissed glass of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, in Mission: Impossible &#8211, Ghost Protocol, which was released in December 2011. It’s more or less the same trick Harold Lloyd did 90 years earlier, only higher and in Cruise’s case, he has safety harnesses holding him in place. They even don’t even digitally remove that element. They astutely make it part of the story, with the idea being both the harness and his character’s glue gloves only have a fixed amount of time to keep him safe. He then makes street pizza. It’s a marriage of movie star charisma, superb visual storytelling, and old-fashioned derring-do captured in massive IMAX cinematography.

Bane hijacks a plane in Midair in The Dark Knight Rises ( 2012 ).

Another Christopher Nolan sequence, this one is also the favorite of the director’s stunt sequences in his Batman trilogy. A team of aerial stuntmen coordinated by Tom Struthers again literally jump from one massive plane to smaller charter flight, and commandeer it with little more than wires, explosives, and guts, in a similar scene from the James Bond film Licence to Kill. Nolan improves on his influence by recording in eye-catching IMAX photography how they filmed this and other stunts. The wings coming off is a digital effect. The rest is essentially nonexistent.

Pole Cat Craziness in Mad Max: Fury Road ( 2015 )

We were persuaded to include every single entry from George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. This mad fantasia of gas-guzzling grandeur is one set piece marvel after another, strung together in a feature-length chase sequence that ascends to a level of cinematic Valhalla where all is shiny and chrome. However, if we must narrow it down to” Witnessed” and only one scene that the Academy can point to, what comes next? it would probably be the pole cat spectacle.

These Australian lunatics, er, stuntmen, were Miller’s gang, who really swayed in the breeze ( presumably because it looked cooler ) on poles above cars traveling anywhere between 30 and 60 MPH in the Namibian desert. They then swung on said poles over movie stars, including Zoë Kravitz who is really whisked by a pole-catter from one speeding vehicle to another, with nothing but hard desert earth beneath their feet. God Bless George Miller. No, really, that must’ve been the case because the fact no one died makes this something of a miracle.

The Last 40 Minutes of John Wick 4 ( 2023 ), All of It

Much like the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises, the John Wick flicks are an embarrassment of riches for stunt work and spectacle. The John Wick movies are a chance for those who have the knowledge to translate that into pure cinema because they were written by former stuntmen-turned-directors Chad Staheleski and David Leitch. Each mainline movie has been directed by Staheleski, and the John Wick movies are no exception.

Which might make it a bit of a shame the series is not ending after what was clearly intended to be the grand finale in John Wick: Chapter 4. The epic climax of stunt work featured an all-expensive view of the carnage as Keanu Reeves shoots his way through enemy territory in one of the most impressive oner action scenes ever created and culminates in an even more impressive, seeming series of oners where Reeves and Donnie Yen battle their way repeatedly up a long, outdoor Parisian staircase in Montmartre filled with assassins who want old Johnny boy dead. It’s a visual crucible of Mr. Wick’s trials and travails distilled into a masterpiece of carnage.

The article 13 Movie Stunts That Deserved Oscars appeared second on Den of Geek.

We agree: the computer-generated heads could be a great fit for personas—but not for the purpose you might think. Ironically, the website highlights the core issue of this very common design method: the person ( a ) does not exist. Personas are deliberately created, much like in the photos. Knowledge is taken out of natural environment and recombined into an isolated preview that’s detached from reality.

However, it’s odd that manufacturers use personalities to guide their style in the real world.

Personas: A action up

Most manufacturers have created, used, or come across personalities at least once in their profession. The Interaction Design Foundation defines profile as “fictional characters, which you create based upon your research in order to represent the various consumer types that might use your company, product, page, or brand” in their article” Personas- A Simple Introduction.” In their most complete expression, personas typically consist of a name, profile picture, quotes, demographics, goals, needs, behavior in relation to a certain service/product, emotions, and motivations ( for example, see Creative Companion’s Persona Core Poster ). According to design firm Designit, the goal of personas is to “make the research relateable, ]and ] easy to communicate, digest, reference, and apply to product and service development.”

The decontextualization of identities

Personas are common because they make “dry” research information more realistic, more people. However, this approach places a cap on the study’s data analysis, making it impossible for the investigated users to be excluded from their particular contexts. As a result, personalities don’t describe important factors that make you realize their decision-making method or allow you to connect to users ‘ thoughts and behavior, they lack stories. You are aware of the persona’s actions, but you lack the history knowledge to understand why. You end up with images of people that are really less people.

This “decontextualization” we see in identities happens in four way, which we’ll discuss below.

People are assumed to be stable, according to people.

Although many companies still try to box in their employees and customers with outdated personality tests ( referring to you, Myers-Briggs ), here’s a painfully obvious truth: people are not a fixed set of features. Depending on how you feel, how you act, think, and think, what you do and do. You appear distinct to different people, you may act helpful to some, tough to others. And you change your mind all the time about judgments you’ve taken.

Current psychologists concur that while individuals typically act in accordance with specific patterns, how people act and make decisions is ultimately influenced by a combination of history and culture. The context—the atmosphere, the effect of other people, your feelings, the whole story that led up to a situation—determines the kind of person you are in each particular time.

Personas do not account for this variation in their attempt to reduce reality; instead, they present a consumer as a set of features. Like character tests, personas seize people away from real life. Even worse, individuals are reduced to a brand and categorized as” that kind of guy” with no means to practice their inherent flexibility. This behavior discredits variety, perpetuates stereotypes, and doesn’t reveal reality.

Personas rely on people, not the environment

You’re designing for a environment, not an individual, in the real world. Each individual lives in a community, a group, an habitat, where there are environmental, social, and cultural factors you need to consider. A pattern is not meant for a single customer. Instead, you create a product that is intended to be used by a certain number of people. Personas, yet, show the customer alone rather than explain how the consumer relates to the environment.

Do you make the same choice over and over again? Maybe you’re a dedicated vegan but also decide to buy some meats when your family are coming across. As they depend on various situations and characteristics, your decisions—and behavior, thoughts, and comments —are no absolute but extremely contextual. Because it doesn’t explain the grounds for your decisions, the persona that “represents” you doesn’t take into account this interdependence. It doesn’t provide a explanation of why you act the way you do. People practice the well-known attribution error, which states that they too often attribute others ‘ behavior to their personalities and not to the circumstances.

As mentioned by the Interaction Design Foundation, identities are often placed in a situation that’s a” specific environment with a problem they want to or have to solve “—does that mean environment actually is considered? However, what frequently happens is that you take a hypothetical figure and based on that literature decide how this character may deal with a particular situation. How could you possibly comprehend how someone you want to represent behave in new circumstances given that you haven’t even fully investigated and understood the current context of the people you want to represent?

Personas are meaningless averages

A persona is depicted as a specific person but is not a real person, as stated in Shlomo Goltz’s introduction article on Smashing Magazine; rather, it is made up of observations from numerous people. A well-known critique to this aspect of personas is that the average person does not exist, as per the famous example of the USA Air Force designing planes based on the average of 140 of their pilots ‘ physical dimensions and not a single pilot actually fitting within that average seat.

The same limitation applies to mental aspects of people. Have you ever heard a famous person say something like,” They took what I said out of context!” They used my words, but I didn’t mean it like that”. The reporter didn’t explain the context of the celebrity’s statement or explain the non-verbal expressions, but the celebrity’s statement was literally reported. As a result, the intended meaning was lost. You do the same when you create personas: you collect somebody’s statement ( or goal, or need, or emotion ), of which the meaning can only be understood if you provide its own specific context, yet report it as an isolated finding.

However, personas go one step further, combining a decontextualized finding with another decontextualized finding from another. The resulting set of findings often does not make sense: it’s unclear, or even contrasting, because it lacks the underlying reasons on why and how that finding has arisen. It lacks any significance. And the persona doesn’t give you the full background of the person ( s ) to uncover this meaning: you would need to dive into the raw data for each single persona item to find it. What, then, is the usefulness of the persona?

The validity of personas can be deceiving.

To a certain extent, designers realize that a persona is a lifeless average. To combat this, designers create and add “relatable” details to personas to make them appear to be real people. Nothing captures the absurdity of this better than a sentence by the Interaction Design Foundation:” Add a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character”. In other words, you add non-realism in an attempt to create more realism. Wouldn’t it be much more responsible to emphasize that John is only an abstraction if you purposefully conceal the fact that” John Doe” is an abstract representation of research findings? If something is artificial, let’s present it as such.

After accepting that people’s personalities are fixed, ignored the importance of their environment, and hidden meaning by joining isolated, non-generalizable findings, designers create new context to create ( their own ) meaning. In doing so, as with everything they create, they introduce a host of biases. As phrased by Designit, as designers we can” contextualize]the persona ] based on our reality and experience. We make connections that are well-known to us. This practice reinforces stereotypes, doesn’t reflect real-world diversity, and gets further away from people’s actual reality with every detail added.

To conduct effective design research, we must report the “as-is” reality and make it relatable for our audience so that everyone can use their own empathy and formula for their own interpretation and emotional response.

Dynamic Selves: The alternative to personas

If we shouldn’t use personas, what should we do instead?

Designit suggests using mindsets rather than personas. Each Mindset is a” spectrum of attitudes and emotional responses that different people have within the same context or life experience”. It challenges designers to avoid becoming fixated on just one person’s way of being. Unfortunately, while being a step in the right direction, this proposal doesn’t take into account that people are part of an environment that determines their personality, their behavior, and, yes, their mindset. Therefore, Mindsets are also not absolute but change in regard to the situation. What determines a certain Mindset, remains to be seen.

Another alternative comes from Margaret P., author of the article” Kill Your Personas“, who has argued for replacing personas with persona spectrums that consist of a range of user abilities. A visual impairment may be temporary ( recovery from eye surgery ), permanent ( blindness ), or situational (screen glare ). Persona spectrums are highly useful for more inclusive and context-based design, as they’re based on the understanding that the context is the pattern, not the personality. Their limitation, however, is that they have a very functional take on users that misses the relatability of a real person taken from within a spectrum.

We want to change the traditional design process to be context-based by creating an alternative to personas. Contexts are generalizable and have patterns that we can identify, just like we tried to do previously with people. So how do we learn these patterns? How do we ensure truly context-based design?

Understand real individuals in multiple contexts

Nothing about reality can be more relatable and inspiring. Therefore, we have to understand real individuals in their multi-faceted contexts, and use this understanding to fuel our design. Dynamic Selves is how we define it.

Let’s take a look at what the approach looks like, based on an example of how one of us applied it in a recent project that researched habits of Italians around energy consumption. We drafted a design research plan aimed at investigating people’s attitudes toward energy consumption and sustainable behavior, with a focus on smart thermostats.

1. Choose the right sample

When we contest personas, we are frequently met with the words” Where are you going to find a single person that encapsulates all the information from one of these advanced personas ]””? The answer is simple: you don’t have to. You don’t need to have information about many people for your insights to be deep and meaningful.

Quantity is key to qualitative research, but sampling accuracy is key to its validity. You select the people that best represent the “population” you’re designing for. You can infer how the rest of the population thinks and acts if this sample is chosen wisely and you have a deep understanding of the sampled people. There’s no need to study seven Susans and five Yuriys, one of each will do.

Similarly, you don’t need to understand Susan in fifteen different contexts. Once you’ve seen her in a few different settings, you’ve grasped Susan’s general scheme of action. Not Susan as an atomic being but Susan in relation to the surrounding environment: how she might act, feel, and think in different situations.

It becomes clear why each should be represented as an individual because each is already an abstraction of a larger group of individuals in similar circumstances because each person is representative of a portion of the total population you’re researching. You don’t want abstractions of abstractions! These selected people need to be understood and shown in their full expression, remaining in their microcosmos—and if you want to identify patterns you can focus on identifying patterns in contexts.

However, the question persists: how do you choose a representative sample? First of all, you have to consider what’s the target audience of the product or service you are designing: it might be useful to look at the company’s goals and strategy, the current customer base, and/or a possible future target audience.

We were creating an application for those who already have smart thermostats in our example project. In the future, everyone could have a smart thermostat in their house. Right now, though, only early adopters own one. We had to understand the causes behind these early adopters in order to build a significant sample. We therefore recruited by asking people why they had a smart thermostat and how they got it. There were those who had made the decision to purchase it, those who had been influenced by other people’s decisions, and those who had discovered it in their homes. So we selected representatives of these three situations, from different age groups and geographical locations, with an equal balance of tech savvy and non-tech savvy participants.

2. Conduct your research

After having chosen and recruited your sample, conduct your research using ethnographic methodologies. This will give you more examples and anecdotes to enrich your qualitative data. In our example project, given COVID-19 restrictions, we converted an in-house ethnographic research effort into remote family interviews, conducted from home and accompanied by diary studies.

To gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and decision-making trade-offs, the research focus was not limited to the interviewee alone but deliberately included the whole family. Each interviewee would provide a story that would later become much more interesting and precise with the additions made by their spouses, partners, kids, or occasionally even pets. We also focused on the relationships with other meaningful people ( such as colleagues or distant family ) and all the behaviors that resulted from those relationships. This extensive field of study gave us the ability to create a vivid mental image of dynamic situations involving multiple actors.

It’s essential that the scope of the research remains broad enough to be able to include all possible actors. Therefore, it normally works best to define broad research areas with macro questions. Follow-up questions will be written down in a way that is best suited for an interview, and they should be conducted in a semi-structured manner. This open-minded “plan to be surprised” will yield the most insightful findings. One of our participants responded to our question about how his family controlled the house temperature by saying,” My wife has not installed the thermostat’s app; she uses WhatsApp instead. If she wants to turn on the heater and she is not home, she will text me. I am her thermostat”.

3. Analysis: Create the Dynamic Selves

You begin to represent each individual with several Dynamic Selves, each” Self” representing one of the circumstances you have examined throughout the research analysis. The core of each Dynamic Self is a quote, which comes supported by a photo and a few relevant demographics that illustrate the wider context. The research findings themselves will show which demographics are relevant to show. In our case, the important demographics were family type, number and type of houses owned, economic status, and technological maturity because our research focused on families and their way of life to understand their needs for thermal regulation. ( We also included the individual’s name and age, but they’re optional—we included them to ease the stakeholders ‘ transition from personas and be able to connect multiple actions and contexts to the same person ).

Interviews must be video-recorded in order to capture precise quotes, and notes must be as much as possible taken verbatim. This is essential to the truthfulness of the several Selves of each participant. In the case of real-life ethnographic research, photos of the context and anonymized actors are essential to build realistic Selves. These photos should be taken directly from field research, but an evocative and representative image will do as well as that, as long as it’s accurate and depicts meaningful actions that you associate with your participants. For example, one of our interviewees told us about his mountain home where he used to spend every weekend with his family. We depicted him hiking with his young daughter as a result.

At the end of the research analysis, we displayed all of the Selves ‘” cards” on a single canvas, categorized by activities. Each card displayed a situation, represented by a quote and a unique photo. All participants had several cards about themselves.

4. Identify potential designs

Once you have collected all main quotes from the interview transcripts and diaries, and laid them all down as Self cards, you will see patterns emerge. These patterns will highlight the opportunity areas for new product creation, new functionalities, and new services—for new design.

There was a particularly intriguing insight around the concept of humidity in our example project. We realized that people don’t know what humidity is and why it is important to monitor it for health: an environment that’s too dry or too wet can cause respiratory problems or worsen existing ones. This made clear that our client had a significant opportunity to train users about the concept and work as a health advisor.

Benefits of Dynamic Selves

When you use the Dynamic Selves approach in your research, you start to notice unique social relations, peculiar situations real people face and the actions that follow, and that people are surrounded by changing environments. One of the participants in our thermostat project, Davide, is described as a boyfriend, dog lover, and tech nut.

Davide is an individual we might have once reduced to a persona called “tech enthusiast”. However, there are also those who are wealthy or poor, who are tech enthusiasts and have families or are single. Their motivations and priorities when deciding to purchase a new thermostat can be opposite according to these different frames.

Once you have understood Davide in multiple situations, and for each situation have understood in sufficient depth the underlying reasons for his behavior, you’re able to generalize how he would act in another situation. You can infer what he would think and do in the circumstances ( or scenarios ) you design for using your understanding of him.

The Dynamic Selves approach aims to dismiss the conflicted dual purpose of personas—to summarize and empathize at the same time—by separating your research summary from the people you’re seeking to empathize with. This is crucial because scale affects how we feel about people and how difficult it is to feel empathy for others. We feel the strongest empathy for individuals we can personally relate to.

If you take a real person as inspiration for your design, you no longer need to create an artificial character. No more developing plot devices to “realize” the character, and no more need for additional bias. It’s simply how this person is in real life. In fact, as we all know, personas quickly turn into nothing more than a name in our priority guides and prototype screens because these characters don’t really exist.

Another powerful benefit of the Dynamic Selves approach is that it raises the stakes of your work: if you mess up your design, someone real, a person you and the team know and have met, is going to feel the consequences. It might stop you from taking shortcuts and will remind you to conduct daily checks on your designs.

Finally, real people in their specific contexts provide a better foundation for anecdotal storytelling and are thus more persuasive. Documentation of real research is essential in achieving this result. The circumstances of your design proposals resound in your mind when you encounter Alessandra. Noise, bad ergonomics, lack of light, you name it. If we go for this functionality, I’m afraid we’re going to add complexity to her life”.

Conclusion

In their article on Mindsets, Designit mentioned that “design thinking tools offer a shortcut to deal with reality’s complexities, but this process of simplification can occasionally flatten out people’s lives into a few general characteristics.” Unfortunately, personas have been culprits in a crime of oversimplification. They fail to account for the complex nature of our users ‘ decision-making processes and don’t take into account the fact that people are immersed in environments.

Design needs simplification but not generalization. You have to look at the research elements that stand out: the sentences that captured your attention, the images that struck you, the sounds that linger. Use those as metaphors for the person in all of their contexts. Both insights and people come with a context, they cannot be cut from that context because it would remove meaning.

It’s high time for design to break away from fiction and use reality as our guide and inspiration, in all of its messy, surprising, and unquantifiable beauty.