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I am imaginative. What I do is alchemy. It is a secret. I prefer to let it be done through me rather than through me.

I have a creative side. Certainly all creative people approve of this brand. Not all people see themselves in this manner. Some innovative people practice technology in their work. I honor their assertion, which is true. Perhaps I also have a little bit of fear for them. However, my thinking and being are unique.

Apologizing and qualifying in progress is a diversion. That’s what my mind does to destroy me. I’ll leave it alone for today. I may come back later to make amends and define. After I’ve said what I originally said. which is difficult enough.

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

Sometimes it does. Maybe what I need to make arrives right away. When I say something at that time, I’ve learned not to say it because people often don’t work hard enough to acknowledge that the idea is the best idea even when you know it’s the best idea.

Maybe I work and work and work until the thought strikes me. Maybe it arrives right away and I don’t remind people for three weeks. Sometimes I blurt out the plan so quickly that I didn’t stop myself. like a child who discovered a prize in one of his Cracker Jacks. I occasionally manage to get away with this. Yes, that is the best idea, but maybe others disagree. The majority of the time, they don’t, and I regret that joy has faded.

Joy should only be saved for the meet, when it will matter. not the informal gathering that two different gatherings precede that meeting. Nobody understands why these discussions occur. We keep saying we’re getting rid of them, but we keep discovering new ways to get them. They occasionally yet excel. But occasionally they are a hindrance to the actual labor. Depending on what you do and where you do it, the ratio between when conferences are valuable and when they are a sad distraction vary. also who you are and what you do. I’ll go over it once more. I am imaginative. That is the design.

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

Don’t inquire about the procedure. I am imaginative.

I have a creative side. I have no power over my goals. And I have no control over my best tips.

I can nail ahead, fill in the blanks, or use images or information, which occasionally works. I can go for a move, which occasionally works. There is a Eureka that has nothing to do with sizzling fuel and flowing pots. I may be making dinner. I frequently have a plan for action when I wake up. The idea that may have saved me disappears almost as frequently as I become aware and a part of the world once more as a thoughtless wind of oblivion. For imagination, in my opinion, comes from that other planet. The one that we enter in goals, and possibly before and after death. But authors should be asking this, and I am not a writer. I am imaginative. And it’s for philosophers to build massive soldiers in their imaginative world that they claim to be true. But that is yet another diversion. And a sad one. Possibly on a much bigger issue than whether or not I am creative. But that’s not how I came around, though.

Often the result is evasion. And suffering. Do you know the designer who is tortured by the cliché? Even when the artist ( this place that noun in quotes ) attempts to write a sweet drink jingle, a call in a worn-out comedy, or a budget ask, it’s true.

Some individuals who detest being called artistic perhaps been closeted artists, but that’s between them and their gods. No offence here, that’s meant. Your wisdom is also true. But I should take care of me.

Designers are recognized as artists.

Disadvantages know cons, just like real rappers recognize actual rappers, just like queers recognize queers. People have a lot of regard for designers. We respect, follow, and nearly deify the excellent ones. Of course, it is horrible to revere any person. We’ve been given a warning. We are more knowledgeable. We are aware that people are really people. Because they are clay, like us, they squabble, they are depressed, they regret making the most important decisions, they are poor and hungry, they can be violent, and they can be as ridiculous as we can. But. But. However, they produce this incredible issue. They give birth to something that was unable to arise before them or otherwise. They are the inspirations of thought. And since it’s only lying there, I suppose I should add that they are the inventor’s parents. Bad mee backside! Okay, that’s all said and done. Continue.

Because we compare our personal small accomplishments to those of the great ones, artists denigrate them. Wonderful video I‘m not Miyazaki, so I‘m not. That is glory right then. That is glory straight out of the mouth of God. This meagre much creation that I made? It essentially fell off the back of the pumpkin truck. The carrots weren’t actually new, either.

Artists is aware that they are at best Some. Also Mozart’s original artists hold that opinion.

I have a creative side. In my hallucinations, my former innovative managers are the ones who judge me because I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 times. They are correct to do that. When it really matters, my brain goes flat because I am too lazy and complacent. There is no treatment for artistic mania.

I have a creative side. Every project I create has a goal that makes Indiana Jones appear to be a retiree snoring in a deck head. The more I pursue creativity, the faster I can finish my work, and the longer I brood and circle and gaze blankly before I can finish that work.

I can move ten times more quickly than those who aren’t creative, those who have just been creative for a short while, and those who have only been creative for a short time in their careers. Only that I spend twice as long as they do putting the job away before I work ten times as quickly as they do. When I put my mind to it, I am so confident in my ability to do a fantastic work. I have an addiction to the delay hurry. I also have a fear of the climb.

I am hardly a painter.

I have a creative side. never a performer. Though as a child, I had a dream that I would one day become that. Some of us like and criticize our talents because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. At least we aren’t in elections, which is narcissism.

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

I have a creative side. Every term I’ve said these may irritate another artists who have different viewpoints. Ask two artists a topic and find three opinions. Our dispute, our interest in it, and our responsibility to our own wisdom, at least in my opinion, are the proof that we are creative, no matter how we does think about it.

I have a creative side. I lament my lack of taste in almost all of the areas of human understanding that I know very little about. And I put my ego before everything else in the places that are most important to me, or perhaps more precisely, to my passions. Without my passions, I may probably have to spend time staring living in the eye, which almost none of us can do for very long. No seriously. Actually, no. Because a lot of career is intolerable if you really look at it.

I have a creative side. I think that when I leave, a small portion of me will stay in someone else’s head, just like a family does.

Working frees me from worrying about my job.

I have a creative side. I fear that my little product will disappear.

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

I have a creative side. I think that method is the greatest secret. I think I have to consider it so strongly that I actually made the foolish decision to publish an essay I wrote without having to go through or edit. I swear I didn’t accomplish this frequently. But I did it right away because I was even more frightened of forgetting what I was saying because I was afraid of you seeing through my sad movements toward the wonderful.

There. I believe I said it correctly.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes … and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m just trying to contradict what he’s saying, but I’m just trying to give some context to initiatives and opportunities where AI can make a difference for people with disability. To be clear, I want to take some time to talk about what’s possible in hope that we’ll find it one day. There are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday.

Other words

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

As Joe points out, far word authoring by human-in-the-loop should definitely be a thing. And if AI can intervene and provide a starting point for alt text, even if the swift reads,” What is this BS?” That’s not correct at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that’s a gain.

If we can specifically teach a design to consider image usage in context, it might be able to help us more swiftly distinguish between images that are likely to be attractive and those that are more descriptive. That will clarify which situations require image descriptions, and it will increase authors ‘ effectiveness in making their sites more visible.

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

• Perform more people use have telephones or smartphones?
• How many more?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these containers?
• How many people are that?

For a moment, the chance to learn more about graphics and data in this way could be innovative for people who are blind and low vision as well as for those with various types of color blindness, cognitive impairments, and other issues. Putting aside the challenges of large language model ( LLM) hallucinations, where a model only makes up plausible-sounding “facts,” It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

What if you could ask your browser to make a complicated chart simpler? What if you asked it to separate a single line from a line graph? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you could ask it to switch colors for patterns? That seems like a possibility given the chat-based interfaces and our current ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools.

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

Matching algorithms

When Safiya Umoja Noble chose to call her book Algorithms of Oppression, she hit the nail on the head. Although her book focused on how search engines can foster racism, I believe it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to foster conflict, prejudice, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. Many of these are the result of a lack of diversity in the people who create and build them. However, when these platforms are built with inclusive features in mind, there is real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.

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

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

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

Other ways that AI can assist people with disabilities

I’m sure I could go on and on about using AI to assist people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round if I weren’t trying to put this together in between other tasks. In no particular order:

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

The importance of diverse teams and data

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

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you include information about disabilities that has been written by people with a variety of disabilities in the training data.

Want a model that uses ableist language without using it? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. Despite this, AI models won’t soon replace human copy editors when it comes to sensitivity reading.

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

I have no doubts about how dangerous AI can and will be for people today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the world. However, I also think we should acknowledge this and make thoughtful, thoughtful, and intentional changes to our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

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

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

How we got below

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

the development of online requirements

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

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

These new methods, requirements, and systems greatly boosted the sector’s growth. Web style flourished as creators and designers explored more different styles and designs. However, we also relied heavily on numerous exploits. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes ( such as rounded or angled corners ) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks ). All kinds of nested floats or absolute positioning ( or both ) were necessary for complicated layouts. Display and photo substitute for specialty styles was a great start toward varying the designs from the big five, but both tricks introduced convenience and efficiency issues. Additionally, JavaScript libraries made it simple to add a dash of interaction to pages without having to spend the money to double or even quadruple the download size for basic websites.

The web as software platform

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

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

This fusion of potent mobile devices and potent development tools contributed to the growth of social media and other centralized tools for people to use and interact with. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media provided connections on a global scale, with both positive and negative outcomes.

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

Where we are now

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

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

We can now prototype almost any idea with just a few commands and a few lines of code. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. However, the upfront cost these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes down as the maintenance and upgrading they become a part of our technical debt.

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

Where do we go from here?

Hacks of today help to shape standards for the future. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks —for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we refuse to acknowledge that they are hacks or when we choose not to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go ahead and create.

As designers and developers for the web ( and beyond ), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s give everything we produce a positive vibe by infusing our values into everything we do. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then distribute it, improve it, re-use it, or create something new with it. Learn. Make. Share. grow. Rinse and repeat. Everything will change whenever you believe you have mastered the web.

The personalization space is true, between the dream of getting it right and the worry of it going wrong ( like when we encounter “persofails” similar to a company’s repeated pleas for more toilet seats from regular people ). It’s an particularly confusing place to be a modern professional without a map, a map, or a strategy.

There are no Lonely Planet and some tour guides for those of you who want to personalize because powerful customisation is so dependent on each group’s talent, technology, and market position.

But you can ensure that your group has packed its bags rationally.

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

It’s known as prepersonalization.

Behind the song

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

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

How do you decide where to position customisation wagers? How do you design regular interactions that didn’t journey up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve found that for many well-known budgeted programs to support their continued investments, they initially required one or more workshops to join vital technologies users and stakeholders. Make it matter.

We’ve witnessed the same evolution up near with our clients, from big tech to burgeoning companies. In our experience with working on small and large customisation efforts, a program’s best monitor record—and its capacity to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and manage its design and engineering efforts—turns on how successfully these prepersonalization activities play out.

Effective workshops consistently save time, money, and overall well-being by separating successful future endeavors from unsuccessful ones.

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

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

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

Set the timer for your kitchen.

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The evaluation activities that we suggest including can ( and frequently do ) last for weeks. For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Here are a summary of our broad approach and information on the most crucial first-day activities.

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

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

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

Kickstart: Apt your appetite

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

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

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

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

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

Each team member should decide where they would like to place your company’s emphasis on your product or service. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. Here, the goal is to show how various departments may view their own benefits from the effort, which can vary from one department to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

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

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

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

Hit that test kitchen

Next, let’s take a look at what you’ll need to create personalization recipes. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. They give you a variety of options for how your organization can conduct its activities because of their broad and potent capabilities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

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

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

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

Verify your ingredients

Like a good product manager, you’ll make sure you have everything ready to cook up your desired interaction ( or figure out what needs to be added to your pantry ) and that you validate with the right stakeholders present. These ingredients include the audience that you’re targeting, content and design elements, the context for the interaction, and your measure for how it’ll come together.

This is not just about identifying needs. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team:

1. compare findings to a common method for developing features, similar to how artists paint with the same color palette,
2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar,
3. and establish parity between all important performance indicators and performance metrics.

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

Create a recipe.

What ingredients are important to you? Consider the construct “what-what-when-why”

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

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

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

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

We’ve also found that cocreating the recipes themselves can sometimes be the most effective way to start brainstorming about what these cards might be for your organization. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

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

Better architecture is necessary for better kitchens.

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

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

You can withstand the heat without a doubt.

Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a deliberate and cooperative approach will produce the desired outcome. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, head to the test kitchen to save time, preserve job security, and avoid imagining the creative concepts that come from the doers in your organization. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

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

Your time well spent is being able to assess your unique situation and digital skills, despite the associated costs associated with investing in this kind of technology and product design. Don’t squander it. The pudding is the proof, as they say.

I’ve been fascinated by movies 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 exciting activities. Yet my friends and I had movie ideas to make 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 to get the most out of customer studies, you must tell a compelling story that involves stakeholders, including the product team and decision-makers, and piques their interest in learning more.

Think of your favorite film. It more than likely follows a three-act narrative construction: the layout, the turmoil, 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 introduces the action. 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 structure, 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 study.

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 finances 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 lead some groups, but that approach can so easily miss the chance to solve people ‘ real issues. To be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. User study improves pattern. It keeps it on trail, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of the problems with your goods and taking action can help you be ahead of your competition.

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

Act one: layout

The rig consists entirely in comprehending the history, and that’s where basic research comes in. Basic research ( also called relational, discovery, or preliminary research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. You’re learning about the problems 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 cultural inquiries or journal studies ( or both! ), which can assist you in identifying both prospects and problems. It doesn’t need to get a great investment in time or money.

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

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

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 deficiencies. 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 maybe partners are now doing the same. Their business may lose money because users didn’t finish particular tasks, which may be their love. Or probably they do connect with people ‘ problems. In any case, action one serves as your main strategy to pique the interest and interest of the participants.

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

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

Act two: fight

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

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

There are parallels with storytelling here too, if you try to tell a story with too many characters, the plot may get lost. With fewer participants, each user’s struggles will be more easily recalled and shared with other parties when discussing 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 consider in-person usability tests like watching a movie as opposed to remote testing like attending a play. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Usability research in person is a much more valuable learning experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. Additionally, you’ll also hear their reactions in real-time, including surprises, disagreements, and discussions of 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 meet users at their location to conduct your research. With either option, you get to see how things work in context, things come up that wouldn’t have in a lab environment—and conversion can shift in entirely different directions. You have less control over how these sessions end as researchers, but this can occasionally help you understand users even better. Meeting users where they are can provide clues to the external forces that could be affecting how they use your product. Usability tests in person offer a level of detail that is frequently absent from remote testing.

That’s not to say that the “movies” —remote sessions—aren’t a good option. 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 access to a much wider user base geographically. 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 conducted remotely or in person. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Additionally, you can test your own hypotheses and determine whether your reasoning is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. The excitement centers on Act 2, but there are also potential surprises in that Act. This is equally true of usability tests. Unexpected things that participants say frequently alter the way you look at things, and these unexpected revelations can lead to unexpected turns in the narrative.

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. Usability testing is 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 raised.

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 in voiceover with some audience participation. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like given the things that the team has learned. They provide the stakeholders with their suggestions and direction for developing this vision.

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. The most effective presenters employ the same methods as great storytellers: By reaffirming the status quo and then revealing a better way, they create a conflict that needs to be resolved, writes Duarte. ” 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.

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 function to solve 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, hoped, the motivation to take those steps!

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 ). The plot begins here. 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 is the audience, as well. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users ‘ stories through research. 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 to everyone, and all parties must be interested in the conclusion.

I’ve lost count of the times when promising ideas go from being useless in a few days to being useless after working as a solution designer for too long to explain.

Financial items, which is the industry in which I work, are no exception. It’s tempting to put as many features at the ceiling as possible and expect something sticks because people’s true, hard-earned money is on the line, user expectations are high, and crowded market. However, this strategy is a formula for disaster. Why? How’s why:

The drawbacks of feature-first creation

It’s easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm of developing innovative features when you start developing a financial product from scratch or are migrating existing user journeys from papers or telephony channels to online bank or mobile applications. They may believe,” If I may only add one more thing that solves this particular person problem, they’ll enjoy me”! But what happens if you eventually encounter a roadblock as a result of your security team’s negligence? don’t like it, right? When a battle-tested film isn’t as well-known as you anticipated, or when it fails due to unforeseen difficulty?

The concept of Minimum Viable Product ( MVP ) comes into play in this context. Even if Jason Fried doesn’t usually refer to this concept, his book Getting Real and his radio Rework frequently discuss it. An MVP is a product that offers only enough significance to your users to keep them interested without becoming too hard or frustrating to use. Although the idea seems simple, it requires a razor-sharp eye, a ruthless edge, and the courage to stand up for your position because it is easy to fall for” the Columbo Effect” when there is always” just one more thing …” to add.

The issue with most funding apps is that they frequently turn out to be reflections of the company’s internal politics rather than an experience created exclusively for the customer. This implies that the priority should be given to delivering as many features and functionalities as possible in order to satisfy the requirements and wishes of competing internal departments as opposed to crafting a compelling value statement that is focused on what people in the real world actually want. These products may therefore quickly become a muddled mess of confusing, related, and finally unlovable client experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The significance of the foundation

What is a better strategy, then? How can we create items that are reliable, user-friendly, and most importantly, stick?

The concept of “bedrock” comes into play in this context. The mainstay of your product is really important to consumers, and Bedrock is that. It’s the fundamental building block that creates price and maintains relevance over time.

The core has to be in and around the standard servicing journeys in the world of retail bank, which is where I work. People only look at their existing account once every blue moon, but they do so daily. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their stability and pay their bill at least once a quarter.

The key is in identifying the main tasks that individuals want to complete and therefore persistently striving to make them simple, reliable, and trustworthy.

How can you reach the foundation, though? By focusing on the” MVP” strategy, giving ease the top priority, and working toward a distinct value proposition. This means avoiding unnecessary functions and putting your users first, and adding real value.

It also requires some nerve, as your coworkers might not always agree on your perspective right away. And in some cases, it might even mean making it clear to consumers that you won’t be coming over to their home to prepare their meal. Sometimes you may need to use the sporadic “opinionated user interface design” ( i .e. clunky workaround for edge cases ) to test a concept or to give yourself some room to work on something more crucial stuff.

Functional methods for creating stick-like economic items

What are the main learnings I’ve made from my own research and practice, then?

1. What trouble are you trying to solve first, and make a distinct “why”? For whom? Make sure your goal is unmistakable before beginning any work. Make certain it also complies with the goals of your business.
2. Avoid putting too many features on the list at again; instead, focus on getting that right first. Choose one that actually adds price, and work from that.
3. Give clarity the precedence it deserves over difficulty when it comes to financial products. Eliminate unwanted details and concentrate solely on what matters most.
4. Accept constant iteration as Bedrock is a powerful process rather than a set destination. Continuously collect customer feedback, improve your product, and work toward that foundational state.
5. Stop, look, and listen: Don’t just go through with testing your product as part of the delivery process; test it frequently in the field. Use it for yourself. Move the A/B testing. User opinions on Gatter. Speak to users and make adjustments accordingly.

The “bedrock dilemma”

Building towards rock implies sacrificing some short-term growth prospective in favor of long-term balance, which is an interesting paradox at play here. But the reward is worthwhile because products created with a concentrate on core will outlive and outperform their competitors and provide people with ongoing value over time.

How do you begin your quest for rock, then? Consider it gradually. Start by identifying the underlying factors that your customers actually care about. Focus on developing and improving a second, potent have that delivers real value. And most importantly, make an obsessive effort because, whatever you think, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker, you can’t deny it! The best way to foretell the future is to make it, he said.

Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.

This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.

The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work. 

The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.

The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).

But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.

When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.

The Nervous System: People & Psychology

Primary caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting role: Lead Designer

The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.

The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.

But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.

Design Manager tends to:

• Career conversations and growth planning
• Team psychological safety and dynamics
• Workload management and resource allocation
• Performance reviews and feedback systems
• Creating learning opportunities

Lead Designer supports by:

• Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
• Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
• Offering design mentorship and guidance
• Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges

The Muscular System: Craft & Execution

Primary caretaker: Lead Designer
Supporting role: Design Manager

The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.

The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of design standards and system usage
• Feedback on what design work meets the standard
• Experience direction for the product
• Design decisions and product-wide alignment
• Innovation and craft advancement

Design Manager supports by:

• Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
• Confirming experience direction is being followed
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• Facilitating design alignment across teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow

Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer

The circulatory system is about how information, decisions, and energy flow through the team. When this system is healthy, strategic direction is clear, priorities are aligned, and the team can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.

This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.

Lead Designer contributes:

• User needs are met by the product
• Overall product quality and experience
• Strategic design initiatives
• Research-based user needs for each initiative

Design Manager contributes:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Stakeholder management and alignment
• Cross-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both collaborate on:

• Co-creation of strategy with leadership
• Team goals and prioritization approach
• Organizational structure decisions
• Success measures and frameworks

Keeping the Organism Healthy

The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.

Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending

When you’re in a meeting about a design problem, it helps to acknowledge which system you’re primarily focused on. “I’m thinking about this from a team capacity perspective” (nervous system) or “I’m looking at this through the lens of user needs” (muscular system) gives everyone context for your input.

This isn’t about staying in your lane. It’s about being transparent as to which lens you’re using, so the other person knows how to best add their perspective.

Create Healthy Feedback Loops

The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:

Nervous system signals to muscular system: “The team is struggling with confidence in their design skills” → Lead Designer provides more craft coaching and clearer standards.

Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.

Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).

Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”

Stay Curious, Not Territorial

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.

This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

The Design Manager focuses only on the nervous system and ignores craft development. The Lead Designer focuses only on the muscular system and ignores team dynamics. Both people retreat to their comfort zones and stop collaborating.

The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.

The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.

Poor Circulation

Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.

The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.

The treatment: Remember that you’re both caretakers of the same organism. When one system fails, the whole team suffers. When both systems are healthy, the team thrives.

The Payoff

Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).

The Bottom Line

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.

The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.

So the next time you’re in that meeting room, wondering why two people are talking about the same problem from different angles, remember: you’re watching shared leadership in action. And if it’s working well, both the mind and body of your design team are getting stronger.

“Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a totally coherent system bound to context and behavior.” — Kenneth L. Pike

The web has accents. So should our design systems.

Design Systems as Living Languages

Design systems aren’t component libraries—they’re living languages. Tokens are phonemes, components are words, patterns are phrases, layouts are sentences. The conversations we build with users become the stories our products tell.

But here’s what we’ve forgotten: the more fluently a language is spoken, the more accents it can support without losing meaning. English in Scotland differs from English in Sydney, yet both are unmistakably English. The language adapts to context while preserving core meaning. This couldn’t be more obvious to me, a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who learned English with an American accent, and lives in Sydney.

Our design systems must work the same way. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.

Consistency becomes a prison

The promise of design systems was simple: consistent components would accelerate development and unify experiences. But as systems matured and products grew more complex, that promise has become a prison. Teams file “exception” requests by the hundreds. Products launch with workarounds instead of system components. Designers spend more time defending consistency than solving user problems.

Our design systems must learn to speak dialects.

A design dialect is a systematic adaptation of a design system that maintains core principles while developing new patterns for specific contexts. Unlike one-off customizations or brand themes, dialects preserve the system’s essential grammar while expanding its vocabulary to serve different users, environments, or constraints.

When Perfect Consistency Fails

At Booking.com, I learned this lesson the hard way. We A/B-tested everything—color, copy, button shapes, even logo colors. As a professional with a graphic design education and experience building brand style guides, I found this shocking. While everyone fell in love with Airbnb’s pristine design system, Booking grew into a giant without ever considering visual consistency.  

The chaos taught me something profound: consistency isn’t ROI; solved problems are.

At Shopify. Polaris () was our crown jewel—a mature design language perfect for merchants on laptops. As a product team, we were expected to adopt Polaris as-is. Then my fulfillment team hit an “Oh, Ship!” moment, as we faced the challenge of building an app for warehouse pickers using our interface on shared, battered Android scanners in dim aisles, wearing thick gloves, scanning dozens of items per minute, many with limited levels of English understanding.

Task completion with standard Polaris: 0%.

Every component that worked beautifully for merchants failed completely for pickers. White backgrounds created glare. 44px tap targets were invisible to gloved fingers. Sentence-case labels took too long to parse. Multi-step flows confused non-native speakers.

We faced a choice: abandon Polaris entirely, or teach it to speak warehouse.

The Birth of a Dialect

We chose evolution over revolution. Working within Polaris’s core principles—clarity, efficiency, consistency—we developed what we now call a design dialect:

Result: Task completion jumped from 0% to 100%. Onboarding time dropped from three weeks to one shift.

This wasn’t customization or theming—this was a dialect: a systematic adaptation that maintained Polaris’s core grammar while developing new vocabulary for a specific context. Polaris hadn’t failed; it had learned to speak warehouse.

The Flexibility Framework

At Atlassian, working on the Jira platform—itself a system within the larger Atlassian system—I pushed for formalizing this insight. With dozens of products sharing a design language across different codebases, we needed systematic flexibility so we built directly into our ways of working. The old model—exception requests and special approvals—was failing at scale.

We developed the Flexibility Framework to help designers define how flexible they wanted their components to be:

During a navigation redesign, we tiered every element. Logo and global search stayed Consistent. Breadcrumbs and contextual actions became Flexible. Product teams could immediately see where innovation was welcome and where consistency mattered.

The Decision Ladder

Flexibility needs boundaries. We created a simple ladder for evaluating when rules should bend:

Good: Ship with existing system components. Fast, consistent, proven.

Better: Stretch a component slightly. Document the change. Contribute improvements back to the system for all to use.

Best: Prototype the ideal experience first. If user testing validates the benefit, update the system to support it.

The key question: “Which option lets users succeed fastest?”

Rules are tools, not relics.

Unity Beats Uniformity

Gmail, Drive, and Maps are unmistakably Google—yet each speaks with its own accent. They achieve unity through shared principles, not cloned components. One extra week of debate over button color costs roughly $30K in engineer time.

Unity is a brand outcome; fluency is a user outcome. When the two clash, side with the user.

Governance Without Gates

How do you maintain coherence while enabling dialects? Treat your system like a living vocabulary:

Document every deviation – e.g., dialects/warehouse.md with before/after screenshots and rationale.

Promote shared patterns – when three teams adopt a dialect independently, review it for core inclusion.

Deprecate with context – retire old idioms via flags and migration notes, never a big-bang purge.

A living dictionary scales better than a frozen rulebook.

Start Small: Your First Dialect

Ready to introduce dialects? Start with one broken experience:

This week: Find one user flow where perfect consistency blocks task completion. Could be mobile users struggling with desktop-sized components, or accessibility needs your standard patterns don’t address.

Document the context: What makes standard patterns fail here? Environmental constraints? User capabilities? Task urgency?

Design one systematic change: Focus on behavior over aesthetics. If gloves are the problem, bigger targets aren’t “”breaking the system””—they’re serving the user. Earn the variations and make them intentional.

Test and measure: Does the change improve task completion? Time to productivity? User satisfaction?

Show the savings: If that dialect frees even half a sprint, fluency has paid for itself.

Beyond the Component Library

We’re not managing design systems anymore—we’re cultivating design languages. Languages that grow with their speakers. Languages that develop accents without losing meaning. Languages that serve human needs over aesthetic ideals.

The warehouse workers who went from 0% to 100% task completion didn’t care that our buttons broke the style guide. They cared that the buttons finally worked.

Your users feel the same way. Give your system permission to speak their language.

The net of today is not always a welcoming place. Websites greet you with a popover that requires assent to their muffin coverage, and leave you with Taboola advertising promising” One Crazy Trick”! to treat your problems. Social media sites are tuned for wedding, and some things are more interesting than a duel. I have witnessed light war among visitors today because it seems that folks want to fight.

These conflicts are often at conflict with a site’s targets. We don’t like those customers to tussle with each other if we are offering customer support and advice. If we offer information about the latest study, we want visitors to feel at ease, if we promote approaching marches, we want our key supporters to feel comfortable and we want interested newcomers to experience welcome.

I looked at the origins of computer science in Vienna ( 1928-1934 ) for a case study of the significance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous effects of its demise in a study for a conference on the History of the Web. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult ( and sometimes disagreeable ) people.

The Vienna Circle

Though people had been thinking about calculating engines and thinking machines from antiquity, Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna. In the absence of divine authority, the people who developed the theory had no desire to construct machines. They were trying to understand what the limits of reason were. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be certain that math is accurate? Are there things that are true but that cannot be expressed in language?

The main points were uncovered during the group’s weekly meetings ( Thursdays at 6 ) known as the Vienna Circle. They got together in the office of Professor Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna to discuss problems in philosophy, math, and language. This Vienna department’s focus on the intersection of physics and philosophy had long been one of its strengths, and their work had elevated them to a position among the world’s leaders. Schlick’s colleague Hans Hahn was a central participant, and by 1928 Hahn brought along his graduate students Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel. Rudolf Carnap, Karl Popper, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, the architect and physicist, and Otto Neurath, the inventor of infographics, were among the other prominent participants. Out-of-town visitors often joined, including the young Johnny von Neumann, Alfred Tarski, and the irascible Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Participants adjourned to a nearby café for additional discussion with an even larger group of participants when Schlick’s office became too dim. This convivial circle was far from unique. The Austrian School of free-market economics was founded by an intersecting circle: Neurath, von Mises, and Oskar Morgenstern. There were theatrical circles ( Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, Max Reinhardt ), and literary circles. The café was the location of events.

The interdisciplinarity of the group posed real challenges of temperament and understanding. Personalities were frequently a challenge. Gödel was convinced people were trying to poison him. Mises objected to the wasteful contracts Josef Frank, an architect, used to build public housing. Wittgenstein’s temper had lost him his job as a secondary school teacher, and for some of these years he maintained a detailed list of whom he was willing to meet. Neurath would interrupt a speaker with a shouted” Metaphysics” and was eager to find muddled thought! The continuing amity of these meetings was facilitated by the personality of their leader, Moritz Schlick, who would be remembered as notably adept in keeping disagreements from becoming quarrels.

In the Café

The Viennese café of this era was long remembered as a particularly good place to argue with your friends, to read, and to write. The cafés were constructed to serve an imperial capital, but now that the Empire has ended, they have had too much space and fewer customers. There was no need to turn tables: a café could only survive by coaxing customers to linger. They might order another cup of coffee, or perhaps a friend might stop by. One could play chess, or billiards, or read newspapers from abroad. Coffee was frequently served with a glass of fresh spring water, which was still a novelty in a time when most water was still considered unsafe to drink. That water glass would be refilled indefinitely.

Jura Soyfer, the poet behind” The End Of The World,” a musical comedy about Professor Peep discovering a comet that is heading for Earth, was performed in one café’s basement.

Prof. Peep: The comet is going to destroy everybody!

Hitler: I have no business destroying anyone.

Of course, coffee can be prepared in many ways, and the Viennese café developed a broad vocabulary to represent precisely how one preferred to drink it: melange, Einspänner, Brauner, Schwarzer, Kapuziner. The café was transformed into a warm and personal third space, a neutral ground where anyone who could afford a cup of coffee would be welcome due to the extensive customization and correspondingly esoteric conventions of service. Viennese of this era were fastidious in their use of personal titles, of which an abundance were in common use. Café waiters also gave regular customers titles, but they were careful to address their customers with titles a notch or two more than they deserved. A graduate student would be Doktor, an unpaid postdoc Professor. Because so many of the Circle’s members ( and so many other Viennese ) were from elsewhere: Carnap from Wuppertal, Gödel from Brno, von Neumann from Budapest, and so many others, this assurance was even more important. No one was going to make fun of your clothes, mannerisms, or accent. The pram in the hall wouldn’t bother your friends. Everyone shared a Germanic Austrian literary and philosophical culture, not least those whose ancestors had been Eastern European Jews who knew that culture well, having read all about it in books.

The café circle’s friendliness was made stronger by its openness. Because the circle sometimes extended to architects and actors, people could feel less constrained to admit shortfalls in their understanding. It was soon discovered that marble tabletops served as an improvised and accessible blackboard, making them a useful surface for pencil sketches.

Comedies like” The End Of The World” and fictional newspaper sketches or feuilletons of writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig served as a second defense against disagreeable or churlish behavior. The knowledge that a parody of one’s remarks might soon appear in Neue Freie Presse if one got carried away was surely a big help from Professor Schlick in keeping things in order.

The End Of Red Vienna

Vienna’s city council had been Socialist, dedicated to public housing based on user-centered design, and supported ambitious programs of public outreach and adult education even though Austria’s government had drifted to the right after the War. In 1934 the Socialists lost a local election, and this era soon came to its end as the new administration focused on the imagined threat of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Von Neumann to Princeton, Neurath to Holland and Oxford, Popper to New Zealand, and Carnap to Chicago were the Circle’s most frequent members who left in less than a month. Prof. Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University by a student outraged by his former association with Jews. The author of” The End of the World,” Julia Soyfer, passed away in Buchenwald.

In 1939, von Neumann finally convinced Gödel to accept a job in Princeton. Gödel was required to pay significant fines before moving abroad. The officer in charge of these fees would look back on this as the best posting of his career, his name was Eichmann.

Design for Amiability

An impressive literature recounts those discussions and the environment that facilitated the development of computing. How can we create a design that is amiable? This is not just a matter of choosing rounded typefaces and a cheerful pastel palette. I think we might find eight distinct design constraints that go in a lot of useful ways.

Seriousness: The Vienna Circle was wrestling with a notoriously difficult book—Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus—and a catalog of outstanding open questions in mathematics. Instead of just making money off of debate, they were concerned with long-term issues. Constant reminders that the questions you are considering matter—not only that they are consequential or that those opposing you are scoundrels —help promote amity.

Empiricism: The Vienna Circle’s distinctive approach required that knowledge be grounded in either direct observation or rigorous reasoning. Disagreement, when it arose, could be settled by observation or by proof. If neither appeared willing to take the situation, it couldn’t be resolved. On these terms, one can seldom if ever demolish an opposing argument, and trolling is pointless.

Abstraction: When a disagreement becomes unresolved, the argument escalates to a point where the opponent loses their face or their jobs. The Vienna Circle’s focus on theory—the limits of mathematics, the capability of language—promoted amity. Abstraction could have been merely academic without seriousness, but it was obvious that mathematics had strict rules of reason and consistency.

Formality: The punctilious demeanor of waiters and the elaborated rituals of coffee service helped to establish orderly attitudes amongst the argumentative participants. This contrasts favorably with the contemptuous sneer that currently dominates social media.

Schlamperei: Members of the Vienna Circle maintained a global correspondence, and they knew their work was at the frontier of research. However, this was a dingy, frumpy, and old-fashioned Vienna on the edge of Europe. Many participants came from even more obscure backwaters. The majority or all of them harbored the suspicion that they were actually schleppers, and a tinge of the absurd aided in regulating tempers. The director of” The End Of The World” had to pass the hat for money to purchase a moon for the set, and thought it was funny enough to write up for publication.

Openness: Anyone could join in the discussion because all kinds of people were present. Each week would bring different participants. Fluidic borders lessen tension and give participants the opportunity to expand the scope of discussion and terms of engagement. Low entrance friction was characteristic of the café: anyone could come, and if you came twice you were virtually a regular. Vienna’s cafés had no shortage of humorists, and permeable boundaries and café culture made it easier for moderating influences to draw in raconteurs and storytellers to ease up awkward situations. Openness counteracts the suspicion that promoters of amiability are exerting censorship.

Parody: The University of Chicago and its café were unmistakably public areas. There were writers about, some of them renowned humorists. The possibility that one’s bad behavior or taste might be derided in print kept discussion within bounds. The sanction of public humiliation, however, was itself made mild by the veneer of fiction, even if you got a little carried away and a character based on you made a splash in some newspaper fiction, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Engagement: Although the subject matter was significant to the participants, it was esoteric: neither their mothers nor their siblings were particularly interested in it. A small stumble or a minor humiliation could be shrugged off in ways that major media confrontations cannot.

I think it is noteworthy that this setting was created to promote amiability through a variety of voices. The café waiter flattered each newcomer and served everyone, and also kept out local pickpockets and drunks who would be mere disruptions. Schickel and other regulars kept the conversation moving and on topic. The fiction writers and raconteurs—perhaps the most peripheral of the participants—kept people in a good mood and reminded them that bad behavior could make anyone ridiculous. Each of these voices, naturally speaking, was a human being; you could understand that. Algorithmic or AI moderators, however clever, are seldom perceived as reasonable. No Moderator or centralized authority could be used to direct everyone’s resentments. Even after the disaster of 1934, what people remembered were those cheerful arguments.

Read more about John Jantsch’s book The Human Side of AI Branding at Duct Tape Marketing.

Listen to the full season: Overview On this season of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Mark Kingsley, recognized brand planner, consultant, and author of” Companies in the Age of AI”. Mark describes how AI is changing the branding landscape, causing brands to act morally, think critically, and advance meaning.[ ]

Read more about John Jantsch’s book The Human Side of AI Branding at Duct Tape Marketing.