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The personalization gap is real, between the dream of getting it right and the worry of it going wrong ( like when we encounter “persofails” similar to a company’s constant plea to regular people to purchase additional bathroom seats ). 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 successful personalization depends so much on each group’s talent, technology, and market position.

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

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

We refer to it as prepersonalization.

Behind the audio

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 personalization wagers? How do you design regular interactions that hasn’t journey up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve discovered that several budgeted programs second required one or more workshops to join key stakeholders and domestic customers of the technology in order to justify their continuing investments. 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 personalization work, 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.

Successful seminars consistently separate successful future endeavors from ineffective ones, saving countless hours of time, resources, and overall well-being.

A personalization training involves a yearlong work of testing and function development. It’s never a technical load switch-flip. It’s ideal managed as a queue that usually evolves through three actions:

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

This is why we created our democratic personalization platform and why we’re field-testing an following deck of cards: we believe that there’s a foundation grammar, a set of “nouns and verbs” that your organization can use to style 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 the kitchen.

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The evaluation activities that we suggest include can last for a number of weeks ( and frequently do ). 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 both the potential and the team’s and leadership’s readiness and drive.
1. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
2. Work your plan: This stage essentially entails creating a competitive environment in which team members can individually present their own pilots that each contain a proof-of-concept project, its business case, and its 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 in your organization. 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. We have a list of these in the cards. 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 ). In our cards, we break down connected experiences into five categories: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to draw attention to both the benefits of ongoing investment and the difference between what you currently offer and what you intend to deliver in the future.

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

Each team member should decide where their focus should be placed for your product or service. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. Here, the goal is to 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 compliance with data and privacy be a significant challenge? 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 ready 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?

The key here is to avoid treating the installed software like some imagined kitchen from a fantasy remodeling project ( as one of our client executives humorously 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 final menu of the prioritized backlog will be created. 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.

Recipes have ingredients in them, and those recipes have ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

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

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

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

Create your recipe.

What ingredients are important to you? Consider the construct of a who-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 to a newly registered user to highlight the breadth of the content catalog and convert them to happy subscribers.
3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

We’ve also found that 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, which shift from focusing on cookbooks to focusing on customers, might seem more nuanced. 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.

Architecture must be improved to produce better kitchens.

Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. Avoid those who make up their mind. 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’t stand the heat, in fact…

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 organizational framework gives you a fighting 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.

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

I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the heroes and the excitement—but most of all the stories. I aspired to be an artist. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on fascinating experiences. Perhaps my friends and I had movie ideas to make and sun in. But they never went any farther. However, I did end up working in user experience ( UI). 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 favourite film. It more than likely follows a three-act narrative construction: the installation, 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 the activity begins. Here, difficulties grow or get worse. The solution comes in the third and final work. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This architecture, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about consumer research, and it might be particularly useful for introducing user research to others.

Use story as a framework for conducting analysis

It’s sad to say, but many have come to see studies as being dispensable. Research is typically one of the first things to go when expenses or deadlines are tight. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may lead some groups, but that approach can so easily miss the chance to solve clients ‘ real issues. To be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. Design is enhanced by consumer study. It keeps it on record, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of problems with your goods and taking corrective actions can help you be ahead of your competition.

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

Act one: installation

The setup 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. Like in the movies, you’re learning about the difficulties users face, what options are available, and how they are affected by them. To do basic research, you may conduct situational inquiries or journal studies ( or both! ), which may assist you in identifying both problems and opportunities. It doesn’t need to get a great investment in time or money.

What is the least practical ethnography that Erika Hall can do is spend fifteen minutes with a consumer and say,” Walk me through your day yesterday. That’s it. Current that one ask. 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”. Hall predicts that “[This ] will likely prove quite fascinating. In the very unlikely event that you didn’t learn anything new or helpful, carry on with increased confidence in your way”.

This makes sense to me in all its entirety. And I love that this makes consumer studies so visible. You don’t need to make a lot of paperwork; you can only attract people and do it! 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 inadequacies. And that’s the start of a gripping tale. It’s the place in the story where you realize that the principal characters—or the people in this case—are facing issues that they need to conquer. This is where you begin to develop compassion for the heroes and support their success, much like in the movies. And maybe partners are now doing the same. Their business may lose money because users can’t finish particular tasks, which may be their love. Or probably they do connect with people ‘ problems. In either case, work one serves as your main strategy for piqueing interest and investment from 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 gains everyone—users, the goods, and partners. It’s similar to winning an Oscar for a film; it frequently results in a favorable reception and success for your item. And this can be an opportunity for participants to repeat this process with different items. The secret to this method is storytelling, and knowing how to tell a compelling story is the only way to entice partners to do more research.

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

Act two: fight

Act two is all about digging deeper into the issues that you identified in operate one. This typically involves conducting vertical research, 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 include unfulfilled needs or problems with a circulation or procedure that’s tripping users away. Additional problems will arise in the course of action two of a film. It’s ok that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this work.

Usability tests should generally consist of five participants, according to Jakob Nielsen, who found that that number of users can usually identify the majority of the issues:” As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the second user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings regularly but hardly learning much new.”

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

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

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

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 done 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 is in the second act, but there are also potential surprises in the third. This is equally true of usability tests. Sometimes, participants will say unexpected things that alter the way you look at them, which can lead to unexpected turns in the story.

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

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

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

Act three: resolution

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

This act is primarily told 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 offer the stakeholders their suggestions and suggestions for how to create this vision.

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. The most effective presenters 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 and forth.

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be visual, like quick sketches of how a new design could look that solves a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the session is over, when you’ve concluded by bridging the gaps and offering suggestions for improvement. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. The stakeholders will now have the opportunity to take the next steps, and hopefully the will-power to do so!

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 as output.

Act two: Next, there’s character development. The protagonists encounter 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 storytelling, presentation decks, and digital media in act three. The output of these can be: presentation decks, video clips, audio clips, and pictures.

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

So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. 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 I’ve watched promising thoughts go from zero to warrior in a few days before failing to deliver within weeks as a product developer for very long.

Financial goods, which is my area of expertise, are no exception. It’s tempting to put as many features at the ceiling as possible and hope someone sticks because people’s true, hard-earned money is on the line, user expectations are high, and a crammed market. However, this strategy is a formula for disaster. Why, you see this:

The perils of feature-first growth

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 client journeys from papers or telephony channels to online bank or mobile applications. You might be thinking,” If I can only put one more thing that solves this particular person problem, they’ll appreciate me”! But what happens if you eventually encounter a roadblock as a result of your security team’s negligence? not like it? When a difficult-fought film fails to win over viewers or fails owing to unanticipated difficulty?

The concept of Minimum Viable Product ( MVP ) comes into play in this context. Even though Jason Fried doesn’t usually refer to it that way, his podcast Rework and his book Getting Real frequently address this concept. An MVP is a product that offers only sufficient value to your users to keep them interested, but not so much that it becomes difficult to keep up. Although it seems like an easy idea, 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 fund apps is that they frequently turn out to be reflections of the company’s internal politics rather than an experience created purely 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 needs 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 may we create products that are user-friendly, firm, and, most importantly, stick?

The concept of “bedrock” comes into play here. The main component of your item that really matters to people is Bedrock. It serves as the foundation for 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 sky, 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.

But how do you reach the foundation? By focusing on the” MVP” strategy, giving convenience precedence, and working iteratively toward a clear value proposition. This means avoiding unnecessary characteristics and putting your customers 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 and prepare their meal. Sometimes you 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 more time to work on something more crucial.

Functional methods for creating reliable economic products

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

1. What trouble are you trying to solve first and foremost with a distinct “why”? Whom? Make sure your goal is unmistakable before beginning any work. Make certain it also aligns with the goals of your business.
2. Avoid the temptation to put too many features at once and focus on getting that right first. Choose one that actually adds price, and work from that.
3. When it comes to financial items, clarity is often more important than difficulty. Eliminate unwanted details and concentrate solely on what matters most.
4. Accept constant iteration: Bedrock is not a fixed destination; it is a fluid process. Continuously collect customer comments, make improvements to your product, and move toward that foundation.
5. Stop, look, and listen: Don’t just go through with testing your product as part of the delivery process; test it constantly in the field. Use it for yourself. Move the A/B testing. User comments on Gatter. Speak to the users of it and make adjustments accordingly.

The foundational dilemma

This is an intriguing conundrum: sacrificing some of the potential for short-term progress in favor of long-term stability. But the reward is worthwhile because products built with a focus on bedrock will outlive and surpass their rivals over time and provide users with long-term value.

How do you begin your quest for core, then? Get 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 build it, he said.

Warning: There are clues in the Doctor Who season” Wish World.” In the final event of this time, John Smith and his loving spouse Belinda live a picture-perfect existence in america with their very real child Poppy. Conrad Clark promises wonderful weather and presents light-hearted, not-portal reports on television, including big bone creatures that travel across London.

On Den of Geek, a review of Doctor Who Series 15 Episode 7: Wish World initially appeared.

The Mission: Impossible brand is built on powerful Tom Cruise gaze, convoluted tale twists and reveals, and amazing feats. But, it is not based on powerful narratives. The majority of Mission films feature scoundrel officials and poorly defined MacGuffins, which would be a grating repeat if the plots were any indication. Yet, lack of narrative quality does not correlate to absence of tension. The majority of the movies feature superb villains who make Ethan Hunt, Cruise’s character, struggle and perform incredible feats, giving rise to the stunts we all adore.

Let’s take a look at the best of the worst as Mission: Impossible comes to an end ( perhaps ) with Mission: Impossible &#8211, The Final Reckoning. The villains who literally drove Ethan Hunt up a wall, into a gigantic turbine, or hang from a biplane. Point of quality, second. While the series does feature some entertaining henchmen like Paris ( Pom Klementieff ) and some stories feature shadowy baddies pulling the strings, like the evil duplicitous IMF director John Musgrave ( Billy Crudup ) or the Entity, we’re just looking at the main bad guys, the people who dare to match wills with Ethan Hunt.

7. Sean Ambrose ( Mission: Impossible II )

Mission: Difficult II about ended the company in its early stages. It seemed like a wise move to hire Hong Kong-based producer John Woo, who also has the same level of style as the first movie’s director, Brian De Palma. However, Woo and screenwriter Robert Towne ( a Hollywood star who co-wrote the first film ) base their account on the Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious, casting Thandiwe Newton in place of Ingrid Bergman as the untrustworthy detective who captures our hero&#8217, s center.

The combination ended up being fatal. The main antagonist of M: I2 and#8216, played by previous IMF agent Sean Ambrose, was a problem Dougray Scott’s portrayal of, which Woo&#8217’s melodramatic method and underdeveloped characterizations. The story of how Scott, the first people cast to play Wolverine in 2000&#8217, s X-Men, lost the part because of an on-set injury has been told time and again, overshadowing the worse insult, that he&#8217, s pretty badly used in this movie. Ambrose is meant to be Hunt’s black partner, so much so that he appears in the movie as Cruise’s figure. However, he always possesses the personality and strength of his adversary, who frequently appears to be a sulking man-child over Hunt’s entire world, let alone the world.

6. The Ghost Protocol character from Mission: Impossible is Kurt Hendricks.

Cobalt, Kurt Hendricks, is so much better in both vision and murder. Played by Swedish artist Michael Nyqvist, Hendricks is exactly the type of enemy who really concern Ethan Hunt. Hendricks wants to start a nuclear war between the United States and Russia because he is a real believer in a hedonistic philosophy. The IMF has no choice but to join in the outrageous actions that makes the franchise but unique due to that extremist belief.

The risk posed by Dick may give Ethan scaling the Birge Kalifa, but as a man, he&#8217, s a little screen. Nyqvist has nothing to do with this film other than influences, as evidenced by his numerous narrative roles in his native Sweden and in American films like John Wick. Hendricks never succeeds, but his minion Sabine ( Léa Seydoux ), whose personal connection to Hunt &#8217’s coworker Jane Carter ( Paula Patton ), gives her an edge.

5. Gabriel ( Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning )

The main antagonist of Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, the agent known only as Gabriel ( Esai Morales ) is set up as Ethan Hunt &#8217, s greatest foil. He was directly accountable for Ethan joining the IMF, not only does he appear to have spy abilities that are even more advanced than our hero’s. We are informed that Gabriel killed Ethan and his girlfriend Marie and framed him for it, which placed him on the sensor of the IMF&#8217. Worse however, Gabriel emerges as an follower of the all-powerful AI known as the Entity, giving him a driving attitude to fit Ethan&#8217, s want to save everyone.

There&#8217, s nothing bad with this description on paper. It stinks in reality. Dead Reckoning and especially The Final Reckoning suffer from a self-mythologizing that keeps dragging the video again into the previous rather of charging ahead, and Gabriel embodies that forward desire. Morales enjoys playing the villain role, but Gabriel&#8217, s worst sin, boring the audience. Gabriel is given some big moments of evil, directly killing fan favorites Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ) and Luther Stickell ( Ving Rhames ).

4. Jim Phelps ( Mission: Impossible )

Before moving on, we must become clear that Jim Phelps is a decent criminal. Not a blow against Jim, but rather a testament to the strength of the other enemies. One of the main protagonists of the original 1960s television series ( albeit portrayed by Peter Graves instead of Jon Voight ), Jim Phelps makes Mission: Impossible into a legacy sequel, connecting the classic series to a new set of heroes.

Mission: Impossible transforms the original warrior into the fresh criminal, which is unlike most legacy sequels. At the beginning of the film, Phelps first appears to have died during an attack that kills the majority of Hunt’s team during a quest that IMF boss Kitteridge after reveals to be a &#8220, gram hunt. &#8221, But, Phelps returns later in the movie as primary Ethan&#8217, s supporter and then his foe, the real traitor that Kitteridge seeks. Despite being 57 when the film was shot, which is one year younger than Cruise when Dead Reckoning filming began, Vaughn has a lot of eloquence in the lead role, but he struggles a little with the acrobatics at the end.

3. August Walker ( Mission: Impossible – Fallout )

The beard that Henry Cavill developed for the film was the main attraction heading into Fallout. Due to the fact that he could/could no shave his face for reshoots of Justice League, his director Joss Whedon had to online remove the stache from Cavill for the film, creating an notably absurd looking Superman. It seemed like a minor move at the time, but when we all saw Fallout, we got it. The beard appears incredible, and it is appropriate to continue.

The beard perfectly captures August Walker, the figure of Cavill, in its entirety. Described as a &#8220, blunt instrument&#8221, assigned to work with ( read: spy on ) Hunt for CIA Director Erika Sloane ( Angela Bassett ), Walker proves to be a force of nature who is just as destructive as our hero. Walker proves a credible threat to Ethan yet before he&#8217 is revealed to be the cruel John Lark, the person the IMF sought in Rogue Nation. He&#8217 ;s prepared to kill our hero right away, and he looks fantastic doing it.

2. ( Mission: Impossible III ) Owen Davian

Despite the death-defying derring-do in the Mission: Impossible franchise, it &#8217 ;s notable that the most terrifying moment occurs not during one of Ethan Hunt &#8217’s deeds, but in a line of dialogue. When arms seller Owen Davian wakes up to discover he&#8217, s been captured by IMF, he ignores Ethan&#8217, s concerns and cheerfully asks some of his own: &#8220, Do you have a family, a girl? Because you already know what I’m going to do next, please? I’m going to find her and I’m going to hurt her, respectively. &#8221, It&#8217, s not so much the specific words that Davian says that send a chill down the spine. They were delivered exactly as they were, completely without any passion.

Of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the greatest actors of his generation, plays Davian. Hoffman &#8217, s ability to play cool and controlled ( and, in one memorable scene, play the ever-energetic Ethan Hunt disguised as Davian ) elevates the otherwise mundane J. J. Abrams-directed third film. In fact, Hoffman does a lot of the acting, which puts him in second place despite the utterly mesmerizing performance.

1. Solomon Lane ( Mission: Impossible &#8211, Rogue Nation )

Solomon Lane almost almost killed Ethan&#8217’s loved ones, despite Owen Davian’s claims that he might have done so. When sweet Benji reveals the bomb strapped to his chest, his expression of pure sorrow and terror reveals more about Lane’s capacity for evil than any of Davian’s monologues could. In fact, Lane encapsulates everything about the franchise&#8217, s past baddies, perfecting everything they tried to do. He has the quiet menace of Davian, Gabriel and Ambrose’s espionage abilities, and he has the twisted worldview of Hendricks. By the time he sends a bomb to Ethan’s estranged wife Julia Meade ( Michelle Monaghan ), Lane even develops a personal animosity like Phelps.

Much of the credit goes to Sean Harris, who uses his raspy voice and dark eyes to enhance the malevolence. Cruise&#8217, who is a genuine on camera, staring out of the screen with yearning blue eyes and a furrowed brow, is responsible for so much of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Harris&#8217, eyes do the exact opposite. When he looks out from the screen, we see pools of blackness, drowning us in nothingness. If Hunt is the living manifestation of nihilism, as IMF Director Alan Hunley ( Alec Baldwin ) so famously put it, &#8220, the living manifestation of destiny, &#8221, then Lane is the opposite.

The first post Mission: Impossible Villians, Ranked appeared on Den of Geek.

Warning: clues appear for Doctor Who series 15 show 7 of” Wish World.” Why not? Doctor Who’s past line finale” Empire of Death” brought up a frightening mask-wearing villain from the traditional era, so where’s the harm in making it two on the run? In the final moments of the penultimate episode of series 15, [ Wish World ]]…

The second article on Den of Geek was about Doctor Who’s Returning Classic-Era Villain Explained.

The Mission: Impossible brand is built on powerful Tom Cruise gaze, convoluted tale twists and reveals, and amazing feats. But, it is not based on powerful narratives. The majority of Mission films feature scoundrel officials and poorly defined MacGuffins, which would be a grating repeat if the plots were any indication. Yet, lack of narrative quality does not correlate to absence of tension. The majority of the movies feature superb villains who make Ethan Hunt, Cruise’s character, struggle and perform incredible feats, giving rise to the stunts we all adore.

Let’s take a look at the best of the worst as the franchise settles down ( maybe ) with Mission: Impossible &#8211, The Final Reckoning. The villains who literally drove Ethan Hunt up a wall or into a gigantic turbine or hanging from a biplane. Point of quality, initially. While the series does feature some entertaining henchmen like Paris ( Pom Klementieff ) and some stories feature shadowy baddies pulling the strings, like the evil duplicitous IMF director John Musgrave ( Billy Crudup ) or the Entity, we’re just looking at the main bad guys, the people who dare to match wills with Ethan Hunt.

7. Sean Ambrose ( Mission: Impossible II )

Mission: Difficult II about ended the company in its early stages. It seemed like a wise move to hire Hong Kong-based producer John Woo, who also has the same level of style as the first movie’s director, Brian De Palma. However, Woo and screenwriter Robert Towne ( a Hollywood star who co-wrote the first film ) base their account on the Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious, casting Thandiwe Newton in place of Ingrid Bergman as the untrustworthy detective who captures our hero&#8217, s center.

The mixture ended up being fatal. Woo&#8217’s theatrical approach clashed with poor characterizations, which was made especially obvious in M: I2&#8216, where the main antagonist, previous IMF agent Sean Ambrose, Dougray Scott, was played. The story of how Scott, the first people cast to play Wolverine in 2000&#8217, s X-Men, lost the part because of an on-set injury has been told time and again, overshadowing the worse insult, that he&#8217, s pretty badly used in this movie. Ambrose is disguised as Cruise’s figure in the beginning of the movie because he is intended to be Hunt’s black twice. However, he always possesses the personality and intensity of his adversary, coming off as too frequently as a sulking man-child than anyone who could endanger Hunt, let alone the entire world.

6. Kurt Hendricks ( Ghost Protocol from Mission: Impossible )

Kurt Hendricks, also known as Cobalt, is so much better in both vision and murder. Played by Swedish artist Michael Nyqvist, Hendricks is exactly the type of enemy who may concern Ethan Hunt. Hendricks wants to start a nuclear war between the United States and Russia because he is a real believer in a hedonistic philosophy. The IMF has no choice but to indulge in the kind of over-the-top action that makes the franchise but unique due to that fundamentalist belief.

The risk posed by Dick may give Ethan scaling the Birge Kalifa, but as a man, he&#8217, s a little screen. Nyqvist has nothing to do with this film other than influences, as evidenced by his numerous music roles in his native Sweden and in American films like John Wick. Hendricks never succeeds, but his minion Sabine ( Léa Seydoux ), whose personal connection to Hunt &#8217, his coworker Jane Carter ( Paula Patton ), gives her an edge that she never could have.

5. Gabriel ( Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning )

The main antagonist of Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, the agent known only as Gabriel ( Esai Morales ) is set up as Ethan Hunt &#8217, s greatest foil. He was immediately responsible for Ethan joining the IMF, not only does he appear to have spy abilities that are even more advanced than our hero’s. We are informed that Gabriel killed Ethan and his girlfriend Marie and framed him for the crime, which put him on the radar of the IMF&#8217. Worse nevertheless, Gabriel emerges as an follower of the all-powerful AI known as the Entity, giving him a driving attitude to fit Ethan&#8217, s want to save everyone.

There&#8217 is nothing wrong with this characterization on paper. In reality, it stinks. Dead Reckoning and especially The Final Reckoning suffer from a self-mythologizing that keeps dragging the movie back into the past instead of charging forward, and Gabriel embodies that backwards impulse. Morales enjoys playing the villain role, but Gabriel’s worst sin bores the audience. Gabriel is given some significant moments of evil that directly kill fan favorites Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ) and Luther Stickell ( Ving Rhames ).

4. Jim Phelps ( Mission: Impossible )

Before moving on, we must be clear that Jim Phelps is a decent villain. He is a reflection of the strength of the other baddies, not a knock against Jim, because he ranks so poorly in this list. One of the main protagonists of the original 1960s television series ( albeit portrayed by Peter Graves instead of Jon Voight ), Jim Phelps makes Mission: Impossible into a legacy sequel, connecting the classic series to a new set of heroes.

Mission: Impossible, however, exhibits bravery unlike most legacy sequels, by transforming the protagonist into the new villain. At the beginning of the film, Phelps initially appears to have died during a mission that IMF boss Kitteridge later revealed to be a &#8220, mole hunt, which is carried out by Hunt &#8217’s team. &#8221, However, Phelps returns late in the film as first Ethan&#8217, s ally and then his enemy, the true traitor that Kitteridge seeks. Despite the fact that he was 57 when the movie was shot, a year younger than Cruise when Dead Reckoning was being made, he struggles a little with the stunts at the end.

3. August Walker ( Mission: Impossible – Fallout )

The buzz was all about the mustache that Henry Cavill developed for the film before Fallout. Due to the fact that he could or would not shave the face for reshoots of Justice League, director Joss Whedon had to digitally remove the stache from Cavill’s face, creating an infamously absurd looking Superman. It seemed like a petty move at the time, but once we all saw Fallout, we got it. The mustache appears incredible, and it is appropriate to continue.

The mustache is significant because it accurately describes August Walker, Cavill&#8217, his character. Described as a &#8220, blunt instrument&#8221, assigned to work with ( read: spy on ) Hunt for CIA Director Erika Sloane ( Angela Bassett ), Walker proves to be a force of nature who is just as destructive as our hero. Walker proves a credible threat to Ethan even before he&#8217 is revealed to be the malevolent John Lark, the man the IMF sought in Rogue Nation. He&#8217 ;s prepared to kill our hero at any moment, and he looks fantastic doing it.

2. ( Mission: Impossible III ) Owen Davian

Despite the death-defying derring-do in the Mission: Impossible franchise, it’s notable that the most terrifying moment occurs in a line of dialogue rather than one of Ethan Hunt’s deeds. When arms dealer Owen Davian wakes up to discover he&#8217, s been captured by IMF, he ignores Ethan&#8217, s questions and blithely asks some of his own: &#8220, Do you have a wife, a girlfriend? Because you already know what I’m going to do next, why? I’m going to find her and I’m going to hurt her, respectively. &#8221, It&#8217, s not so much the specific words that Davian says that send a chill down the spine. They were delivered exactly as they were, completely without any passion.

Of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the greatest actors of his generation, plays Davian. Hoffman &#8217, s ability to play cool and controlled ( and, in one memorable scene, play the ever-energetic Ethan Hunt disguised as Davian ) elevates the otherwise mundane J. J. Abrams-directed third film. In fact, Hoffman does a lot of the acting that it &#8217 makes it difficult to tell how mediocre Davian’s writing is, a demerit that places him in second place despite the utterly mesmerizing performance.

1. Solomon Lane ( Mission: Impossible &#8211, Rogue Nation )

Although Owen Davian may discuss killing Ethan&#8217’s loved ones, Solomon Lane actually almost almost succeeded in doing so. When sweet Benji reveals the bomb strapped to his chest, his expression of pure sorrow and terror reveals more about Lane’s capacity for evil than any of Davian’s monologues could. In fact, Lane encapsulates everything about the franchise&#8217, s past baddies, perfecting everything they tried to do. He has the quiet menace of Davian, Gabriel and Ambrose’s espionage abilities, and he has the twisted worldview of Hendricks. By the time he sends a bomb to Ethan’s estranged wife Julia Meade ( Michelle Monaghan ), Lane even develops a personal animosity like Phelps.

Much of the credit goes to Sean Harris, who uses his raspy voice and dark eyes to enhance the malevolence. Cruise&#8217, who is a genuine on camera, staring out of the screen with yearning blue eyes and a furrowed brow, is responsible for so much of the Mission: Impossible franchise. The exact opposite happens in Harris ‘ eyes. When he looks out from the screen, we see pools of blackness, drowning us in nothingness. If Hunt is the living manifestation of nihilism, as IMF Director Alan Hunley ( Alec Baldwin ) so famously put it, &#8220, the living manifestation of destiny, &#8221, then Lane is the opposite.

On Den of Geek, the first post Mission: Impossible Villians, Ranked appeared.

The Mission: Difficult brand is built on amazing feats, complicated plot twists and reveals, and powerful Tom Cruise gaze. However, it is not based on powerful narratives. If anyone were interested in the plots, the majority of the Mission films did feature renegade agents and poorly defined MacGuffins. Lack of a story, though]…

The article Mission: Impossible Villians, Ranked appeared initially on Den of Geek.

The Mission: Difficult brand is built on amazing feats, complicated plot twists and reveals, and powerful Tom Cruise gaze. But, it is not based on powerful narratives. If anyone were interested in the plots, the majority of the Mission films did feature scoundrel agents and poorly defined MacGuffins. Lack of story quality does not, however, translate to a lack of tension. The majority of the movies feature superb villains who make Ethan Hunt, Cruise’s character, struggle and perform incredible feats, giving rise to the stunts we all adore.

So as the franchise winds down ( maybe ) with Mission: Impossible &#8211, The Final Reckoning, let&#8217, s take a look at the best of the worst: the villains who literally drove Ethan Hunt up a wall or into a giant turbine or hanging from a biplane. Second, precision. While the series does feature some entertaining henchmen like Paris ( Pom Klementieff ) and some stories feature shadowy baddies pulling the strings, like the evil duplicitous IMF director John Musgrave ( Billy Crudup ) or the Entity, we’re just looking at the main bad guys, the people who dare to match wills with Ethan Hunt.

7. Sean Ambrose ( Mission: Impossible II )

Mission: Impossible II nearly ended the franchise’s early years. It seemed like a good idea to take on director John Woo, a Hong Kong filmmaker with just as much style as the first picture &#8217, s producer, Brian De Palma. Additionally, Woo and writer Robert Towne, a legendary Hollywood star who co-wrote the first film, based their relationship on the Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious, casting Thandiwe Newton in place of Ingrid Bergman as the dishonest detective who captures our hero’s heart.

The mixture ended up being fatal. Woo&#8217, s dramatic approach clashed with poor characterizations, a problem particularly evident with M: I2&#8216, s main antagonist, past IMF agent Sean Ambrose, played by Dougray Scott. The myth of how Scott, the second person cast in the role of Wolverine in 2000’s X-Men, lost the role due to an on-set injuries has been repeatedly refuted, overshadowing the worse affront, that he was quite poorly used in this movie. Ambrose is meant to be Hunt’s black partner, so much so that he appears in the movie as Cruise’s character. But he never has the power nor the personality of his enemy, very frequently coming off as a brooding man-child than anyone who could harm Hunt, let alone the earth.

6. Kurt Hendricks ( Ghost Protocol from Mission: Impossible )

Kurt Hendricks, aka Cobalt, is so much better in conception than in murder. Dick, who is played by Swedish artist Michael Nyqvist, is the kind of enemy who really concern Ethan Hunt. Hendricks wants to start a nuclear war between the United States and Russia because he is a real believer in a misanthropic philosophy. That radical idea gives the IMF no choice but to join in the form of over-the-top activity that makes the company so unique.

Hendricks ‘ threat may cause Ethan to scale the Birge Kalifa, but he is nothing on as a person. Nyqvist has nothing to do with this film other than influences, as evidenced by his numerous music roles in his native Sweden and in American films like John Wick. Worse, he&#8217, s overshadowed by his minion Sabine ( Léa Seydoux ), whose personal connection to Hunt &#8217, s colleague Jane Carter ( Paula Patton ) gives her an edge that Hendricks never achieves.

5. Gabriel ( Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning )

The agent known only as Gabriel ( Esai Morales ), who plays the main antagonist in Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, is portrayed as Ethan Hunt’s greatest foil. He was immediately accountable for Ethan joining the IMF, not only does he appear to have spy abilities even greater than those of our hero. We learn that Gabriel killed Ethan&#8217, s girl Marie and framed him for the crime, which put him on the IMF&#8217, s sensor. Even worse, Gabriel reappears as an follower of the all-powerful AI known as the Entity, giving him a driving philosophy that is comparable to Ethan&#8217’s desire to save everyone.

There&#8217, s everything wrong with this description on paper. In process it stinks. The Final Reckoning, particularly The Dead Reckoning, suffer from a self-mythologizing that makes dragging the film forward rather than forward, and Gabriel embraces that forward desire. Morales enjoys playing the villain role, but Gabriel’s worst sin bores the audience. In some shocking instances, Gabriel directly kills fan favorites Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ) and Luther Stickell ( Ving Rhames ).

4. ( Mission: Impossible ) Jim Phelps

Before we move on, we must become clear that Jim Phelps is a decent monster. The fact that he ranks but small here is a testament to the strength of the other enemies, not a knock against Jim. Jim Phelps transforms Mission: Impossible into a legacy sequel by connecting the beloved television series to a new cast of heroes, Peter Graves being one of the main characters from the 1960s television series ( although Jon Voight was the actor ).

Mission: Impossible does, however, turn the original hero into the new criminal, something that most legacy sequels lack. Phelps initially seems to die in the attack that takes out most of Hunt &#8217, s staff at the start of the video, during a quest that IMF director Kitteridge after reveals to be a &#8220, gram hunt. Phelps makes a late appearance in the movie as Ethan and his ally before becoming the true traitor that Kitteridge seeks. Despite the fact that he was 57 when the movie was shot, a year younger than Cruise when Dead Reckoning was being made, he struggles a little with the stunts at the end.

3. Fallout, August Walker ( Mission: Impossible )

The buzz was all about the mustache that Henry Cavill developed for the film before Fallout. Because he could/would not shave the facial hair for reshoots on Justice League, that movie&#8217, s director Joss Whedon had to digitally remove the &#8216, stache from Cavill&#8217, s face, resulting in an infamously absurd looking Superman. At the time, it seemed like a petty move, but once we saw Fallout together, we were hooked. The mustache appears incredible and is appropriate to continue.

The mustache is important because it sums up Cavill&#8217, s character August Walker. Walker proves to be a force of nature who is just as devasting as our hero when he is referred to as a” blunt instrument””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” Walker proves a real threat to Ethan even before he&#8217 is revealed to be the malevolent John Lark, the identity of the man the IMF sought in Rogue Nation. He&#8217, s ready to pummel our hero to death at any second—and he looks great doing it.

2. The third installment of Missile: Impossible features Owen Davian.

For all of the death-defying derring-do in the Mission: Impossible franchise, it &#8217, s notable that the scariest moment comes not during one of Ethan Hunt &#8217, s feats, but in a line of dialogue. When Owen Davian awakens to discover that he has been arrested by the IMF, he ignores Ethan and blithely asks his own questions, including:” Do you have a wife or a girlfriend?” Because you already know what I’m going to do next, why? I&#8217, m gonna find her &#8230, and I&#8217, m gonna hurt her. It’s not so much the specific words that Davian says that give you a chill as it does the rest of your body. It&#8217 ;s the way that they &#8217 were re-delivered completely without passion.

Of course Davian is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the greatest actors of his generation. Hoffman’s ability to play cool and controlled ( and, in one memorable scene, play the ever-energetic Ethan Hunt disguised as Davian ) elevates the otherwise uninteresting third film from J. J. Abrams. In fact, Hoffman does a lot of the acting that it &#8217 makes it difficult to tell how mediocre Davian’s writing is, a demerit that places him in second place despite the utterly mesmerizing performance.

1. Solomon Lane ( Mission: Impossible &#8211, Rogue Nation )

Solomon Lane almost almost killed Ethan&#8217’s loved ones, despite Owen Davian’s claims that he should do so. The pure sorrow and terror on sweet Benji&#8217, s face when he reveals the bomb strapped to his chest tells us more about Lane&#8217, s capacity for evil than any of Davian&#8217, s monologues could do. In fact, Lane perfectly captures the franchise’s past baddies, perfecting everything they attempted to do. He has Gabriel and Ambrose’s espionage skills, Davian’s quiet menace, and Hendricks ‘ twisted worldview. By the time he sends a bomb to the worksite of Ethan&#8217, s estranged wife Julia Meade ( Michelle Monaghan ) out of pure pettiness, Lane even develops a personal animosity like Phelps.

Sean Harris receives a lot of the credit, especially because he uses his sabery voice and dark eyes to enhance the malevolence. Cruise&#8217, who is a genuine on camera, staring out of the screen with yearning blue eyes and a furrowed brow, is responsible for so much of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Harris&#8217, eyes do the exact opposite. We see pools of blackness when he looks out of the screen, drowning us in nothingness. If Hunt is truly the living manifestation of nihilism, as IMF Director Alan Hunley ( Alec Baldwin ) memorably put it, &#8220, the living manifestation of destiny, &#8221.

The article Mission: Impossible Villians, Ranked appeared initially on Den of Geek.

But what on earth is a zealous stress?

Imagine a person determined to do it all. She is homeschooling two wonderful children while her father, who works remotely, is furthermore working remotely. She has a demanding customer fill at work—all of whom she loves. She wakes up early to get some movement in ( or frequently catch up on work ), prepares dinner while the kids are having breakfast, and works while positioning herself near the end of her “fourth grade” to watch as she balances clients, tasks, and budgets. Sound like a bit? Yet with a supportive group both at home and at work, it is.

This girl seems to need self-care because she has too much going on. But no, she doesn’t have occasion for that. She begins to feel as though she’s dropping balloons. Never accomplishing much. There’s not enough of her to be here and there, she is trying to divide her head in two all the time, all time, every time. She begins to question herself. And as those thoughts creep in more and more, her domestic tale becomes more and more important.

She immediately KNOWS what she needs to accomplish! She really Would MORE.

This is a difficult and dangerous period. Know the reason. Because when she doesn’t end that new purpose, that storyline will get worse. She instantly starts failing. She isn’t doing much. SHE is not enough. She’ll discover more she may do because she might neglect, or perhaps her home. She doesn’t nap as much, proceed because much, all in the attempts to do more. Trying to prove herself to herself, but always succeeding in any endeavor. Not feeling “enough”.

But, yeah, that’s what zealous burnout looks like for me. It develops gradually over the course of several weeks and months rather than immediately as a big sign. My burning out process looks like speeding up, hardly a man losing focus. I move quickly and steadily, and therefore I simply quit.

I am the one who was

It’s amusing the things that shape us. Through the camera of my own childhood, I witnessed the battles, sacrifices, and concerns of someone who had to make it all work without having much. I was happy that my mom was so competent and my dad sympathetic, I never went without and also got an extra here or there.

Growing up, I didn’t feel shame when my mom gave me food postcards; in fact, I would have likely sparked debates about the subject, orally eviscerating anyone who dared to criticize the disabled person who was attempting to ensure all of our needs were met with so little. As a child, I watched the way the worry of not making those ends meet impacted persons I love. As the non-disabled people in my home, I did take on many of the real things because I was” the one who was” make our lives a little easier. I soon realized that putting more of myself into it was linked to fears or confusion; I am the one who does. I learned first that when something frightens me, I may double down and work harder to make it better. I am capable of taking on the problem. When individuals have seen this in me as an adult, I’ve been told I seem brave, but make no mistake, I’m not. If I seem courageous, it’s because this behavior was forged from another people’s worries.

And here I am, more than 30 years later, also feeling the urge to aimlessly force myself forward when faced with daunting tasks in front of me, assuming that I am the one who is and consequently does. I find myself driven to prove that I can make things happen if I work longer hours, take on more responsibility, and do more.

Because I have seen how strong a financially challenged person can be, I do not see people who struggle financially as failures because they are pulled along the way. I truly get that I have been privileged to be able to avoid many of the challenges that were present in my youth. That said, I am still” the one who can” who feels she should, so if I were faced with not having enough to make ends meet for my own family, I would see myself as having failed. Despite my best efforts and education, the majority of this is due to good fortune. I will, however, allow myself the arrogance of saying I have been careful with my choices to have encouraged that luck. My sense of self is the result of the notion that I am” the one who can” and feel compelled to accomplish the most. I can choose to stop, and with some quite literal cold water splashed in my face, I’ve made the choice to before. But that choosing to stop is not my go-to, I move forward, driven by a fear that is so a part of me that I barely notice it’s there until I’m feeling utterly worn away.

Why all this history, then? You see, burnout is a fickle thing. Over the years, I have read and heard a lot about burnout. Burnout is real. Especially now, with COVID, many of us are balancing more than we ever have before—all at once! It’s challenging, and so many amazing professionals are affected by the avoidance, the shutting down, and the procrastination. There are important articles that relate to what I imagine must be the majority of people out there, but not me. That’s not how my burnout appears.

The dangerous invisibility of zealous burnout

A lot of work environments see the extra hours, extra effort, and overall focused commitment as an asset ( and sometimes that’s all it is ). They see a person attempting to overcome obstacles, not a person trapped in fear. Many well-meaning organizations have safeguards in place to protect their teams from burnout. However, in situations like this, alarms don’t always ring, and some organization members are surprised and depressed when the inevitable stop occurs. And sometimes maybe even betrayed.

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

Women and burnout

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

Despite this, women are still more likely than their male counterparts to burn out, especially in these COVID stressful times. Mothers in the workplace feel the pressure to do all the “mom” things while giving 110 %. Mothers not in the workplace feel they need to do more to” justify” their lack of traditional employment. Women who are not mothers frequently feel the need to do even more because they don’t feel the pressure that comes with being a mother. It’s vicious and systemic and so a part of our culture that we’re often not even aware of the enormity of the pressures we put on ourselves and each other.

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

According to what I’ve read, this connection between work stress and health is more dangerous for women than it is for their non-female counterparts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So now what?

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

• Get enough sleep.
• Eat healthy.
• Work out.
• Go outside.
• Take a break.
• Practice self-care in general.

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

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

I have come up with a few suggestions for me to help me remember the airline attendant’s advice to put on your face first when I feel burned out.

Cook an elaborate meal for someone!

Okay, since I’m a “food-focused” person, I’ve always been a fan. There are countless tales in my home of someone walking into the kitchen and turning right around and walking out when they noticed I was” chopping angrily”. But it’s more than that, and you should give it a try. Seriously. It’s the perfect go-to if you don’t feel worthy of taking time for yourself—do it for someone else. Because the majority of us work in a digital world, cooking can pique all of your senses and make you immerse in the moment in all your ways of seeing the world. It can break you out of your head and help you gain a better perspective. In my house, I’ve been known to pick a place on the map and cook food that comes from wherever that is ( thank you, Pinterest ). Because it’s not what I was raised making, I enjoy making Indian food because the smells are warm and the bread only needs a small amount of kneading to keep my hands busy. And in the end, we all win!

Vent like a sniveling jerk.

Be careful with this one!

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

When that is required, turn to a trusted friend and give yourself some pure verbal diarrhea by expressing all your concerns. You need to trust this friend not to judge, to see your pain, and, most importantly, to tell you to remove your cranium from your own rectal cavity. Seriously, it’s about getting a reality check here! One of the things that I admire most about my husband is how he can simplify things down to the simplest of terms, even though sometimes after the fact. ” We’re spending our lives together, of course you’re going to disappoint me from time to time, so get over it” has been his way of speaking his dedication, love, and acceptance of me—and I could not be more grateful. Of course, it required that I remove my head from that rectal cavity. So, again, usually those moments are appreciated in hindsight.

Pick up a book!

There are many books out there that are more like you sharing their stories and how they’ve come to find greater balance than they are self-help. Maybe you’ll find something that speaks to you. Among the titles that have stood out to me are:

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

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

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

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

Give yourself a break.

You are never going to be perfect—hell, it would be boring if you were. It’s OK to be broken and flawed. Being tired, depressed, and worried is human nature. It’s OK to not do it all. You can’t be brave without being imperfect, which is terrifying.

This last one is the most important: allow yourself permission to NOT do it all. You never promised to be everything to everyone at all times. Our fears determine our strength, not ours.

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

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

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

Does this sound familiar?

If something sounds familiar, you are not alone. Don’t let your negative self-talk tell you that you “even burn out wrong”. It is not improper. Even if rooted in fear like my own drivers, I believe that this need to do more comes from a place of love, determination, motivation, and other wonderful attributes that make you the amazing person you are. We’re going to be OK, ya know. The lives that come before us might never have the same meaning as the one we’re striving for, which is acceptable because the only way to judge is in the mirror when we stop and look around.

Do you remember that Winnie the Pooh sketch that had Pooh eat so much at Rabbit’s house that his buttocks couldn’t fit through the door? Well, I already have a strong connection to Rabbit, so it was surprising when he unexpectedly declared that this was unacceptable. But do you recall what happened next? He put a shelf across poor Pooh’s ankles and decorations on his back, and made the best of the big butt in his kitchen.

At the end of the day, we are resourceful and aware that we can push ourselves if necessary, even when we are exhausted or have a ton of stuff in our room. None of us has to be afraid, as we can manage any obstacle put in front of us. And maybe that means we need to redefine success in order to make room for comfort in human nature, but that doesn’t really sound so bad either.

So, wherever you are right now, please breathe. Do what you need to do to get out of your head. Give thanks and be considerate.

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

Feedback is also one of the most underestimated equipment, and generally by assuming that we’re now great at it, we settle, forgetting that it’s a skill that can be trained, grown, and improved. Bad opinions can lead to conflict in projects, lower morale, and long-term, undermine trust and teamwork. Quality comments can be a revolutionary force.

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

We can find a long history of sequential comments on the web: code was written and discussed on mailing lists since the beginning of open source. Currently, engineers engage on pull calls, developers post in their favourite design tools, project managers and sprint masters exchange ideas on tickets, and so on.

Design analysis is often the label used for a type of input that’s provided to make our job better, jointly. It generally shares many of the concepts with suggestions, but it also has some differences.

The information

The material of the feedback serves as the foundation for all effective critiques, so we need to begin there. There are many versions that you can use to design your information. The one that I personally like best—because it’s obvious and actionable—is this one from Lara Hogan.

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

Here is a reply that could be included in some feedback, and it might appear fair at first glance because it appears to merely fit the equation. But does it?

Not confident about the keys ‘ patterns and hierarchy—it feels off. Can they be altered?

Observation for style feedback doesn’t really mean pointing out which part of the software your input refers to, but it also refers to offering a viewpoint that’s as specific as possible. Do you offer the user’s viewpoint? Your expert perspective? A business perspective? From the perspective of the project manager? A first-time user’s perspective?

I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them.

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

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

The question approach is meant to provide open guidance by eliciting the critical thinking in the designer receiving the feedback. Notably, in Lara’s equation she provides a second approach: request, which instead provides guidance toward a specific solution. While that’s a viable option for feedback in general, in my experience, going back to the question approach typically leads to the best solutions because designers are generally more at ease in being given an open space to explore.

The difference between the two can be exemplified with, for the question approach:

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

Or, for the request approach:

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

At this point in some situations, it might be useful to integrate with an extra why: why you consider the given suggestion to be better.

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

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

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

No, because of the length in question, this kind of feedback is effective and can provide just enough information for a sound fix. Also if we zoom out, it can reduce future back-and-forth conversations and misunderstandings, improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of collaboration beyond the single comment. Imagine that in the example above the feedback were instead just,” Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons”. Since the designer receiving this feedback wouldn’t have much to go by, they might just implement the change. In later iterations, the interface might change or they might introduce new features—and maybe that change might not make sense anymore. Without explaining the why, the designer might assume that the change is one of consistency, but what if it wasn’t? So there could now be an underlying concern that changing the buttons would be perceived as a regression.

Yes, this style of feedback is not always efficient because the points in some comments don’t always need to be exhaustive, sometimes because certain changes may be obvious (” The font used doesn’t follow our guidelines” ) and sometimes because the team may have a lot of internal knowledge such that some of the whys may be implied.

The equation above is not intended to provide a predetermined template for feedback, but rather a mnemonic to reflect and enhance the practice. Even after years of active work on my critiques, I still from time to time go back to this formula and reflect on whether what I just wrote is effective.

The tone

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

Since our goal is to be understood and to have a positive working environment, tone is essential to work on. Over the years, I’ve tried to summarize the necessary soft skills in a formula that resembles the one for content: the receptivity equation.

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

The time when feedback occurs is known as timing. To-the-point feedback doesn’t have much hope of being well received if it’s given at the wrong time. If a new feature’s entire high-level information architecture is about to go live when it’s about to be released, it might still be relevant if that questioning raises a significant blocker that no one saw, but those concerns are much more likely to have to wait for a later revision. So in general, attune your feedback to the stage of the project. Early iteration? Iteration later? Polishing work in progress? Each of these has unique needs. The right timing will make it more likely that your feedback will be well received.

Attitude is the equivalent of intent, and in the context of person-to-person feedback, it can be referred to as radical candor. Before writing, it’s important to make sure the person we’re writing will actually benefit them and improve the overall project. This might be a hard reflection at times because maybe we don’t want to admit that we don’t really appreciate that person. Although it’s possible, and that’s okay, it’s hoped not to be the case. Acknowledging and owning that can help you make up for that: how would I write if I really cared about them? How can I avoid being passive aggressive? How can I encourage constructive behavior?

Form is relevant especially in a diverse and cross-cultural work environments because having great content, perfect timing, and the right attitude might not come across if the way that we write creates misunderstandings. There could be many reasons for this: some words might cause particular reactions, some non-native speakers might not understand all the nuances of some sentences, and other times our brains might be different and we might perceive the world differently. Neurodiversity must be taken into account. Whatever the reason, it’s important to review not just what we write but how.

A few years back, I was asking for some feedback on how I give feedback. I was given some sound advice, but I also got a surprise comment. They pointed out that when I wrote” Oh, ]… ]”, I made them feel stupid. That wasn’t my intention at all! I felt really bad, and I just realized that I provided feedback to them for months, and every time I might have made them feel stupid. I was horrified … but also thankful. I quickly changed my spelling mistake by adding “oh” to my list of replaced words (your choice between aText, TextExpander, or others ) so that when I typed “oh,” it was immediately deleted.

Something to highlight because it’s quite frequent—especially in teams that have a strong group spirit—is that people tend to beat around the bush. A positive attitude doesn’t necessarily mean giving in to criticism; it just means that you give it in a respectful and constructive manner, whether it be in the form of criticism or criticism. The nicest thing that you can do for someone is to help them grow.

We have a great advantage in giving feedback in written form: it can be reviewed by another person who isn’t directly involved, which can help to reduce or remove any bias that might be there. The best, most insightful moments for me came when I shared a comment and asked a trusted person how it sounds, how can I do it better, or even” How would you have written it”? I discovered that by seeing the two versions side by side, I’ve learned a lot.

The format

Asynchronous feedback also has a significant inherent benefit: it allows us to spend more time making sure that the suggestions ‘ clarity and actionability meet two main objectives.

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

In terms of clarity, start by grounding the critique that you’re about to give by providing context. This includes specifically describing where you’re coming from: do you have a thorough understanding of the project, or is this your first time seeing it? Are you coming from a high-level perspective, or are you figuring out the details? Are there regressions? Which user’s point of view are you addressing when offering feedback? Is the design iteration at a point where it would be okay to ship this, or are there major things that need to be addressed first?

Even if you’re giving feedback to a team that already has some background information on the project, providing context is helpful. And context is absolutely essential when giving cross-team feedback. If I were to review a design that might be indirectly related to my work, and if I had no knowledge about how the project arrived at that point, I would say so, highlighting my take as external.

We frequently concentrate on the negatives and attempt to list every improvement that could be made. That’s of course important, but it’s just as important—if not more—to focus on the positives, especially if you saw progress from the previous iteration. Although this may seem superfluous, it’s important to remember that design has a number of possible solutions to each problem. So pointing out that the design solution that was chosen is good and explaining why it’s good has two major benefits: it confirms that the approach taken was solid, and it helps to ground your negative feedback. In the longer term, sharing positive feedback can help prevent regressions on things that are going well because those things will have been highlighted as important. Positive feedback can also help, as an added bonus, prevent impostor syndrome.

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

Another way that you can improve your feedback is to depersonalize the feedback: the comments should always be about the work, never about the person who made it. It’s” This button isn’t well aligned” versus” You haven’t aligned this button well”. This can be changed in your writing very quickly by reviewing it just before sending.

In terms of actionability, one of the best approaches to help the designer who’s reading through your feedback is to split it into bullet points or paragraphs, which are easier to review and analyze one by one. You might also consider breaking up the feedback into sections or even across multiple comments if it is longer. Of course, adding screenshots or signifying markers of the specific part of the interface you’re referring to can also be especially useful.

One approach that I’ve personally used effectively in some contexts is to enhance the bullet points with four markers using emojis. A red square indicates that it is something I consider blocking, a yellow diamond indicates that it should be changed, and a green circle indicates that it is fully confirmed. I also use a blue spiral � � for either something that I’m not sure about, an exploration, an open alternative, or just a note. However, I’d only use this strategy on teams where I’ve already established a high level of trust because the impact could be quite demoralizing if I had to deliver a lot of red squares, and I’d change how I’d communicate that a little.

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

• 🔶 Navigation—I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.
• � � Overall— I think the page is solid, and this is good enough to be our release candidate for a version 1.0.
• � � Metrics—Good improvement in the buttons on the metrics area, the improved contrast and new focus style make them more accessible.
• Button Style: Using the green accent in this context, which conveys that it is a positive action because green is typically seen as a confirmation color. Do we need to explore a different color?
• Considering the number of items on the page and the overall page hierarchy, it seems to me that the tiles should use Subtitle 2 instead of Subtitle 1. This will keep the visual hierarchy more consistent.
• � � Background—Using a light texture works well, but I wonder whether it adds too much noise in this kind of page. What is the purpose of using that?

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

One final note: say the obvious. Sometimes we might feel good or bad about something, so we don’t say it. Or sometimes we might have a doubt that we don’t express because the question might sound stupid. Say it, that’s fine. You might have to reword it a little bit to make the reader feel more comfortable, but don’t hold it back. Good feedback is transparent, even when it may be obvious.

Asynchronous feedback also has the benefit of automatically guiding decisions, according to writing. Especially in large projects,” Why did we do this”? There’s nothing better than open, transparent discussions that can be reviewed at any time, and this could be a question that arises from time to time. For this reason, I recommend using software that saves these discussions, without hiding them once they are resolved.

Content, tone, and format. Although each of these subjects offers a useful model, improving eight of the subjects ‘ observation, impact, question, timing, attitude, form, clarity, and actionability is a lot of work to put in all at once. One effective approach is to take them one by one: first identify the area that you lack the most (either from your perspective or from feedback from others ) and start there. Then the third, the third, and so on. At first you’ll have to put in extra time for every piece of feedback that you give, but after a while, it’ll become second nature, and your impact on the work will multiply.

Thanks to Brie Anne Demkiw and Mike Shelton for reviewing the first draft of this article.

” Any feedback?” is perhaps one of the worst ways to ask for opinions. It’s obscure and unfocused, and it doesn’t give us a sense of what we’re looking for. Getting good opinions starts sooner than we might hope: it starts with the demand.

Starting the process of receiving feedback with a question may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense if we consider that receiving input can be seen as a form of pattern research. In the same way that we wouldn’t perform any studies without the correct questions to get the insight that we need, the best way to ask for feedback is also to build strong issues.

Design analysis is not a one-time procedure. Sure, any great comments process continues until the project is finished, but this is especially true for layout because architecture work continues iteration after iteration, from a high level to the finest details. Each stage requires its unique set of questions.

And suddenly, as with any great research, we need to examine what we got up, get to the base of its perspectives, and take action. Iteration, evaluation, and problem. This look at each of those.

The query

Being available to input is important, but we need to be specific about what we’re looking for. Any comments,” What do you think,” or” I’d love to hear your mind” at the end of a presentation are likely to garner a lot of different ideas, or worse, to make people follow the lead of the first speaker. And next… we get frustrated because vague issues like those you turn a high-level moves review into folks rather commenting on the borders of buttons. Which theme may be important, so it might be difficult to get the team to pay attention to it.

But how do we get into this scenario? It’s a combination of various aspects. One is that we don’t often consider asking as a part of the input approach. Another is how healthy it is to leave the question open and assume that everyone else will agree. Another is that in nonprofessional debate, there’s usually no need to be that exact. In summary, we tend to undervalue the value of the issues, and we don’t work to improve them.

The work of asking good questions guidelines and focuses the criticism. It also serves as a form of acceptance, outlining your willingness to make comments and the types of responses you want to receive. It puts people in the right emotional position, especially in situations when they weren’t expecting to give opinions.

There isn’t a second best method to request feedback. It simply needs to be certain, and sensitivity can take several shapes. The stage than depth model for design critique has been a particularly helpful tool for my coaching.

” Stage” refers to each of the steps of the process—in our event, the design process. The kind of feedback changes as the customer research moves forward to the final design. But within a single stage, one might also examine whether some assumptions are correct and whether there’s been a suitable language of the amassed input into updated designs as the project has evolved. The layers of user experience could serve as a starting point for future inquiries. What do you want to know: Project objectives? user requirements? Functionality? Content? Interaction design? Information architecture UI design? Navigation planning? Visual design? Branding?

Here’re a few example questions that are precise and to the point that refer to different layers:

• Functionality: Is it desirable to automate account creation?
• Interaction design: Take a look through the updated flow and let me know whether you see any steps or error states that I might’ve missed.
• Information architecture: This page contains two competing pieces of information. Is the structure effective in communicating them both?
• User interface design: What do you think about the top-of-the-page error counter, which makes sure you can see the next error even when the error is outside the viewport?
• Navigation design: From research, we identified these second-level navigation items, but once you’re on the page, the list feels too long and hard to navigate. Do you have any suggestions for how to handle this?
• Visual design: Are the sticky notifications in the bottom-right corner visible enough?

How much of a presentation’s depth would be on the other axis of specificity. For example, we might have introduced a new end-to-end flow, but there was a specific view that you found particularly challenging and you’d like a detailed review of that. This can be especially helpful from one iteration to the next when it’s crucial to highlight the areas that have changed.

There are other things that we can consider when we want to achieve more specific—and more effective—questions.

A quick fix is to get rid of the generic qualifiers from questions like “good”, “well,” “nice,” “bad,” “okay,” and” cool.” For example, asking,” When the block opens and the buttons appear, is this interaction good”? is it possible to look specific, but you can identify the “good” qualifier and make the question” When the block opens and the buttons appear, is it clear what the next action is” look like?

Sometimes we actually do want broad feedback. Although that’s uncommon, it can occur. In that sense, you might still make it explicit that you’re looking for a wide range of opinions, whether at a high level or with details. Or perhaps you should just say,” At first glance, what do you think”? so that it’s clear that what you’re asking is open ended but focused on someone’s impression after their first five seconds of looking at it.

Sometimes the project is particularly broad, and some areas may have already been thoroughly explored. In these situations, it might be useful to explicitly say that some parts are already locked in and aren’t open to feedback. Although it’s not something I’d recommend in general, I’ve found it helpful in avoiding getting back into rabbit holes like those that could lead to further refinement but aren’t currently what matters most.

Asking specific questions can completely change the quality of the feedback that you receive. Even experienced designers will appreciate the clarity and efficiency gained from concentrating solely on what is required, and those with less refined critique skills will now be able to offer more actionable feedback. It can save a lot of time and frustration.

The iteration

Design iterations are probably the most visible part of the design work, and they provide a natural checkpoint for feedback. Many design tools have inline commenting, but many of them only display changes as a single fluid stream in the same file. These types of design tools cause conversations to end after they are resolved, update shared UI components automatically, and require designers to always display the most recent version unless these would-be useful features were manually disabled. The implied goal that these design tools seem to have is to arrive at just one final copy with all discussions closed, probably because they inherited patterns from how written documents are collaboratively edited. That approach to design critiques is probably not the best approach, but some teams might benefit from it even if I don’t want to be too prescriptive.

The asynchronous design-critique approach that I find most effective is to create explicit checkpoints for discussion. For this, I’m going to use the term iteration post. It refers to a write-up or presentation of the design iteration followed by a discussion thread of some kind. This can be used on any platform that can accommodate this structure. By the way, when I refer to a “write-up or presentation“, I’m including video recordings or other media too: as long as it’s asynchronous, it works.

There are many benefits to using iteration posts:

• It creates a rhythm in the design work so that the designer can review feedback from each iteration and prepare for the next.
• Decisions are made immediately available for future review, and conversations are also always available.
• It creates a record of how the design changed over time.
• Depending on the tool, it might also make it simpler to collect and act on feedback.

These posts of course don’t mean that no other feedback approach should be used, just that iteration posts could be the primary rhythm for a remote design team to use. And from there, there can develop additional feedback techniques ( such as live critique, pair designing, or inline comments ).

I don’t think there’s a standard format for iteration posts. However, there are a few high-level components that make sense as a baseline:

1. The goal
2. The layout
3. The list of changes
4. The querys

Each project is likely to have a goal, and hopefully it’s something that’s already been summarized in a single sentence somewhere else, such as the client brief, the product manager’s outline, or the project owner’s request. In every iteration post, I would copy and paste this, so I could do it again. The idea is to provide context and to repeat what’s essential to make each iteration post complete so that there’s no need to find information spread across multiple posts. The most recent iteration post will provide all I need to know about the most recent design.

This copy-and-paste part introduces another relevant concept: alignment comes from repetition. Therefore, repeating information in posts is actually very effective at ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

The design is then the actual series of information-architecture outlines, diagrams, flows, maps, wireframes, screens, visuals, and any other kind of design work that’s been done. It’s any design artifact, in essence. For the final stages of work, I prefer the term blueprint to emphasize that I’ll be showing full flows instead of individual screens to make it easier to understand the bigger picture.

It might also be helpful to have clear names on the artifacts so that it is easier to refer to them. Write the post in a way that helps people understand the work. It’s not very different from creating a strong live presentation.

For an efficient discussion, you should also include a bullet list of the changes from the previous iteration to let people focus on what’s new, which can be especially useful for larger pieces of work where keeping track, iteration after iteration, could become a challenge.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, a list of the questions must be included in order to help you guide the design critique in the desired direction. Doing this as a numbered list can also help make it easier to refer to each question by its number.

Not every iteration is the same. Earlier iterations don’t need to be as tightly focused—they can be more exploratory and experimental, maybe even breaking some of the design-language guidelines to see what’s possible. Then, later, the iterations begin coming to a decision and improving it until the design process is complete and the feature is ready.

I want to highlight that even if these iteration posts are written and conceived as checkpoints, by no means do they need to be exhaustive. A post might be a draft, just a concept to start a discussion, or it might be a cumulative list of all the features that have been added over the course of each iteration until the full picture is achieved.

Over time, I also started using specific labels for incremental iterations: i1, i2, i3, and so on. Although this may seem like a minor labeling tip, it can be useful in many ways:

• Unique—It’s a clear unique marker. Everyone knows where to go to review things, and it’s simple to say” This was discussed in i4″ with each project.
• Unassuming—It works like versions ( such as v1, v2, and v3 ) but in contrast, versions create the impression of something that’s big, exhaustive, and complete. Attempts must be exploratory, incomplete, or partial.
• Future proof—It resolves the “final” naming problem that you can run into with versions. No more files with the title “final final complete no-really-its-done” Within each project, the largest number always represents the latest iteration.

The wording release candidate (RC ) could be used to describe a design as complete enough to be worked on, even if there might be some bits that still need more attention and in turn, more iterations would be required, such as” with i8 we reached RC” or “i12 is an RC” to indicate when it is finished.

The review

A back-and-forth between two people that can be very productive typically occurs during a design critique. This approach is particularly effective during live, synchronous feedback. However, when we work asynchronously, it is more effective to adopt a different strategy: we can adopt a user-research mindset. Written feedback from teammates, stakeholders, or others can be treated as if it were the result of user interviews and surveys, and we can analyze it accordingly.

Asynchronous feedback is particularly effective around these friction points because of this shift’s significant benefits:

1. It removes the pressure to reply to everyone.
2. It lessens the annoyance of snoop-by comments.
3. It lessens our personal stake.

The first friction is being forced to respond to every comment. Sometimes we write the iteration post, and we get replies from our team. It’s just a few of them, it’s simple, and there isn’t much to worry about. But other times, some solutions might require more in-depth discussions, and the amount of replies can quickly increase, which can create a tension between trying to be a good team player by replying to everyone and doing the next design iteration. This might be especially true if the respondent is a stakeholder or a person who is directly involved in the project and whom we feel we need to speak with. We need to accept that this pressure is absolutely normal, and it’s human nature to try to accommodate people who we care about. When we treat a design critique more like user research, we realize that we don’t need to respond to every comment, and there are alternatives: In asynchronous spaces, responding to all comments can be effective.

One is to let the next iteration speak for itself. The response is received when the design changes and a follow-up iteration is made. You might tag all the people who were involved in the previous discussion, but even that’s a choice, not a requirement.
• Another tactic is to formally acknowledge each comment in a brief response, such as” Understood. Thank you”,” Good points— I’ll review”, or” Thanks. These will be included in the upcoming iteration. In some cases, this could also be just a single top-level comment along the lines of” Thanks for all the feedback everyone—the next iteration is coming soon”!
• Another option is to quickly summarize the comments before moving on. Depending on your workflow, this can be particularly useful as it can provide a simplified checklist that you can then use for the next iteration.

The swoop-by comment, which is the kind of feedback that comes from a member of the project or team who might not be aware of the context, restrictions, decisions, or requirements —or of the discussions from earlier iterations. On their side, there’s something that one can hope that they might learn: they could start to acknowledge that they’re doing this and they could be more conscious in outlining where they’re coming from. It can be annoying to have to repeat the same response repeatedly in swoop-by comments.

Let’s begin by acknowledging again that there’s no need to reply to every comment. However, if responding to a previously litigated point is useful, a brief response with a link to the previous discussion for additional information is typically sufficient. Remember, alignment comes from repetition, so it’s okay to repeat things sometimes!

Swoop-by commenting can still be useful for two reasons: first, they might point out something that isn’t clear, and second, they might have the power to represent a user’s first impression of the design. Sure, you’ll still be frustrated, but that might at least help in dealing with it.

The personal stake we might have in the design could be the third friction point, which might cause us to feel defensive if the review turned into a discussion. Treating feedback as user research helps us create a healthy distance between the people giving us feedback and our ego ( because yes, even if we don’t want to admit it, it’s there ). In the end, putting everything in aggregate form helps us to prioritize our work more.

Always remember that while you need to listen to stakeholders, project owners, and specific advice, you don’t have to accept every piece of feedback. You must examine it and come to a decision that can be justified, but sometimes “no” is the best choice.

As the designer leading the project, you’re in charge of that decision. In the end, everyone has their area of expertise, and as a designer, you are the one with the most background and knowledge to make the right choice. And by listening to the feedback that you’ve received, you’re making sure that it’s also the best and most balanced decision.

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

Although I’m not sure when I first heard this statement, it has stuck with me over the centuries. How do you generate solutions for scenarios you can’t think? Or create items that are functional on products that have not yet been created?

Flash, Photoshop, and flexible pattern

When I first started designing sites, my go-to technology was Photoshop. I created a design for a 960px paint that I would later add willing to. The growth phase was about attaining pixel-perfect precision using set widths, fixed levels, and absolute setting.

All of this was altered by Ethan Marcotte’s 2010 post in A List Off entitled” Responsive Web Design.” I was sold on reactive style as soon as I heard about it, but I was even terrified. The pixel-perfect models full of special figures that I had formerly prided myself on producing were no longer good enough.

My first encounter with flexible design didn’t help my fear. My second project was to get an active fixed-width website and make it reactive. What I discovered the hard manner was that you can’t really put sensitivity at the end of a job. To make smooth design, you need to prepare throughout the style phase.

A new way to style

Removing restrictions and creating content that can be viewed on any system has always been the goal of designing responsive or smooth websites. It relies on the use of percentage-based design, which I immediately achieved with local CSS and power groups:

.column-span-6 { width: 49%; float: left; margin-right: 0.5%; margin-left: 0.5%;}.column-span-4 { width: 32%; float: left; margin-right: 0.5%; margin-left: 0.5%;}.column-span-3 { width: 24%; float: left; margin-right: 0.5%; margin-left: 0.5%;}

Therefore using Sass to re-use repeated slabs of code and transition to more semantic premium:

.logo { @include colSpan(6);}.search { @include colSpan(3);}.social-share { @include colSpan(3);}

Media questions

The next ingredient for flexible design is press queries. Without them, content would shrink to fit the available space, regardless of whether it remained readable ( The exact opposite issue resulted from the development of a mobile-first approach ).

Media questions prevented this by allowing us to add breakpoints where the design could adapt. Like most people, I started out with three breakpoints: one for desktop, one for tablets, and one for mobile. Over the years, I added more and more for phablets, wide screens, and so on. 

For years, I happily worked this way and improved both my design and front-end skills in the process. The only problem I encountered was making changes to content, since with our Sass grid system in place, there was no way for the site owners to add content without amending the markup—something a small business owner might struggle with. This is because each row in the grid was defined using a div as a container. Adding content meant creating new row markup, which requires a level of HTML knowledge.

String premium was a mainstay of early flexible design, present in all the frequently used systems like Bootstrap and Skeleton.

 
1 of 7
 
2 of 7
 
3 of 7
 
4 of 7
 
5 of 7
 
6 of 7
 
7 of 7

Another difficulty arose as I moved from a design firm building websites for smaller- to medium-sized companies, to larger in-house teams where I worked across a collection of related sites. In those capacities, I began to work more with washable parts.

Our rely on multimedia queries resulted in parts that were tied to frequent screen sizes. If the goal of part libraries is modify, then this is a real problem because you can just use these components if the devices you’re designing for correspond to the viewport sizes used in the pattern library—in the process never really hitting that “devices that don’t already occur” goal.

Then there’s the problem of space. Media questions allow components to adapt based on the viewport size, but what if I put a component into a sidebar, like in the figure below?

Container queries: our savior or a false dawn?

Container queries have long been touted as an improvement upon media queries, but at the time of writing are unsupported in most browsers. There are workarounds for JavaScript, but they can lead to dependencies and compatibility issues. The basic theory underlying container queries is that elements should change based on the size of their parent container and not the viewport width, as seen in the following illustrations.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of container queries is that they help us create components or design patterns that are truly reusable because they can be picked up and placed anywhere in a layout. This is an important step in moving toward a form of component-based design that works at any size on any device.

In other words, responsive layouts are to be replaced by responsive components.

Container queries will help us move from designing pages that respond to the browser or device size to designing components that can be placed in a sidebar or in the main content, and respond accordingly.

My issue is that layout is still used to determine when a design needs to adapt. This approach will always be restrictive, as we will still need pre-defined breakpoints. For this reason, my main question with container queries is, How would we decide when to change the CSS used by a component?

The best place to make that choice is probably a component library that is disconnected from context and real content.

As the diagrams below illustrate, we can use container queries to create designs for specific container widths, but what if I want to change the design based on the image size or ratio?

In this example, the dimensions of the container are not what should dictate the design, rather, the image is.

Without having strong cross-browser support for them, it’s difficult to say for certain whether container queries will be a success story. Responsive component libraries would definitely evolve how we design and would improve the possibilities for reuse and design at scale. However, we might need to modify these elements in order to fit our content.

CSS is changing

Whilst the container query debate rumbles on, there have been numerous advances in CSS that change the way we think about design. The days of fixed-width elements measured in pixels and floated div elements used to cobble layouts together are long gone, consigned to history along with table layouts. Flexbox and CSS Grid have revolutionized layouts for the web. We can now create elements that wrap onto new rows when they run out of space, not when the device changes.

.wrapper { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, 450px); gap: 10px;}

The repeat() function paired with auto-fit or auto-fill allows us to specify how much space each column should use while leaving it up to the browser to decide when to spill the columns onto a new line. Similar things can be achieved with Flexbox, as elements can wrap over multiple rows and “flex” to fill available space. 

.wrapper { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; justify-content: space-between;}.child { flex-basis: 32%; margin-bottom: 20px;}

The biggest benefit of all of this is that you don’t need to wrap any containers in rows. Without rows, content isn’t tied to page markup in quite the same way, allowing for removals or additions of content without additional development.

This is a big step forward when it comes to creating designs that allow for evolving content, but the real game changer for flexible designs is CSS Subgrid.

Remember the days of crafting perfectly aligned interfaces, only for the customer to add an unbelievably long header almost as soon as they’re given CMS access, like the illustration below?

Subgrid allows elements to respond to adjustments in their own content and in the content of sibling elements, helping us create designs more resilient to change.

.wrapper { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(150px, 1fr)); grid-template-rows: auto 1fr auto; gap: 10px;}.sub-grid { display: grid; grid-row: span 3; grid-template-rows: subgrid; /* sets rows to parent grid */}

CSS Grid allows us to separate layout and content, thereby enabling flexible designs. Meanwhile, Subgrid allows us to create designs that can adapt in order to suit morphing content. The above code can be implemented behind an @supports feature query even though Firefox is the only browser that supports subgrid at the time of writing.

Intrinsic layouts

I’d be remiss not to mention intrinsic layouts, a term used by Jen Simmons to describe a mix of contemporary and traditional CSS features to create layouts that respond to available space.

Responsive layouts have flexible columns using percentages. Intrinsic layouts, on the other hand, use the fr unit to create flexible columns that won’t ever shrink so much that they render the content illegible.

frunits is a statement that says,” I want you to distribute the extra space in this way, but never make it smaller than the content that is inside.”

—Jen Simmons,” Designing Intrinsic Layouts”

Intrinsic layouts can also make use of a mix of fixed and flexible units, letting the content choose how much space it occupies.

What makes intrinsic design stand out is that it not only creates designs that can withstand future devices but also helps scale design without losing flexibility. Without the requirement of having the same breakpoints or the same amount of content as in the previous implementation, components and patterns can be lifted and reused.

We can now create designs that adapt to the space they have, the content within them, and the content around them. We can create responsive components using an intrinsic approach without relying on container queries.

Another 2010 moment?

This intrinsic approach should in my view be every bit as groundbreaking as responsive web design was ten years ago. It’s another “everything changed” moment for me.

But it doesn’t seem to be moving quite as fast, I haven’t yet had that same career-changing moment I had with responsive design, despite the widely shared and brilliant talk that brought it to my attention.

One possible explanation for that is that I now work for a sizable company, which is quite different from the role I held as a design agency in 2010! In my agency days, every new project was a clean slate, a chance to try something new. Nowadays, projects use existing tools and frameworks and are often improvements to existing websites with an existing codebase.

Another possibility is that right now I feel more prepared for change. In 2010 I was new to design in general, the shift was frightening and required a lot of learning. Additionally, an intrinsic approach isn’t exactly new; it’s about applying existing skills and CSS knowledge in a unique way.

You can’t framework your way out of a content problem

Another reason for the slightly slower adoption of intrinsic design could be the lack of quick-fix framework solutions available to kick-start the change.

Ten years ago, responsive grid systems were everywhere. With a framework like Bootstrap or Skeleton, you had a responsive design template at your fingertips.

Because the benefit of having a selection of units is a hindrance when it comes to creating layout templates, intrinsic design and frameworks do not go hand in hand quite as well. The beauty of intrinsic design is combining different units and experimenting with techniques to get the best for your content.

And then there are design tools. We probably all used Photoshop templates for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices to drop designs into and demonstrate how the site would look at all three stages at some point in our careers.

How do you do that now, with each component responding to content and layouts flexing as and when they need to? This kind of design must take place in the browser, which is something I’m very fond of.

The debate about “whether designers should code” is another that has rumbled on for years. When designing a digital product, we should, at the very least, design for a best- and worst-case scenario when it comes to content. It’s not ideal to implement this in a graphics-based software package. In code, we can add longer sentences, more radio buttons, and extra tabs, and watch in real time as the design adapts. Does it continue to function? Is the design too reliant on the current content?

Personally, I look forward to the day intrinsic design is the standard for design, when a design component can be truly flexible and adapt to both its space and content with no reliance on device or container dimensions.

First, the content

Content is not constant. After all, to design for the unanticipated or unexpected, we must take into account changes in content, such as in our earlier Subgrid card illustration, which allowed the cards to make adjustments to both their own and sibling elements.

Thankfully, there’s more to CSS than layout, and plenty of properties and values can help us put content first. Subgrid and pseudo-elements like ::first-line and ::first-letter help to separate design from markup so we can create designs that allow for changes.

Instead of the dated markup tricks below,

 First line of text with different styling...

—we can target content based on where it appears.

.element::first-line { font-size: 1.4em;}.element::first-letter { color: red;}

Much bigger additions to CSS include logical properties, which change the way we construct designs using logical dimensions (start and end) instead of physical ones (left and right), something CSS Grid also does with functions like min(), max(), and clamp().

This flexibility allows for directional changes according to content, a common requirement when we need to present content in multiple languages. In the past, this was often achieved with Sass mixins but was often limited to switching from left-to-right to right-to-left orientation.

Directional variables must be set in the Sass version.

$direction: rtl;$opposite-direction: ltr;$start-direction: right;$end-direction: left;

These variables can be used as values—

body { direction: $direction; text-align: $start-direction;}

—or as real estate.

margin-#{$end-direction}: 10px;padding-#{$start-direction}: 10px;

However, now we have native logical properties, removing the reliance on both Sass ( or a similar tool ) and pre-planning that necessitated using variables throughout a codebase. These properties also start to break apart the tight coupling between a design and strict physical dimensions, creating more flexibility for changes in language and in direction.

margin-block-end: 10px;padding-block-start: 10px;

There are also native start and end values for properties like text-align, which means we can replace text-align: right with text-align: start.

Like the earlier examples, these properties help to build out designs that aren’t constrained to one language, the design will reflect the content’s needs.

Fluid and fixed

We briefly covered the power of combining fixed widths with fluid widths with intrinsic layouts. The min() and max() functions are a similar concept, allowing you to specify a fixed value with a flexible alternative. 

For min() this means setting a fluid minimum value and a maximum fixed value.

.element { width: min(50%, 300px);}

The element in the figure above will be 50 % of its container as long as the element’s width doesn’t exceed 300px.

For max() we can set a flexible max value and a minimum fixed value.

.element { width: max(50%, 300px);}

Now the element will be 50 % of its container as long as the element’s width is at least 300px. This means we can set limits but allow content to react to the available space.

The clamp() function builds on this by allowing us to set a preferred value with a third parameter. Now we can allow the element to shrink or grow if it needs to without getting to a point where it becomes unusable.

.element { width: clamp(300px, 50%, 600px);}

This time, the element’s width will be 50 % of its container’s preferred value, with no exceptions for 300px and 600px.

With these techniques, we have a content-first approach to responsive design. We can separate content from markup, meaning the changes users make will not affect the design. By anticipating unforeseen language or direction changes, we can begin creating future-proofing designs. And we can increase flexibility by setting desired dimensions alongside flexible alternatives, allowing for more or less content to be displayed correctly.

First, the situation

Thanks to what we’ve discussed so far, we can cover device flexibility by changing our approach, designing around content and space instead of catering to devices. But what about that last bit of Jeffrey Zeldman’s quote,”… situations you haven’t imagined”?

Rather than someone using a mobile phone and moving through a crowded street in glaring sunshine, it’s a very different design to be done for someone using a desktop computer. Situations and environments are hard to plan for or predict because they change as people react to their own unique challenges and tasks.

This is why making a choice is so crucial. One size never fits all, so we need to design for multiple scenarios to create equal experiences for all our users.

Thankfully, there is a lot we can do to provide choice.

Responsible design

” There are parts of the world where mobile data is prohibitively expensive, and where there is little or no broadband infrastructure”.

” I Used the Web for a Day on a 50 MB Budget.”

Chris Ashton

One of the biggest assumptions we make is that people interacting with our designs have a good wifi connection and a wide screen monitor. However, our users may be commuters using smaller mobile devices that may experience drops in connectivity while traveling on trains or other modes of transportation. There is nothing more frustrating than a web page that won’t load, but there are ways we can help users use less data or deal with sporadic connectivity.

The srcset attribute allows the browser to decide which image to serve. This means we can create smaller ‘cropped’ images to display on mobile devices in turn using less bandwidth and less data.

The preload attribute can also help us to think about how and when media is downloaded. It can be used to tell a browser about any critical assets that need to be downloaded with high priority, improving perceived performance and the user experience. 

There’s also native lazy loading, which indicates assets that should only be downloaded when they are needed.

With srcset, preload, and lazy loading, we can start to tailor a user’s experience based on the situation they find themselves in. What none of this does, however, is allow the user themselves to decide what they want downloaded, as the decision is usually the browser’s to make. 

So how can we put users in control?

The return of media inquiries

Media questions have always been about much more than device sizes. They allow content to adapt to different situations, with screen size being just one of them.

We’ve long been able to check for media types like print and speech and features such as hover, resolution, and color. These checks allow us to provide options that suit more than one scenario, it’s less about one-size-fits-all and more about serving adaptable content.

The Media Queries Level 5 spec is still being developed as of this writing. It introduces some really exciting queries that in the future will help us design for multiple other unexpected situations.

For instance, a light-level feature allows you to alter a user’s style when they are in the sun or in the dark. Paired with custom properties, these features allow us to quickly create designs or themes for specific environments.

@media (light-level: normal) { --background-color: #fff; --text-color: #0b0c0c; }@media (light-level: dim) { --background-color: #efd226; --text-color: #0b0c0c;}

Another key feature of the Level 5 spec is personalization. Instead of creating designs that are the same for everyone, users can choose what works for them. This is achieved by using features like prefers-reduced-data, prefers-color-scheme, and prefers-reduced-motion, the latter two of which already enjoy broad browser support. These features tap into preferences set via the operating system or browser so people don’t have to spend time making each site they visit more usable. 

Media questions like this go beyond choices made by a browser to grant more control to the user.

Expect the unexpected

In the end, we should always anticipate that things will change. Devices in particular change faster than we can keep up, with foldable screens already on the market.

We can design for content, but we can’t do it the same way we do for this constantly changing landscape. By putting content first and allowing that content to adapt to whatever space surrounds it, we can create more robust, flexible designs that increase the longevity of our products.

A lot of the CSS discussed here is about moving away from layouts and putting content at the heart of design. There is so much more we can do to adopt a more intrinsic approach, from responsive components to fixed and fluid units. Even better, we can test these techniques during the design phase by designing in-browser and watching how our designs adapt in real-time.

When it comes to unexpected circumstances, we need to make sure our goods are accessible whenever and wherever needed. We can move closer to achieving this by involving users in our design decisions, by creating choice via browsers, and by giving control to our users with user-preference-based media queries.

Good design for the unexpected should allow for change, provide choice, and give control to those we serve: our users themselves.