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I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the figures 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 fascinating experiences. I also came up with concept movies 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 show 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 more than likely follows a three-act construction that’s frequently seen in movies: the layout, the conflict, and the resolution. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to know the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two sets the scene for the fight and the activity begins. Here, issues grow or get worse. The decision is the third and final action. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This architecture, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about consumer research, and it might be particularly useful for introducing user research to others.

Use story as a framework when conducting research.

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 pattern. It keeps it on record, pointing to problems and opportunities. You can keep back of your competition by being aware of the problems with your goods and fixing them.

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 relational, discovery, or preliminary research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. You’re learning about the difficulties people face now, what options are available, and how those challenges impact them, just like in the films. 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.

What is the least sustainable ethnography that Erika Hall can do is spend fifteen minutes with a consumer and say,” Walk me through your day yesterday. That’s it. Provide that one ask. Opened up and listen to them for 15 days. Do everything in your power to protect both your objectives and yourself. 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 perfect sense to me. And I love that this makes consumer studies so visible. You can simply attract participants and carry out the recruitment process without having to create 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 may 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 characters and support their success, much like in films. And finally participants are now doing the same. Their concern may be with their company, which may be losing money because consumers are unable to complete specific tasks. Or probably they do connect with customers ‘ problems. In either case, work 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 item team become more user-centric. This gains everyone—users, the goods, and partners. It’s similar to winning an Oscar for a film; it frequently results in a favorable reception and success for your item. 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 examine a design or idea to see whether it addresses the problems.

Act two: issue

Act two is all about digging deeper into the issues that you identified in action one. This typically involves conducting vertical 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. Additional problems will arise in the course of work two of a film. It’s here that you learn more about the figures 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:” As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the second user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings consistently but not 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 tens of thousands of years, but remote testing can also be done using software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing tools. 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. Additionally, you get real-time reactions, including surprises, disagreements, and discussions about what they’re seeing. 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 conduct your research by meeting users at their locations. 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 run as researchers, but this can occasionally improve your understanding of users. 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. A wider audience can be reached through remote sessions. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. Additionally, they make the doors accessible to a much wider range of users. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working.

You can ask real users questions to understand their thoughts and understanding of the solution as a result of usability testing, whether it is done remotely or in person. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. You can also test your own ideas and determine whether they are true. 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. The excitement is in the second act, but there are also potential surprises in the third. This is equally true of usability tests. Sometimes, participants will say unexpected things that alter the way you look at them, which can lead to unexpected turns in the story.

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. Usability testing is also frequently the only research technique that some stakeholders believe they ever need, and too frequently. 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. That’s because you’re narrowing down the area of focus on without considering 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 that arise.

Act three: resolution

The third act is about resolving the issues raised by the first two acts, whereas the first two are about comprehending the context and the tensions that can compel 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 all members of the product team, including developers, UX experts, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other 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. Additionally, it enables the UX design and research teams to clarify, suggest alternatives, or provide more context for their decisions. 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 offer the stakeholders 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 visual, like quick sketches of how a new design could look that solves a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the session is over when you’ve concluded everything by summarizing the key points and offering suggestions for a solution. 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.

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 performs a number of tasks: they are the producer, the director, and the storyteller. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters ( in the research ). And the audience are the stakeholders. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users ‘ stories through research. In the end, the parties should leave with a goal and an eagerness to fix 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. In the end, user research is beneficial for everyone, and all you need to do is pique stakeholders ‘ interest in how the story ends.

Fits LA may not be the first attempt at a subsidiary of the popular Suits series from USA Network, but it is the first one since the first one became a Netflix streaming story. Suit ended almost six years ago, and this spinoff is not only taking us from New York to the […]

The article Meets LA Cast: Join the Doctors, Clients, and More of the West Coast Spinoff appeared first on Den of Geek.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There have been plenty of pieces to keep us eager for the story to appear, from conversations with the cast to snippets in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a complete video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and take a closer look at what their stories may entail for the year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle swirls around him. Although the show has recently announced that it will be visiting this familiar planet this season, series creator Tony Gilroy is also looking forward to seeing it there. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters and serves as a critical setting for the fight to appear, though we haven’t seen the foundation in its early stages as we might this period.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the Link fighter and Cassian in the aircraft was previously teased, but we now get a closer look at it in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this fleet, this video shows him flying it over a niche to capture what is most likely an Imperial minister, is it? A picture further in the video that appears to show him attempting to run away from the ship as it slams against the roof of an Imperial hangar amid a bombardment of Stormtrooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its weight grows, this now seems to be one of the many fascinating action scenes this time.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating weight, Saw Gerrera is set to return this time. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. In terms of insurgent tissues, Swaw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently choosing to form weight in a more bloody way than some rebels are used to. However, as Multi states at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a battle,” which makes it much easier to cross traces in the name of freedom. It’ll be interesting to see what Saw’s position in the revolution this year is because he’s an important player in Rogue One.

Orson Krennic and the Death Star

The production of the Death Star was made possible by Cassian and the other prisoners in Narkina 5’s post-credits field. And in this video, we get a glimpse of Orson Krennic, the architect behind the project, as well as a glimpse of this huge weapon being built. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s position in the years leading up to those events is significantly different because he is ready to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire in Rogue One. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This video gives us yet another glance at K-2SO, our favourite sassy machine ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first meet, this year is likely to provide insight into how this partnership and subsequent friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one interesting aspect of the trailer has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. She occasionally dances along with us. It appears to be a Chandrilan party, possibly a post- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started arranging a marriage for the previous season. This was essential for Mon Mothma to win the support of a bank official who could assist her in keeping her finances, particularly those that helped keep the Empire’s secret, clean. Given how angry she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult decision for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The article Andor Season 2 Video Break: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared initially on Den of Geek.

The world of Star Trek is incredibly well mapped out for a company whose core principle is exploring the unfamiliar. We can build a very complete timeline of events from the year of the Bell Riots, European reconciliation, and the first manned mission following the events described by its TV shows and movies.

The first article on Den of Geek was Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The Motion Photo Novel, which Presents a Pretty Unique View of the Trek Universe.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There are plenty of crumbs to keep us eagerly anticipating the story to come, from put interviews to snippets in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a complete video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and a closer look at what their stories may entail this year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle swirls around him. Tony Gilroy, the father of the line, formerly hinted that the display may be traveling to a common planet this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t eager to see it here. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters and serves as a crucial setting for the fight to come, though we haven’t seen the base in its early stages as we might this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the TIE fighter and Cassian in the cockpit was previously teased, but more of it is now visible in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this ship, this trailer shows him flying it over a field to capture what is most likely an Imperial envoy. A scene further in the trailer that appears to show him struggling to get away from the ship as it bumps up against the ceiling of an Imperial hangar amid a barrage of Stormtrooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its resistance grows, this already appears to be one of the many exciting action scenes this season.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating resistance, Saw Gerrera is set to return this season. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. As far as rebel cells go, Saw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently opting for more violent forms of resistance than some rebels are used to. However, as Cassian states at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a war,” and war makes it much easier to cross lines in the name of freedom. Saw is a significant component of Rogue One, and it’ll be interesting to see what his part in the rebellion this season is.

The Death Star and Orson Krennic

The production of the Death Star was made possible by Cassian and the other prisoners in Narkina 5’s post-credits scene. And in this trailer, we get a glimpse of this massive weapon being built as well as the return of Orson Krennic, the mastermind behind the project. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s stance is significantly different in the years leading up to those events, but in Rogue One, Krennic is willing to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This trailer gives us yet another look at K-2SO, our favorite sassy robot ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first meet, this season is likely to provide us with insight into how this partnership and eventual friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one intriguing aspect of the trailer has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We even witness her doing a dance at one point. It appears to be a Chandrilan celebration, possibly a pre- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started making wedding arrangements last season. In order to protect her finances, especially those that were secretly funding the rebellion, Mon Mothma needed to gain the trust of a banking official. Given how unhappy she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult choice for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

For almost 20 years, LEGO Batman has been performing well. The Caped Crusader has been a steady income cattle for the doll company since its initial work in 2006-2008 and its resurrection in 2012 with the theme. In fact, despite the rest of LEGO’s DC exports, such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, fading off ]… ]

The second post Spills and Gossips: The New 2025 Batmobile from the LEGO Batman Forever Set appeared first on Den of Geek.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There have been a good deal of pieces to keep us eager for the tale to come, from interviews with the throw to brief glances in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a complete video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and a closer look at what their stories may entail this year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle sweeps him all over. Tony Gilroy, the creator of the series, formerly hinted that the display may be traveling to a common world this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t eager to see it here. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters, which serves as a critical setting for the campaign to appear, though we may not have seen the bottom in its early stages until this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the Connect fighter and Cassian in the aircraft was previously teased, but then we get a better sense of it in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this fleet, this video shows him flying it over a niche to capture what is most likely an Imperial minister, is it? Further in the video, there is a scene that appears to show him attempting to run away from the ship as it scuttles against the roof of an Imperial aircraft amid the trooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its weight grows, this now seems to be one of the many fascinating action scenes this time.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating weight, Saw Gerrera is set to return this time. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. As far as rebel cell go, Saw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently opting for more violent forms of resistance than some rebels are used to. However, as Multi states at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a battle,” which makes it much easier to cross traces in the name of freedom. It will be interesting to see what Saw’s position in the rebellion this period is given that he is an important player in Rogue One.

The Death Star and Orson Krennic

The production of the Death Star was made clear in the post-credits field of winter 1. The equipment pieces that Cassian and the other captives of Narkina 5 used. And in this truck, we get a glimpse of this huge weapon being built as well as the return of Orson Krennic, the mastermind behind the project. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s position in the years leading up to those events is significantly different because he is ready to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire in Rogue One. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This video gives us yet another glance at K-2SO, our favourite sassy machine ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first meet, this time is likely to provide us with insight into how this partnership and subsequent friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one interesting aspect of the truck has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We also witness her doing a dance at one place. It appears to be a Chandrilan party, possibly a pre- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started arranging a marriage for the previous season. This was essential for Mon Mothma to win the confidence of a bank official who could assist her in keeping her finances, particularly those that kept the Empire from knowing about the funds being used to fund the rebellion, safe. Given how angry she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult decision for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The article Andor Season 2 Video Break: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared initially on Den of Geek.

Thor needs Thor below. Immortal Thor# 23, written by Al Ewing and illustrated by Jan Bazaldua, may close this May as the God of Thunder. At this point, some visitors will undoubtedly move their vision. After all, every Marvel warrior has passed away and returned more than once, with Thor being the exception. ]… ]

The first article on Den of Geek was Marvel Really Confirmed It’s Killing Off Another Avenger.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There have been plenty of pieces to keep us eager for the story to appear, from conversations with the cast to snippets in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a full video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and a closer look at what their stories may entail this year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle sweeps him all over. Tony Gilroy, the father of the series, formerly hinted that the display may be traveling to a common world this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t eager to see it here. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters and serves as a critical setting for the fight to appear, though we haven’t seen the foundation in its early stages as we might this period.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the Connect warrior and Cassian in the aircraft was previously teased, but more of it is now visible in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this fleet, this video shows him flying it over a niche to capture what is most likely some sort of Imperial minister. Further in the video, there is a picture that appears to show him attempting to run away from the ship as it scuttles against the roof of an Imperial aircraft amid the trooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its opposition grows, this now appears to be one of the many fascinating action scenes this period.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating weight, Saw Gerrera is set to return this time. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. As far as rebel tissue go, Saw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently opting for more violent forms of resistance than some rebels are used to. However, as Cassian claims at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a battle,” which makes it much easier to mix traces in the name of freedom. It’ll be interesting to see what Saw’s position in the revolution this year is because he’s an important player in Rogue One.

The Death Star and Orson Krennic

The production of the Death Star was made possible by Cassian and the other prisoners in Narkina 5’s post-credits field. And in this truck, we not only see a view of this huge weapon being built, but also the return of Orson Krennic, the mastermind behind the project. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s approach is significantly different in the years leading up to those situations, but in Rogue One, Krennic is ready to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This video gives us yet another glance at K-2SO, our favourite sassy machine ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first connected, this time is likely to provide insight into how this partnership and subsequent friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one amazing aspect of the truck has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We also witness her doing a dance at one place. It appears to be a Chandrilan party, possibly a prior- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started arranging a marriage for the previous season. This was essential for Mon Mothma to win the support of a bank official who could assist her in keeping her finances, particularly those that helped keep the Empire’s secret, clear. Given how angry she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult decision for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The article Andor Season 2 Video Break: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared initially on Den of Geek.

This post contains spoilers for Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah. Paul Atreides wasn’t the only one sad to see Duncan Idaho die while battling Sardaukar troops in Dune. Audiences also mourned the loss of Idaho’s performer Jason Momoa, whose carefree attitude lightened the sometimes too-heavy mood. While everyone else is brooding about prophecies and land rights, […]

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Up until now, we’ve been thoroughly teased by sneak peeks of the upcoming second season of Andor. From interviews with the cast to small glimpses in Disney’s 2025 preview, there have been a decent amount of crumbs to keep us excited for the story to come. Today, however, we’ve finally been served a full trailer outside of D23, and there’s a lot here that leaves us hungry for more.

While there’s not a lot of new information shown, we do get to see a lot of familiar faces and a closer look at what their stories might entail this season. From the return of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the trailer below a watch, and then read on to check out our breakdown of the most intriguing bits.

Yavin 4

For the first time since Rogue One, we get to see Cassian (Diego Luna) on Yavin 4 as the hustle and bustle of the rebel base moves all around him. Series creator Tony Gilroy previously revealed that the show would be making the journey to this familiar planet this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still excited to see a glimpse of it here. Yavin 4 becomes the home of the Rebel Alliance and is a crucial backdrop in the fight to come, though we’ve yet to really see the base in its early days, as we might this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

Previous teasers showed us a glimpse of this updated version of the TIE fighter and of Cassian in the cockpit, but now we get to see more of it in action. Why Cassian appears to be stealing this ship has yet to be revealed, but this trailer shows him flying it over a field to take out what is likely some kind of Imperial envoy. There’s also a scene further into the trailer that seems to show him struggling to escape with the ship as it bumps up against the ceiling of an Imperial hangar amidst a barrage of Stormtrooper blaster fire. This is already looks like one of many exciting action sequences this season, as the fight between the Empire and its resistance escalates.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating resistance, Saw Gerrera is set to return this season. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) last season, so who’s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. Saw Gerrera has always been an outlier as far as rebel cells go, often opting for a more violent form of resistance than some rebels are comfortable with. But as Cassian says at the beginning of the trailer, “we’re in a war,” and war makes it a lot easier to cross lines in the name of freedom. Saw is an important part of Rogue One, and it’ll be interesting to see what his role is in the rebellion this season.

Orson Krennic and the Death Star

The post-credits scene of season 1 revealed that the machine parts that Cassian and the other prisoners of Narkina 5 were for the production of the Death Star. And in this trailer we not only see a glimpse of this massive weapon under construction, we also see the return of the mastermind behind the project, Orson Krennic. In Rogue One, Krennic is willing to do whatever it takes to move ahead in the Empire, and it’s doubtful that his stance is much different in the years leading up to those events. If Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This trailer gives us yet another look at K-2SO, our favorite sassy robot (don’t tell B2EMO). While we still don’t know exactly how he and Cassian meet, this season is likely to give us insight into how this partnership and eventual friendship came to be.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While a lot of the sneak peeks mentioned previously are new looks at things we already knew were coming, there is one new and intriguing part of this trailer that has us really excited. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We even get to see her dance along at one point. It looks like this is some kind of Chandrilan celebration, potentially a pre or post wedding event for her daughter, who she began to arrange a marriage for last season. This was necessary for Mon Mothma to gain the trust of a banking official who could help her keep her finances (especially those secretly funding the rebellion) clean in the eyes of the Empire. It was clear that this was a hard choice for her, given how unhappy she is in her own arranged marriage, but nevertheless it seems like she had to go through with it, and may still be regretting it.

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

Up until now, we’ve been thoroughly teased by sneak peeks of the upcoming second season of Andor. From interviews with the cast to small glimpses in Disney’s 2025 preview, there have been a decent amount of crumbs to keep us excited for the story to come. Today, however, we’ve finally been served a full trailer […]

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

Up until now, we’ve been thoroughly teased by sneak peeks of the upcoming second season of Andor. From interviews with the cast to small glimpses in Disney’s 2025 preview, there have been a decent amount of crumbs to keep us excited for the story to come. Today, however, we’ve finally been served a full trailer outside of D23, and there’s a lot here that leaves us hungry for more.

While there’s not a lot of new information shown, we do get to see a lot of familiar faces and a closer look at what their stories might entail this season. From the return of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the trailer below a watch, and then read on to check out our breakdown of the most intriguing bits.

Yavin 4

For the first time since Rogue One, we get to see Cassian (Diego Luna) on Yavin 4 as the hustle and bustle of the rebel base moves all around him. Series creator Tony Gilroy previously revealed that the show would be making the journey to this familiar planet this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still excited to see a glimpse of it here. Yavin 4 becomes the home of the Rebel Alliance and is a crucial backdrop in the fight to come, though we’ve yet to really see the base in its early days, as we might this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

Previous teasers showed us a glimpse of this updated version of the TIE fighter and of Cassian in the cockpit, but now we get to see more of it in action. Why Cassian appears to be stealing this ship has yet to be revealed, but this trailer shows him flying it over a field to take out what is likely some kind of Imperial envoy. There’s also a scene further into the trailer that seems to show him struggling to escape with the ship as it bumps up against the ceiling of an Imperial hangar amidst a barrage of Stormtrooper blaster fire. This is already looks like one of many exciting action sequences this season, as the fight between the Empire and its resistance escalates.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating resistance, Saw Gerrera is set to return this season. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) last season, so who’s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. Saw Gerrera has always been an outlier as far as rebel cells go, often opting for a more violent form of resistance than some rebels are comfortable with. But as Cassian says at the beginning of the trailer, “we’re in a war,” and war makes it a lot easier to cross lines in the name of freedom. Saw is an important part of Rogue One, and it’ll be interesting to see what his role is in the rebellion this season.

Orson Krennic and the Death Star

The post-credits scene of season 1 revealed that the machine parts that Cassian and the other prisoners of Narkina 5 were for the production of the Death Star. And in this trailer we not only see a glimpse of this massive weapon under construction, we also see the return of the mastermind behind the project, Orson Krennic. In Rogue One, Krennic is willing to do whatever it takes to move ahead in the Empire, and it’s doubtful that his stance is much different in the years leading up to those events. If Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This trailer gives us yet another look at K-2SO, our favorite sassy robot (don’t tell B2EMO). While we still don’t know exactly how he and Cassian meet, this season is likely to give us insight into how this partnership and eventual friendship came to be.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While a lot of the sneak peeks mentioned previously are new looks at things we already knew were coming, there is one new and intriguing part of this trailer that has us really excited. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We even get to see her dance along at one point. It looks like this is some kind of Chandrilan celebration, potentially a pre or post wedding event for her daughter, who she began to arrange a marriage for last season. This was necessary for Mon Mothma to gain the trust of a banking official who could help her keep her finances (especially those secretly funding the rebellion) clean in the eyes of the Empire. It was clear that this was a hard choice for her, given how unhappy she is in her own arranged marriage, but nevertheless it seems like she had to go through with it, and may still be regretting it.

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

This Person Does Not Exist is a website that generates human faces with a machine learning algorithm. It takes real portraits and recombines them into fake human faces. We recently scrolled past a LinkedIn post stating that this website could be useful “if you are developing a persona and looking for a photo.” 

We agree: the computer-generated faces could be a great match for personas—but not for the reason you might think. Ironically, the website highlights the core issue of this very common design method: the person(a) does not exist. Like the pictures, personas are artificially made. Information is taken out of natural context and recombined into an isolated snapshot that’s detached from reality. 

But strangely enough, designers use personas to inspire their design for the real world. 

Personas: A step back

Most designers have created, used, or come across personas at least once in their career. In their article “Personas – A Simple Introduction,” the Interaction Design Foundation defines personas as “fictional characters, which you create based upon your research in order to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand.” 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). The purpose of personas, as stated by design agency Designit, is “to make the research relatable, [and] easy to communicate, digest, reference, and apply to product and service development.”

The decontextualization of personas

Personas are popular because they make “dry” research data more relatable, more human. However, this method constrains the researcher’s data analysis in such a way that the investigated users are removed from their unique contexts. As a result, personas don’t portray key factors that make you understand their decision-making process or allow you to relate to users’ thoughts and behavior; they lack stories. You understand what the persona did, but you don’t have the background to understand why. You end up with representations of users that are actually less human.

This “decontextualization” we see in personas happens in four ways, which we’ll explain below. 

Personas assume people are static 

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. You act, think, and feel differently according to the situations you experience. You appear different to different people; you might act friendly to some, rough to others. And you change your mind all the time about decisions you’ve taken. 

Modern psychologists agree that while people generally behave according to certain patterns, it’s actually a combination of background and environment that determines how people act and take decisions. The context—the environment, the influence of other people, your mood, the entire history that led up to a situation—determines the kind of person you are in each specific moment. 

In their attempt to simplify reality, personas do not take this variability into account; they present a user as a fixed set of features. Like personality tests, personas snatch people away from real life. Even worse, people are reduced to a label and categorized as “that kind of person” with no means to exercise their innate flexibility. This practice reinforces stereotypes, lowers diversity, and doesn’t reflect reality. 

Personas focus on individuals, not the environment

In the real world, you’re designing for a context, not for an individual. Each person lives in a family, a community, an ecosystem, where there are environmental, political, and social factors you need to consider. A design is never meant for a single user. Rather, you design for one or more particular contexts in which many people might use that product. Personas, however, show the user alone rather than describe how the user relates to the environment. 

Would you always make the same decision over and over again? Maybe you’re a committed vegan but still decide to buy some meat when your relatives are coming over. As they depend on different situations and variables, your decisions—and behavior, opinions, and statements—are not absolute but highly contextual. The persona that “represents” you wouldn’t take into account this dependency, because it doesn’t specify the premises of your decisions. It doesn’t provide a justification of why you act the way you do. Personas enact the well-known bias called fundamental attribution error: explaining others’ behavior too much by their personality and too little by the situation.

As mentioned by the Interaction Design Foundation, personas are usually placed in a scenario that’s a “specific context with a problem they want to or have to solve”—does that mean context actually is considered? Unfortunately, what often happens is that you take a fictional character and based on that fiction determine how this character might deal with a certain situation. This is made worse by the fact that you haven’t even fully investigated and understood the current context of the people your persona seeks to represent; so how could you possibly understand how they would act in new situations? 

Personas are meaningless averages

As mentioned in Shlomo Goltz’s introductory article on Smashing Magazine, “a persona is depicted as a specific person but is not a real individual; rather, it is synthesized from observations of many 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, “They took what I said out of context! They used my words, but I didn’t mean it like that.” The celebrity’s statement was reported literally, but the reporter failed to explain the context around the statement and didn’t describe the non-verbal expressions. 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. 

But personas go a step further, extracting a decontextualized finding and joining it with another decontextualized finding from somebody else. 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 meaning. 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 relatability of personas is deceiving

To a certain extent, designers realize that a persona is a lifeless average. To overcome this, designers invent and add “relatable” details to personas to make them resemble real individuals. 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. You deliberately obscure the fact that “John Doe” is an abstract representation of research findings; but wouldn’t it be much more responsible to emphasize that John is only an abstraction? If something is artificial, let’s present it as such.

It’s the finishing touch of a persona’s decontextualization: after having assumed that people’s personalities are fixed, dismissed the importance of their environment, and hidden meaning by joining isolated, non-generalizable findings, designers invent 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 create connections that are familiar 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 do good design research, we should report the reality “as-is” and make it relatable for our audience, so everyone can use their own empathy and develop their own interpretation and emotional response.

Dynamic Selves: The alternative to personas

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

Designit has proposed using Mindsets instead of 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 not get fixated on a single user’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. The question remains, what determines a certain Mindset?

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. For example, a visual impairment could be permanent (blindness), temporary (recovery from eye surgery), 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. 

In developing an alternative to personas, we aim to transform the standard design process to be context-based. Contexts are generalizable and have patterns that we can identify, just like we tried to do previously with people. So how do we identify these patterns? How do we ensure truly context-based design? 

Understand real individuals in multiple contexts

Nothing is more relatable and inspiring than reality. Therefore, we have to understand real individuals in their multi-faceted contexts, and use this understanding to fuel our design. We refer to this approach as Dynamic Selves.

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 argue against personas, we’re often challenged with quotes such as “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. 

In qualitative research, validity does not derive from quantity but from accurate sampling. You select the people that best represent the “population” you’re designing for. If this sample is chosen well, and you have understood the sampled people in sufficient depth, you’re able to infer how the rest of the population thinks and behaves. 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 couple of diverse situations, you’ve understood the scheme of Susan’s response to different contexts. Not Susan as an atomic being but Susan in relation to the surrounding environment: how she might act, feel, and think in different situations. 

Given that each person is representative of a part of the total population you’re researching, it becomes clear why each should be represented as an individual, as each already is an abstraction of a larger group of individuals in similar contexts. 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.

Yet the question remains: how do you select 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. 

In our example project, we were designing an application for those who own a smart thermostat. In the future, everyone could have a smart thermostat in their house. Right now, though, only early adopters own one. To build a significant sample, we needed to understand the reason why these early adopters became such. We therefore recruited by asking people why they had a smart thermostat and how they got it. There were those who had chosen to buy it, those who had been influenced by others to buy it, and those who had found it in their house. 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 make your qualitative data rich with anecdotes and examples. 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 tell a story that would then become much more lively and precise with the corrections or additional details coming from wives, husbands, children, or sometimes 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 wide research focus allowed us to shape a vivid mental image of dynamic situations with 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. Interviews are best set up in a semi-structured way, where follow-up questions will dive into topics mentioned spontaneously by the interviewee. This open-minded “plan to be surprised” will yield the most insightful findings. When we asked one of our participants how his family regulated the house temperature, he replied, “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

During the research analysis, you start representing each individual with multiple Dynamic Selves, each “Self” representing one of the contexts you have investigated. 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, as our research focused on families and their lifestyle to understand their needs for thermal regulation, the important demographics were family type, number and nature of houses owned, economic status, and technological maturity. (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).

To capture exact quotes, interviews need to be video-recorded and notes need to be taken verbatim as much as possible. 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. Ideally, these photos should come directly from field research, but an evocative and representative image will work, too, as long as it’s realistic 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. Therefore, we portrayed him hiking with his little daughter. 

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 multiple cards about themselves.

4. Identify design opportunities

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. 

In our example project, there was a particularly interesting insight around the concept of humidity. 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 highlighted a big opportunity for our client to educate users on this concept and become 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. In our thermostat project, we have come to know one of the participants, Davide, as a boyfriend, dog-lover, and tech enthusiast. 

Davide is an individual we might have once reduced to a persona called “tech enthusiast.” But we can have tech enthusiasts who have families or are single, who are rich or poor. 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 use your understanding of him to infer what he would think and do in the contexts (or scenarios) that you design for.

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 important because our empathy for people is affected by scale: the bigger the group, the harder 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 inventing details to make the character more “realistic,” no more unnecessary additional bias. It’s simply how this person is in real life. In fact, in our experience, personas quickly become nothing more than a name in our priority guides and prototype screens, as we all know that 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.

And finally, real people in their specific contexts are a better basis for anecdotal storytelling and therefore are more effective in persuasion. Documentation of real research is essential in achieving this result. It adds weight and urgency behind your design arguments: “When I met Alessandra, the conditions of her workplace struck me. 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

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

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. Portray those, use them to describe the person in their multiple 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 move away from fiction, and embrace reality—in its messy, surprising, and unquantifiable beauty—as our guide and inspiration.

Are you like me, reading about people fading away as they burn out, and feeling unable to relate? Do you feel like your feelings are invisible to the world because you’re experiencing burnout differently? When burnout starts to push down on us, our core comes through more. Beautiful, peaceful souls get quieter and fade into that distant and distracted burnout we’ve all read about. But some of us, those with fires always burning on the edges of our core, get hotter. In my heart I am fire. When I face burnout I double down, triple down, burning hotter and hotter to try to best the challenge. I don’t fade—I am engulfed in a zealous burnout. 

So what on earth is a zealous burnout?

Imagine a woman determined to do it all. She has two amazing children whom she, along with her husband who is also working remotely, is homeschooling during a pandemic. She has a demanding client load at work—all of whom she loves. She gets up early to get some movement in (or often catch up on work), does dinner prep as the kids are eating breakfast, and gets to work while positioning herself near “fourth grade” to listen in as she juggles clients, tasks, and budgets. Sound like a lot? Even with a supportive team both at home and at work, it is. 

Sounds like this woman has too much on her plate and needs self-care. But no, she doesn’t have time for that. In fact, she starts to feel like she’s dropping balls. Not accomplishing enough. There’s not enough of her to be here and there; she is trying to divide her mind in two all the time, all day, every day. She starts to doubt herself. And as those feelings creep in more and more, her internal narrative becomes more and more critical.

Suddenly she KNOWS what she needs to do! She should DO MORE. 

This is a hard and dangerous cycle. Know why? Because once she doesn’t finish that new goal, that narrative will get worse. Suddenly she’s failing. She isn’t doing enough. SHE is not enough. She might fail, she might fail her family…so she’ll find more she should do. She doesn’t sleep as much, move as much, all in the efforts to do more. Caught in this cycle of trying to prove herself to herself, never reaching any goal. Never feeling “enough.” 

So, yeah, that’s what zealous burnout looks like for me. It doesn’t happen overnight in some grand gesture but instead slowly builds over weeks and months. My burning out process looks like speeding up, not a person losing focus. I speed up and up and up…and then I just stop.

I am the one who could

It’s funny the things that shape us. Through the lens of childhood, I viewed the fears, struggles, and sacrifices of someone who had to make it all work without having enough. I was lucky that my mother was so resourceful and my father supportive; I never went without and even got an extra here or there. 

Growing up, I did not feel shame when my mother paid with food stamps; in fact, I’d have likely taken on any debate on the topic, verbally eviscerating anyone who dared to criticize the disabled woman trying to make sure all our needs were met with so little. As a child, I watched the way the fear of not making those ends meet impacted people I love. As the non-disabled person in my home, I would take on many of the physical tasks because I was “the one who could” make our lives a little easier. I learned early to associate fears or uncertainty with putting more of myself into it—I am the one who can. I learned early that when something frightens me, I can double down and work harder to make it better. I can own the challenge. When people have seen this in me as an adult, I’ve been told I seem fearless, but make no mistake, I’m not. If I seem fearless, it’s because this behavior was forged from other people’s fears. 

And here I am, more than 30 years later still feeling the urge to mindlessly push myself forward when faced with overwhelming tasks ahead of me, assuming that I am the one who can and therefore should. I find myself driven to prove that I can make things happen if I work longer hours, take on more responsibility, and do more. 

I do not see people who struggle financially as failures, because I have seen how strong that tide can be—it pulls you along the way. I truly get that I have been privileged to be able to avoid many of the challenges that were present in my youth. That said, I am still “the one who can” who feels she should, so if I were faced with not having enough to make ends meet for my own family, I would see myself as having failed. Though I am supported and educated, most of this is due to good fortune. I will, however, allow myself the arrogance of saying I have been careful with my choices to have encouraged that luck. My identity stems from the idea that I am “the one who can” so therefore feel obligated to do the most. I can choose to stop, and with some quite literal cold water splashed in my face, I’ve made the choice to before. But that choosing to stop is not my go-to; I move forward, driven by a fear that is so a part of me that I barely notice it’s there until I’m feeling utterly worn away.

So why all the history? You see, burnout is a fickle thing. I have heard and read a lot about burnout over the years. Burnout is real. Especially now, with COVID, many of us are balancing more than we ever have before—all at once! It’s hard, and the procrastinating, the avoidance, the shutting down impacts so many amazing professionals. There are important articles that relate to what I imagine must be the majority of people out there, but not me. That’s not what my burnout looks like.

The dangerous invisibility of zealous burnout

A lot of work environments see the extra hours, extra effort, and overall focused commitment as an asset (and sometimes that’s all it is). They see someone trying to rise to challenges, not someone stuck in their fear. Many well-meaning organizations have safeguards in place to protect their teams from burnout. But in cases like this, those alarms are not always tripped, and then when the inevitable stop comes, some members of the organization feel surprised and disappointed. And sometimes maybe even betrayed. 

Parents—more so mothers, statistically speaking—are praised as being so on top of it all when they can work, be involved in the after-school activities, practice self-care in the form of diet and exercise, and still meet friends for coffee or wine. During COVID many of us have binged countless streaming episodes showing how it’s so hard for the female protagonist, but she is strong and funny and can do it. It’s a “very special episode” when she breaks down, cries in the bathroom, woefully admits she needs help, and just stops for a bit. Truth is, countless people are hiding their tears or are doom-scrolling to escape. We know that the media is a lie to amuse us, but often the perception that it’s what we should strive for has penetrated much of society.

Women and burnout

I love men. And though I don’t love every man (heads up, I don’t love every woman or nonbinary person either), I think there is a beautiful spectrum of individuals who represent that particular binary gender. 

That said, women are still more often at risk of burnout than their male counterparts, especially in these COVID stressed times. Mothers in the workplace feel the pressure to do all the “mom” things while giving 110%. Mothers not in the workplace feel they need to do more to “justify” their lack of traditional employment. Women who are not mothers often feel the need to do even more because they don’t have that extra pressure at home. It’s vicious and systemic and so a part of our culture that we’re often not even aware of the enormity of the pressures we put on ourselves and each other. 

And there are prices beyond happiness too. Harvard Health Publishing released a study a decade ago that “uncovered strong links between women’s job stress and cardiovascular disease.” The CDC noted, “Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, killing 299,578 women in 2017—or about 1 in every 5 female deaths.” 

This relationship between work stress and health, from what I have read, is more dangerous for women than it is for their non-female counterparts.

But what if your burnout isn’t like that either?

That might not be you either. After all, each of us is so different and how we respond to stressors is too. It’s part of what makes us human. Don’t stress what burnout looks like, just learn to recognize it in yourself. Here are a few questions I sometimes ask friends if I am concerned about them.

Are you happy? This simple question should be the first thing you ask yourself. Chances are, even if you’re burning out doing all the things you love, as you approach burnout you’ll just stop taking as much joy from it all.

Do you feel empowered to say no? I have observed in myself and others that when someone is burning out, they no longer feel they can say no to things. Even those who don’t “speed up” feel pressure to say yes to not disappoint the people around them.

What are three things you’ve done for yourself? Another observance is that we all tend to stop doing things for ourselves. Anything from skipping showers and eating poorly to avoiding talking to friends. These can be red flags. 

Are you making excuses? Many of us try to disregard feelings of burnout. Over and over I have heard, “It’s just crunch time,” “As soon as I do this one thing, it will all be better,” and “Well I should be able to handle this, so I’ll figure it out.” And it might really be crunch time, a single goal, and/or a skill set you need to learn. That happens—life happens. BUT if this doesn’t stop, be honest with yourself. If you’ve worked more 50-hour weeks since January than not, maybe it’s not crunch time—maybe it’s a bad situation that you’re burning out from.

Do you have a plan to stop feeling this way? If something is truly temporary and you do need to just push through, then it has an exit route with a
defined end.

Take the time to listen to yourself as you would a friend. Be honest, allow yourself to be uncomfortable, and break the thought cycles that prevent you from healing. 

So now what?

What I just described is a different path to burnout, but it’s still burnout. There are well-established approaches to working through burnout:

• Get enough sleep.
• Eat healthy.
• Work out.
• Get outside.
• Take a break.
• Overall, practice self-care.

Those are hard for me because they feel like more tasks. If I’m in the burnout cycle, doing any of the above for me feels like a waste. The narrative is that if I’m already failing, why would I take care of myself when I’m dropping all those other balls? People need me, right? 

If you’re deep in the cycle, your inner voice might be pretty awful by now. If you need to, tell yourself you need to take care of the person your people depend on. If your roles are pushing you toward burnout, use them to help make healing easier by justifying the time spent working on you. 

To help remind myself of the airline attendant message about putting the mask on yourself first, I have come up with a few things that I do when I start feeling myself going into a zealous burnout.

Cook an elaborate meal for someone! 

OK, I am a “food-focused” individual so cooking for someone is always my go-to. There are countless tales in my home of someone walking into the kitchen and turning right around and walking out when they noticed I was “chopping angrily.” But it’s more than that, and you should give it a try. Seriously. It’s the perfect go-to if you don’t feel worthy of taking time for yourself—do it for someone else. Most of us work in a digital world, so cooking can fill all of your senses and force you to be in the moment with all the ways you perceive the world. It can break you out of your head and help you gain a better perspective. In my house, I’ve been known to pick a place on the map and cook food that comes from wherever that is (thank you, Pinterest). I love cooking Indian food, as the smells are warm, the bread needs just enough kneading to keep my hands busy, and the process takes real attention for me because it’s not what I was brought up making. And in the end, we all win!

Vent like a foul-mouthed fool

Be careful with this one! 

I have been making an effort to practice more gratitude over the past few years, and I recognize the true benefits of that. That said, sometimes you just gotta let it all out—even the ugly. Hell, I’m a big fan of not sugarcoating our lives, and that sometimes means that to get past the big pile of poop, you’re gonna wanna complain about it a bit. 

When that is what’s needed, turn to a trusted friend and allow yourself some pure verbal diarrhea, saying all the things that are bothering you. You need to trust this friend not to judge, to see your pain, and, most importantly, to tell you to remove your cranium from your own rectal cavity. Seriously, it’s about getting a reality check here! One of the things I admire the most about my husband (though often after the fact) is his ability to break things down to their simplest. “We’re spending our lives together, of course you’re going to disappoint me from time to time, so get over it” has been his way of speaking his dedication, love, and acceptance of me—and I could not be more grateful. It also, of course, has meant that I needed to remove my head from that rectal cavity. So, again, usually those moments are appreciated in hindsight.

Pick up a book! 

There are many books out there that aren’t so much self-help as they are people just like you sharing their stories and how they’ve come to find greater balance. Maybe you’ll find something that speaks to you. Titles that have stood out to me include:

• Thrive by Arianna Huffington
• Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
• Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis
• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Or, another tactic I love to employ is to read or listen to a book that has NOTHING to do with my work-life balance. I’ve read the following books and found they helped balance me out because my mind was pondering their interesting topics instead of running in circles:

• The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart
• Superlife by Darin Olien
• A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford
• Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway 

If you’re not into reading, pick up a topic on YouTube or choose a podcast to subscribe to. I’ve watched countless permaculture and gardening topics in addition to how to raise chickens and ducks. For the record, I do not have a particularly large food garden, nor do I own livestock of any kind…yet. I just find the topic interesting, and it has nothing to do with any aspect of my life that needs anything from me.

Forgive yourself 

You are never going to be perfect—hell, it would be boring if you were. It’s OK to be broken and flawed. It’s human to be tired and sad and worried. It’s OK to not do it all. It’s scary to be imperfect, but you cannot be brave if nothing were scary.

This last one is the most important: allow yourself permission to NOT do it all. You never promised to be everything to everyone at all times. We are more powerful than the fears that drive us. 

This is hard. It is hard for me. It’s what’s driven me to write this—that it’s OK to stop. It’s OK that your unhealthy habit that might even benefit those around you needs to end. You can still be successful in life.

I recently read that we are all writing our eulogy in how we live. Knowing that your professional accomplishments won’t be mentioned in that speech, what will yours say? What do you want it to say? 

Look, I get that none of these ideas will “fix it,” and that’s not their purpose. None of us are in control of our surroundings, only how we respond to them. These suggestions are to help stop the spiral effect so that you are empowered to address the underlying issues and choose your response. They are things that work for me most of the time. Maybe they’ll work for you.

Does this sound familiar? 

If this sounds familiar, it’s not just you. Don’t let your negative self-talk tell you that you “even burn out wrong.” It’s not wrong. Even if rooted in fear like my own drivers, I believe that this need to do more comes from a place of love, determination, motivation, and other wonderful attributes that make you the amazing person you are. We’re going to be OK, ya know. The lives that unfold before us might never look like that story in our head—that idea of “perfect” or “done” we’re looking for, but that’s OK. Really, when we stop and look around, usually the only eyes that judge us are in the mirror. 

Do you remember that Winnie the Pooh sketch that had Pooh eat so much at Rabbit’s house that his buttocks couldn’t fit through the door? Well, I already associate a lot with Rabbit, so it came as no surprise when he abruptly declared that this was unacceptable. But do you recall what happened next? He put a shelf across poor Pooh’s ankles and decorations on his back, and made the best of the big butt in his kitchen. 

At the end of the day we are resourceful and know that we are able to push ourselves if we need to—even when we are tired to our core or have a big butt of fluff ‘n’ stuff in our room. None of us has to be afraid, as we can manage any obstacle put in front of us. And maybe that means we will need to redefine success to allow space for being uncomfortably human, but that doesn’t really sound so bad either. 

So, wherever you are right now, please breathe. Do what you need to do to get out of your head. Forgive and take care.

One of the most powerful smooth abilities we have at our disposal is the ability to work together to improve our designs while developing our own abilities and perspectives, regardless of how it is used or what it might be called.

Feedback is also one of the most underestimated equipment, and generally by assuming that we’re now great at it, we settle, forgetting that it’s a skill that can be trained, grown, and improved. Bad feedback can cause conflict in jobs, lower motivation, and negatively impact faith and teamwork over the long term. A revolutionary force may be quality feedback.

Practicing our knowledge is absolutely a good way to enhance, but the learning gets yet faster when it’s paired with a good base that programs and focuses the exercise. What are some fundamental components of providing effective opinions? And how can input be changed for workplaces where workers are located and distributed?

On the web, we may discover a long history of sequential suggestions: from the early weeks of open source, script was shared and discussed on email addresses. Developers and sprint masters discuss draw requests, designers make comments on their beloved design tools, and other things.

Design criticism is frequently referred to as a form of collaborative suggestions that is used to improve our work. So it shares a lot of the rules with comments in public, but it also has some variations.

The information

The content of the feedback is the basis of every effective criticism, so where do we need to begin? There are many designs that you can use to form your content. This one from Lara Hogan is the one I privately like best because it’s obvious and actionable.

This formula is typically used to provide feedback to people, but it also fits really well in a pattern criticism because it finally addresses one of the main inquiries that we work on: What? Where? Why? How? Imagine that you’re giving some comments about some pattern function that spans several screens, like an onboard movement: there are some pages shown, a stream blueprint, and an outline of the decisions made. You notice a flaw in the situation. You’ll have a mental model that will enable you to be more accurate and effective if you keep in mind the three components of the equation.

Here is a comment that could be given as a part of some feedback, and it might look reasonable at a first glance: it seems to superficially fulfill the elements in the equation. Does it, though?

Concerning the buttons ‘ styles and hierarchy, it seems off. Can you change them?

Observation for design feedback doesn’t just mean pointing out which area of the interface your feedback touches, but it also means offering a perspective that’s as specific as possible. Do you offer the user’s viewpoint? Your expert perspective? From a business perspective? From the perspective of the project manager? A first-time user’s perspective?

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back.

Impact is about the why. Just pointing out a UI element might sometimes be enough if the issue may be obvious, but more often than not, you should add an explanation of what you’re pointing out.

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow.

By provoking the designer’s critical thinking while receiving the feedback, the question approach is intended to provide open guidance. Notably, Lara’s equation includes a second approach: request, which instead provides instructions for a particular solution. While that’s a viable option for feedback in general, for design critiques, in my experience, defaulting to the question approach usually reaches the best solutions because designers are generally more comfortable in being given an open space to explore.

For the question approach, the difference between the two can be demonstrated as an illustration:

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Would it make sense to unify them?

Or, for the request approach:

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same pair of forward and back buttons.

In some situations, it might be helpful to include an additional reason why: why you think the suggestion is better.

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.

Choosing the question or the request approach may also sometimes be a matter of personal preference. I did rounds of anonymous feedback and reviewed feedback with other people before putting a lot of effort into improving it a while ago. After a few rounds of this work and a year later, I got a positive response: my feedback came across as effective and grounded. until I switched companies. Surprise surprise, my next round of criticism from a specific person wasn’t very positive. The reason is that I had previously tried not to be prescriptive in my advice—because the people who I was previously working with preferred the open-ended question format over the request style of suggestions. However, there was a member of this other team who preferred specific guidance. So I modified my feedback to include requests.

One comment that I heard come up a few times is that this kind of feedback is quite long, and it doesn’t seem very efficient. No, but also yes. Let’s look at both sides.

No, this style of feedback is actually efficient because the length here is a byproduct of clarity, and spending time giving this kind of feedback can provide exactly enough information for a good fix. Additionally, if we zoom out, it may lessen misunderstandings and back-and-forth conversations in the future, thereby increasing overall effectiveness and efficiency of collaboration beyond the single comment. Consider the example above where the feedback would be simply” Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons.” The designer receiving this feedback wouldn’t have much to go by, so they might just apply the change. The interface might change in later iterations or new features might be introduced, and perhaps the change won’t make sense anymore. Without explaining the why, the designer might assume that the change is one of consistency, but what if it wasn’t? So there could now be an underlying concern that changing the buttons would be perceived as a regression.

Yes, this type of feedback is not always effective because some comments don’t always need to be thorough, some times because some changes may be obvious ( the font used doesn’t follow our guidelines ), and others because the team may have a lot of internal knowledge, making some of the whys may be implied.

Therefore, the above equation serves as a mnemonic to reflect and enhance the practice rather than a strict template for feedback. Even after years of active work on my critiques, I still from time to time go back to this formula and reflect on whether what I just wrote is effective.

The atmosphere

Feedback forms the basis for well-developed content, but that’s not really enough. The soft skills of the person who’s providing the critique can multiply the likelihood that the feedback will be well received and understood. It has been demonstrated that only positive feedback can lead to sustained change in people, and tone alone can determine whether content is rejected or welcomed.

Tone is crucial to work on because our goal is to be understood and create a positive working environment. Over the years, I’ve tried to summarize the required soft skills in a formula that mirrors the one for content: the receptivity equation.

Respectful feedback comes across as grounded, solid, and constructive. It’s the kind of feedback that, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative, is viewed as useful and fair.

Timing refers to when the feedback happens. If given at the wrong time, to-the-point feedback has little chance of receiving well. When a new feature’s entire high-level information architecture is about to go live, it might still be relevant if the questioning raises a significant blocker that no one saw, but those concerns are much more likely to have to wait for a later revision. So in general, attune your feedback to the stage of the project. Iteration in the morning? Iteration that was later? Polishing work in progress? Each of these has unique needs. The ideal setting will increase the likelihood that your feedback will be appreciated.

Attitude is the equivalent of intent, and in the context of person-to-person feedback, it can be referred to as radical candor. That entails checking before writing to see if what we have in mind will actually help the person and improve the project overall. Perhaps we don’t want to admit that we don’t really appreciate that person when we reflect on them. Hopefully that’s not the case, but that can happen, and that’s okay. How would I write if I really cared about them, if you could help you make up for it? How can I stop acting aggressively? How can I be more constructive?

Form is important in multicultural and cross-cultural workplaces because having excellent writing, perfect timing, and the right attitude might not be as effective if the writing style leads to miscommunications. There could be many reasons for this, including the fact that occasionally certain words may cause specific reactions, that nonnative speakers may not be able to comprehend all thenuances of some sentences, that our brains may be different and that our world may be perceived differently; hence, neurodiversity must be taken into account. Whatever the reason, it’s important to review not just what we write but how.

A few years ago, I asked for some suggestions for how to give feedback. I was given some sound advice, but I also got a surprise comment. They pointed out that when I wrote” Oh, ]… ]”, I made them feel stupid. That’s not what I meant to say! I just realized that I had been giving them feedback for months and that I had always made them feel foolish. I was horrified … but also thankful. I quickly changed my spelling mistake by adding “oh” to my list of replaced words (your choice between aText, TextExpander, or others ) so that when I typed “oh,” it was immediately deleted.

Something to keep in mind because it’s quite common, especially in teams with a strong group spirit, is that people frequently beat around the bush. It’s important to remember here that a positive attitude doesn’t mean going light on the feedback—it just means that even when you provide hard, difficult, or challenging feedback, you do so in a way that’s respectful and constructive. You can help someone grow the best way you can.

Giving feedback in written form can be reviewed by someone else who isn’t directly involved, which can help to reduce or eliminate any bias that might exist. I found that the best, most insightful moments for me have happened when I’ve shared a comment and I’ve asked someone who I highly trusted,” How does this sound”?,” How can I do it better”, and even” How would you have written it” ?—and I’ve learned a lot by seeing the two versions side by side.

The format

Asynchronous feedback also has a significant inherent benefit: we can devote more time to making sure that the suggestions ‘ clarity of communication and actionability fulfill two main objectives.

Let’s imagine that someone shared a design iteration for a project. You are commenting on it while reviewing it. There are many ways to accomplish this, and context is of course important, but let’s try to think about some things that might be worthwhile to take into account.

In terms of clarity, start by grounding the critique that you’re about to give by providing context. This includes specifically describing where you’re coming from: do you have a thorough understanding of the project, or is this your first time seeing it? Are you bringing in a high-level perspective, or are you just learning the ins and outs? Are there regressions? Which user’s point of view do you consider when providing feedback? Is the design iteration at the point where it would be acceptable to ship this, or are there important issues that need to be addressed first?

Providing context is helpful even if you’re sharing feedback within a team that already has some information on the project. And context is a must when providing cross-team feedback. If I were to review a design that might be directly related to my work, I would say that, underlining my opinion as external, and if I had no idea how the project might have come to that conclusion.

We often focus on the negatives, trying to outline all the things that could be done better. That’s obviously important, but it’s even more crucial to concentrate on the positives, especially if you saw improvement in the previous iteration. Although this may seem superfluous, it’s important to keep in mind that design is a field with hundreds of possible solutions for each problem. So pointing out that the design solution that was chosen is good and explaining why it’s good has two major benefits: it confirms that the approach taken was solid, and it helps to ground your negative feedback. Sharing positive feedback can help prevent regressions in things that are going well because those things will have been deemed significant in the long run. Positive feedback can also help to lessen impostor syndrome as an added bonus.

There’s one powerful approach that combines both context and a focus on the positives: frame how the design is better than the status quo ( compared to a previous iteration, competitors, or benchmarks ) and why, and then on that foundation, you can add what could be improved. There is a significant difference between a critique of a design that is already in good shape and one that isn’t quite there yet.

Depersonalizing your feedback is another way to make it better: it should never be about the creator of the piece of art. It’s” This button isn’t well aligned” versus” You haven’t aligned this button well”. This can be changed in your writing very quickly by reviewing it just before sending.

One of the best ways to assist the designer who is reading through your feedback in terms of actionability is to divide it into bullet points or paragraphs, which are easier to review and analyze one by one. For longer pieces of feedback, you might also consider splitting it into sections or even across multiple comments. Of course, it’s also possible to include screenshots or indicators for the specific area of the interface you’re referring to.

Emojis have been a method I’ve personally used to enhance the bullet points in some situations. So a red square � � means that it’s something that I consider blocking, a yellow diamond � � is something that I can be convinced otherwise, but it seems to me that it should be changed, and a green circle � � is a detailed, positive confirmation. A blue spiral is also used for either an exploration, an open alternative, or just a note for something I’m not sure about. However, I’d only use this strategy on teams where I’ve already established a high level of trust because the impact could be quite demoralizing if I had to deliver a lot of red squares, and I’d change how I’d communicate that a little.

Let’s see how this would work by reusing the example that we used earlier as the first bullet point in this list:

• 🔶 Navigation—When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.
• Overall, I believe the page is strong, and this is a good candidate for a version 1. 1.0 release.
• � � Metrics—Good improvement in the buttons on the metrics area, the improved contrast and new focus style make them more accessible.
• Button Style: Using the green accent in this context, which conveys a positive action because green is typically seen as a confirmation color. Do we need to look for a different color?
• 🔶Tiles—Given the number of items on the page, and the overall page hierarchy, it seems to me that the tiles shouldn’t be using the Subtitle 1 style but the Subtitle 2 style. This will maintain consistency in the visual hierarchy.
• Background: Using a light texture is effective, but I’m not sure if doing so will cause too much noise on this kind of page. What is the thinking in using that?

What about using Figma or another design tool that enables in-place feedback to provide feedback directly? These are generally difficult to use because they conceal discussions and are harder to follow, but in the right setting, they can be very effective. Just make sure that each of the comments is separate so that it’s easier to match each discussion to a single task, similar to the idea of splitting mentioned above.

One last word: avoid the obvious. Sometimes we might feel that something is clearly right or wrong, and we don’t say it. Or sometimes we might have a doubt that we don’t express because the question might sound stupid. Say it, that’s fine. Don’t hold it back, though. You might have to reword it a little to make the reader feel more at ease. Good feedback is transparent, even when it may be obvious.

Another benefit of asynchronous feedback is that written feedback automatically monitors decisions. Why did we do this, especially in large projects? could be a question that pops up from time to time, and there’s nothing better than open, transparent discussions that can be reviewed at any time. I advise using software to prevent these discussions from being hidden after they have been resolved for this reason.

Content, tone, and format. Each one of these subjects provides a useful model, but working to improve eight areas—observation, impact, question, timing, attitude, form, clarity, and actionability—is a lot of work to put in all at once. One way to take them one by one is to first identify the area you most need from both your own perspective and feedback from others. Then the second, followed by the third, and so on. At first you’ll have to put in extra time for every piece of feedback that you give, but after a while, it’ll become second nature, and your impact on the work will multiply.

Thanks to Mike Shelton and Brie Anne Demkiw for their contributions to the initial draft of this article.