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The personalization space 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 repeated pleas for more toilet seats from regular people ). It’s an particularly confusing place to be a modern professional without a map, a map, or a strategy.

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

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

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

It’s known as prepersonalization.

Behind the song

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

We’re used to seeing the polished final outcome of a personalization have. A personal have had to be conceived, budgeted, and prioritized 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 personalisation wagers? How do you design regular interactions that didn’t journey up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve discovered that several budgeted programs initially needed one or more workshops to join key stakeholders and domestic customers of the technology to justify their continuing investments. Create it count.

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 distinguish successful future endeavors from ineffective ones, saving many hours of time, resources, and overall well-being in the process.

A personalization training involves a protracted work of testing and function development. It’s never a switch-flip in your software load. 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. You won’t require these cards. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

Set the timer for your kitchen.

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

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

Kickstart: This specifies the terms of your engagement as you concentrate on both your team’s and your team’s readiness and drive.
1. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
2. Work your plan: This stage 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 at your company. A connected experience, in our parlance, is any UX requiring the orchestration of multiple systems of record on the backend. This might be a marketing-automation platform combined with a content-management system. 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 broader view.

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 the benefits of ongoing investment as well as the difference between what you currently offer and what you intend to offer 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 they would like to place your company’s emphasis on your product or service. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. Here, the goal is to show how various departments may view their own benefits from the effort, which can vary from one department to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

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

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

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

Hit that test kitchen

What will you need next to bring your personalized recipes to life. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. They give you a variety of options for how your organization can conduct its activities because of their broad and potent capabilities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

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

Over the course of the workshop, the 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.

The dishes will be made using recipes that have predetermined ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

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

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

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

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

Create a recipe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better architecture is necessary for better kitchens.

Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. 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 disciplined and highly collaborative approach can achieve the necessary concentration and intention. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, head to the test kitchen to burn off the fantastical ideas that the doers in your organization have in store for time, to preserve job satisfaction and security, and to avoid unnecessary distractions. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

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

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 movies since I was a child. I loved the figures and the excitement—but most of all the reports. I aspired to be an artist. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on interesting activities. I also came up with concept movies that my friends and I could render 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 probably follows a three-act narrative architecture: the installation, the conflict, and the resolution, which is prevalent in literature. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to understand the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two sets the scene for the fight and the action begins. Here, difficulties grow or get worse. The decision is the third and final action. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This structure, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about consumer research, and it might be particularly useful for explaining user research to others.

Use story as a framework for conducting analysis

It’s sad to say, but many have come to view studies as being inconsequential. Research is frequently one of the first things to go when finances or deadlines are tight. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That might lead to some clubs getting in the way, but it’s too easy to overlook the real issues facing users. To be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. User study improves style. It keeps it on record, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of problems with your goods and taking corrective actions can help you be ahead of your competition.

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

Act one: layout

The setup consists entirely in comprehending the history, and that’s where basic research comes in. Basic research ( also called conceptual, discovery, or original research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. Just like in the movies, you’re learning about the problems users face, what options are available, and how those challenges impact them. To do basic research, you may conduct situational inquiries or journal studies ( or both! ), which may assist you in identifying both problems and opportunities. It doesn’t need to be a great investment in time or money.

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

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

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

When partners begin to understand the value of basic research, that is open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making approach. And that can help product teams become more user-centric. This benefits everyone—users, the product, and stakeholders. It’s similar to winning an Oscar for a film; it frequently results in a favorable reception and success for your product. And this can be an incentive for stakeholders to repeat this process with other products. The secret to this process is storytelling, and knowing how to tell a compelling story is the only way to entice stakeholders to do more research.

This brings us to act two, where you iteratively evaluate a design or concept to see whether it addresses the issues.

Act two: conflict

Act two is all about digging deeper into the problems that you identified in act one. This typically involves conducting directional research, such as usability tests, where you evaluate a potential solution ( such as a design ) to see if it addresses the issues you identified. The issues could include unmet needs or problems with a flow or process that’s tripping users up. More issues will come up in the process, much like in act two of a movie. It’s here that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this act.

Usability tests should typically consist of five participants, according to Jakob Nielsen, who found that that number of users can typically 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 fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.”

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

Usability tests have been conducted in person for decades, but you can also do them remotely using software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing software. This approach has become increasingly popular since the beginning of the pandemic, and it works well. You might consider in-person usability tests like watching a movie as opposed to remote testing like attending a play. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Usability research in person is a much more valuable learning experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. 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 remote usability tests frequently lack.

That’s not to say that the “movies” —remote sessions—aren’t a good option. Remote training sessions can reach a wider audience. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. 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.

The advantage of usability testing, whether conducted remotely or in person, is that you can ask real users questions to understand their reasoning and understanding of the problem. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. You can also test your own ideas and determine whether they are true. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. The excitement is in the second act, but there are also potential surprises in the third. This is equally true of usability tests. Sometimes, participants will say unexpected things that alter the way you look at them, which can lead to unexpected turns in the story.

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. Usability testing is 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. Because you narrow down the subject matter of your feedback without understanding the needs of the users. As a result, there’s no way of knowing whether the designs might solve a problem that users have. In the context of a usability test, it’s only feedback on a particular design.

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

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

Act three: resolution

The third act is about resolving the issues from the first two acts, while the first two acts are about understanding the background and the tensions that can compel stakeholders to take action. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That includes all members of the product team, including developers, UX experts, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other interested parties. It allows the whole team to hear users ‘ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. Additionally, it enables the UX design and research teams to clarify, suggest alternatives, or provide more context for their 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” set up a conflict that needs to be resolved” using the same methods as great storytellers, Duarte writes. ” That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently”.

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

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be visual, like quick sketches of how a new design could look that solves a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the session is over when you’ve concluded everything by summarizing the key points and offering suggestions for a solution. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. 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 ). This is the plot’s beginning. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. These techniques can produce personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards.

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

The researcher performs a number of tasks: they are the producer, the director, and the storyteller. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters ( in the research ). And the audience is 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 for everyone, and all you need to do is pique stakeholders ‘ interest in how the story ends.

Learn more at Duct Tape Marketing about Jarret Redding’s The New SEO Playbook for Business Growth.

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch In this instance of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I do a single deep dive into the fast-changing universe of Research and what it means for small businesses, branding experts, and agencies everywhere. Is search engine optimization ( SEO ) still worthwhile? What do zero-click requests and AI]…]

Learn more at Duct Tape Marketing about Jarret Redding’s The New SEO Playbook for Business Growth.

John Jantsch’s The Duct Tape Marketing Audio

In this instance of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I do a single deep dive into the fast-changing universe of SEO and what it means for small businesses, branding experts, and agencies everywhere.

Does SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) still pay off? What do zero-click requests and AI material mean for your website plan? If you’ve seen a drop in pure traffic or keyword rankings currently, it’s time to stop crying and began rethinking your strategy. I present a brand-new, cutting-edge Marketing platform that aims to increase search visibility, draw in high-intelligence traffic, and produce real business results.

Whether you &#8217, re focused on local Research, creating corporate information, or looking to boost Google Business Profile, this season gives you an practical template to level up your SEO for small businesses.

Key Remarks

• SEO Isn’t Dead—It&#8217, s Just Evolved
  Dwindling clicks and changing algorithms mean we need a new playbook—one focused on search presence, not just keyword rankings.
• Zero-Click searches are the new normal.
  With Google answering questions right on the SERP, it’s time to pivot from traffic obsession to meaningful brand authority and engagement.
• Think about Visibility as opposed to Rankings.
  Use tools like Google Search Console to measure click-through rates, branded search growth, and query diversity—not just top 10 positions.
• AI Content is Your Friend ( If Used Right )
  Use AI for SEO content from concepttion to FAQs to help you grow your business.
• Content Clusters Beat One-Off Posts
  Learn how to create content clusters that enhance your efforts to optimize content and support the journey of the buyer.
• Double Down on Local
  Optimize Google Business Profile like it’s your homepage. Publish content, post updates, and answer local FAQs to improve local SEO.
• Focus on Intent-Based SEO
  Create strategic content that addresses real customer needs rather than just search volume. Use the marketing hourglass to guide content across each stage of the journey.
• Backlinks Should Build Brands
  Avoid shady directories. Use podcast backlinks, PR, and industry partnerships to grow brand authority and earn trust.
• Say Goodbye to Vanity Metrics
  It’s not about traffic anymore—it’s about SEO reporting that drives results like leads, engagement, and conversions.

Chapters:

• ]00: 09 ] Introduction
• [01: 52] Search Presence and Visibility
• ]04: 10] Embracing AI for Content
• [05: 59] Local Search Isn’t Going Anywhere, t Going Anywhere.
• ]08: 29 ] Prioritize Intent Based SEO
• ]11: 06 ] Link Building
• Long Tail Queries [13: 58 ]

We won’t pretend to have a comprehensive list of the best apps. Any “best of” listing is essentially arbitrary because there are so many shows out there, including hidden gems that are still abounding and are still awaiting discovery, and there are always growing styles and niches unique to blogging. Having said that, we are aware of what we like and have done […]

The first article on Den of Geek was Apps We Love: The Best Apps to Listen to in 2025.

He is approaching. The Fantastic Four: First Steps may present an extremely powerful personality to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, somebody whose mere existence would possess reverberations across all other worlds, had it long been predicted by synopses and second looks. Although the most recent First Steps video doesn’t entirely show this character, we do notice a harbinger annonce his arrival and its effects on group leader Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic.

What? No, the title isn’t t Galan, much known as Galactus, but rather Galan. Yes, the world-devourer actually appears in the form of a shadow and a foot ( not a cloud )! The video teases Franklin, the oldest child of Reed and Sue Richards, a child who can alter reality with his mind, as the most effective character.

Franklin’s appearance

The Fantastic Four were initially a home, then experts, and heroines, from the moment they first appeared in 1961. It was only a matter of time before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the film’s authors, got married to Sue Storm and welcomed their second baby Franklin Benjamin Richards, who was born in 1968&#8217, s Fantastic Four Monthly# 6. Fantastic Four Yearly# 6 follows Reed and her colleagues Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm as they search for the one factor that can save Sue, whose delivery is threatened by her exposure to celestial waves. It is a mind-bending, psychedelic trip into the Bad Area.

Reed and Sue chose to hire the witch Agatha Harkness (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ), who is portrayed as a nanny. Lee and Kirby&#8217, s larger-than-life approach to family details also highlights Franklin &#8217, s odd life. However, Franklin &#8217’s life becomes even stranger when he begins to manifest abilities, even as a youngster. At first, it appeared as though Franklin had psychic abilities that enabled him to change other people’s minds or even see the future. This led to him adopting the name Tattletale and joining a group of young superheroes called the Power Pack.

However, Reed realized when he examined the situation more closely that Franklin wasn’t creating the future because he wasn’t seeing it. Franklin had the ability to create and re-create reality, abilities that were unconsciously present. Additionally, Reed and Sue discovered that Franklin’s powers were derived from the “X-Gene,” which officially designates him as a mutant in the manner of the X-Men.

So Franklin Richards quickly transitioned from being the child of two superheroes to someone who had connections to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and who could radically alter the world in his will. This, of course, led to some outrageous tales.

Fantastic Franklin

Late in the 2012 story &#8220, Forever, &#8221, the Fantastic Four stand at the edge of oblivion. The Four and their super-talented friends from the Avengers and the X-Men were unable to stand up to the Mad Celestials, literal gods who have lost their minds and have plans to undo reality, despite their remarkable abilities.

Reed and Sue are overheard to say,” Rid!” in the middle of the chaos when a well-known, if not entirely new, voice starts to yell. The adult Franklin, who has arrived from the future to assist his family in dealing with the Mad Celestials, has the voice. &#8220, Rise! Rise! Franklin keeps repeating this until a huge figure appears in the skyline, ready to face the Celestials. Franklin orders, &#8220, To me, my Galactus! upon seeing him. &#8221,

This is perhaps the best instance of Franklin displaying his abilities in this scene from Fantastic Four #604, which was written by Jonathan Hickman and was penciled by Steve Epting. Franklin frequently recreates reality, sometimes in small ways, by assisting his godfather the Thing defeat Yancey Street rivals in matches, and occasionally on a galactic scale.

Adult Franklin frequently appears in time travel tales, including the beloved X-Men two-parter Days of Future Past ( and more so in the less effective sequel Days of Future Present ) or as a brand-new Galactus in Alex Ross ‘ Earth X series. Franklin has also been a tool for rebooting continuity, most famously in the Heroes Reborn/ Heroes Return bbcurios that followed Marvel&#8217’s company-wide Onslaught story.

After the Fantastic Four and Avengers were slain by a new villain called Onslaught, Franklin recreates them in a brand-new reality, one that just so happened to be done by famous 90s figures like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (yes, that’s where the name of Captain America comes from ). Marvel published a story in which Franklin reintegrates the FF and the Avengers into mainstream reality and immediately loses his abilities after the edgy reboots were rejected by fans.

Of course, Franklin regained his abilities only to lose them later, which would be grating if the stories weren’t that good. Case in point is 2024&#8217, s Fantastic Four# 14, which was written by Ryan North and penciled by Carlos Gómez, in which a once-depowered Franklin awakes with his abilities intact and claims that he&#8217, s stripped them away himself. His powers are restored once a year, in which he explores realities and puts an end to threats that his family and other Marvel heroes cannot stop, before returning to being a typical child.

Just a Boy

Franklin &#8217 ;s appeal and that of the entire Fantastic Four are pivotal in making the decision to return to being a regular kid. No matter how incredible the adventures are, the Fantastic Four must be first and foremost a family of people who love one another.

It’s difficult to believe that Franklin’s reality-warping powers might have a role in integrating the team into the MCU with the exception of the fact that the aforementioned Fantastic Four #604 appears in the run-up to Secret Wars, the story that will become 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars.

However, the trailer’s focus on Reed and Sue fretting about being parents and Johnny and Ben celebrating their uncle status, shows that First Steps is putting the family first, which is the most crucial aspect of any Franklin Richards story.

On July 24, 2025, The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be released in theaters.

The post Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival, Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival, and It Isn’t Galactus first appeared on Den of Geek.

It’s that time of year again when fans complain endlessly website about ordering and wrestlers level to the great WrestleMania mark. The biggest stage of WrestleMania is currently in full swing, and the famous John Cena and the legendary WrestleMania are set to take on each other in Las Vegas.

The 15 Best Championship Games Always arose first on Den of Geek.

He is approaching. The Fantastic Four: First Steps may create an extremely powerful personality to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, somebody whose mere presence would possess reverberations across all of the world, had it long been predicted. Although the most recent First Steps trailer doesn’t fully reveal this character, we do notice a harbinger revealing his arrival and how it will affect team leader Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic.

What? No, the title isn’t Galan, much known as Galactus, but rather Galan. Well, the world-devourer does indeed appear in the form of a dark and a base ( not a cloud! ). The video teases Franklin, the oldest child of Reed and Sue Richards, a child who can alter reality with his mind, as the most effective character.

Franklin’s entry

The Fantastic Four were a family initially, scientists first, and characters following from their first presence in 1961. So it was only a matter of time before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the film’s makers, got married to Sue Storm and gave birth to Franklin Benjamin Richards, who was born in 1968’s Fantastic Four Yearly# 6. Fantastic Four Yearly# 6 is a mind-bending, psychedelic trip into the Bad Area that follows Reed and his teammates Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm as they try to find the one thing that can save Sue, whose delivery is threatened by her exposure to celestial rays.

Reed and Sue’s decision to hire the witch Agatha Harkness (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ), mark Franklin &#8217, s odd life, as seen by Lee and Kirby&#8217, s decision to hire her as a nanny (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ). However, Franklin &#8217’s life becomes even stranger when he begins manifesting abilities, even as a young child. At first, it appeared as though Franklin had psychic abilities that allowed him to change the minds of others or even see the future. This led to him adopting the name Tattletale and joining a group of young superheroes called the Power Pack.

However, Reed realized when he looked deeper that Franklin wasn’t seeing the future, he was actually creating it. Franklin had the ability to create and re-create reality, abilities that were unconsciously present. Additionally, Reed and Sue discovered that Franklin’s powers were derived from the “X-Gene,” which officially designates him as a mutant in the manner of the X-Men.

So Franklin Richards quickly transitioned from being the child of two superheroes to someone who had connections to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and who could radically alter the world in his will. This, of course, allowed for some outrageous stories.

Fantastic Franklin

Late in the 2012 story &#8220, Forever, &#8221, the Fantastic Four stand at the edge of oblivion. The Four and their super-talented friends from the Avengers and the X-Men were unable to overcome the Mad Celestials, literal gods who have lost their minds and plan to reverse events, despite their remarkable abilities.

Reed and Sue audibly audibly a well-known, if slightly altered, voice yell, Rise! The adult Franklin, who has arrived from the future to assist his family in dealing with the Mad Celestials, has the voice. &#8220, Rise! Rise! Franklin keeps repeating this until a huge figure appears in the skyline, ready to face the Celestials. When Franklin notices him, Franklin says,” To me, my Galactus! &#8221,

This scene from Fantastic Four #604, which was written by Jonathan Hickman and was penciled by Steve Epting, is undoubtedly the best instance of Franklin displaying his abilities, but it is not the only one. Franklin frequently recreates reality, sometimes in small ways, by assisting his godfather, The Thing, defeat Yancey Street rivals, occasionally on a galactic scale.

Adult Franklin frequently appears in time travel tales, including Alex Ross ‘ new Earth X character, Days of Future Past, a beloved X-Men two-parter, and more recently, in the less effective sequel Days of Future Present. Franklin has also been a tool for writers to reboot continuity, most famously in the Heroes Reborn/ Heroes Return bbcurios that followed Marvel&#8217’s company-wide Onslaught story.

After the Fantastic Four and Avengers were slain by a new villain called Onslaught, Franklin recreates them in a brand-new world, one that coincidentally was created by famous 90s figures like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (yes, that’s where the name of Captain America comes from ). Marvel published a story in which Franklin reintegrates the FF and the Avengers into mainstream reality and immediately loses his abilities after the edgy reboots were rejected by fans.

Of course, Franklin regained his abilities only to lose them later, which would be grating if the stories weren’t that good. A case in point is 2024&#8217, a Fantastic Four# 14, a writer and artist named Carlos Gómez who claims a former demagogue, has stripped his abilities away himself. His powers are renewed once a year, where he explores realities and puts an end to threats that his family and other Marvel heroes cannot stop, before returning to normal life as a child.

Just a Boy

Franklin’s appeal and the entire Fantastic Four’s decision to return to being a normal child are crucial. No matter how incredible the adventures are, the Fantastic Four must be first and foremost a family of people who love one another.

It’s difficult to believe that Franklin’s reality-warping powers might have a role in integrating the team into the MCU with the exception of the fact that the aforementioned Fantastic Four #604 appears in the run-up to Secret Wars, the story that will become 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars.

However, the trailer’s emphasis on Reed and Sue fretting about being parents and Johnny and Ben celebrating their uncle status, shows that First Steps is placing the family first, which is the most crucial element of any Franklin Richards story.

On July 24, 2025, The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be released in theaters.

The post Fantastic Four Trailer Teases Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival of Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s #8230 and It Isn’t Galactus first appeared on Den of Geek.

The Wheel of Time clues are significant in this article. The Wheel of Time’s previous season finales were undoubtedly dramatic, but the ending of season three placed more characters ‘ fates in the balance than ever before, causing life-changing events that will have an effect on their journey in the most important ways however. Despite Perrin having his […]…]

The second post from Den of Geek: The Wheel of Time Season 3 End Explained: Lord Gaebril, The Eelfinn, and Another Mysteries appeared second.

He is approaching. The Fantastic Four: First Steps may offer an extremely powerful personality to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, somebody whose mere presence would possess reverberations across realities, had rumors and first looks for a long time. Although the most recent First Steps video doesn’t entirely show this character, we do notice a harbinger annonce his arrival and its effects on group leader Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic.

What? No, the title isn’t Galan, better known as Galactus, but rather Galan. Yes, the world-devourer actually appears in the form of a shadow and a foot ( not a cloud )! The video teases Franklin, the oldest child of Reed and Sue Richards, a child who can alter reality with his mind, as the most effective character.

Franklin’s entry

The Fantastic Four were initially a family, then scientists, and then superheroes. Their earliest appearance was in 1961. So it was only a matter of time before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the film’s designers, got married to Sue Storm, who was also the father of Franklin Benjamin Richards, who was born in 1968’s Fantastic Four Monthly# 6. Fantastic Four Monthly# 6 is a mind-bending, psychedelic trip into the Bad Area that follows Reed and his colleagues Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm as they try to find the one thing that can save Sue, whose delivery is threatened by her exposure to celestial rays.

Reed and Sue chose to hire the witch Agatha Harkness (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ), who is portrayed in Lee and Kirby’s larger-than-life approach to family life. However, Franklin &#8217’s life becomes even stranger when he begins to manifest abilities, even as a youngster. At first, it appeared as though Franklin had psychic abilities that enabled him to change other people’s minds or even see the future. This led to him adopting the name Tattletale and joining a group of young superheroes called the Power Pack.

However, Reed realized when he looked deeper that Franklin wasn’t seeing the future, he was actually creating it. Franklin had the ability to create and re-create reality, abilities that were unconsciously present. Additionally, Reed and Sue discovered that Franklin’s powers were derived from the “X-Gene,” which officially designates him as a mutant in the manner of the X-Men.

So Franklin Richards quickly transitioned from being the child of two superheroes to someone who had connections to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and who could radically alter the world in his will. This, of course, led to some outrageous tales.

Fantastic Franklin

Late in the 2012 story &#8220, Forever, &#8221, the Fantastic Four stand at the edge of oblivion. The Four and their super-talented friends from the Avengers and the X-Men were unable to stand up to the Mad Celestials, literal gods who have lost their minds and have plans to undo reality, despite their remarkable abilities.

Reed and Sue audibly audibly a well-known, if slightly altered, voice yell, Rise! The adult Franklin, who has arrived from the future to assist his family in dealing with the Mad Celestials, has the voice. &#8220, Rise! Rise! Franklin keeps repeating this until a huge figure appears in the skyline, ready to face the Celestials. When Franklin notices him, Franklin says,” To me, my Galactus! &#8221,

This scene from Fantastic Four #604, which was written by Jonathan Hickman and was penciled by Steve Epting, is undoubtedly the best instance of Franklin displaying his abilities, but it is not the only one. Franklin frequently recreates reality, sometimes in small ways, by assisting his godfather The Thing defeat Yancey Street rivals on a galactic scale.

Adult Franklin frequently appears in time travel tales, including the beloved X-Men two-parter Days of Future Past ( and more so in the less effective sequel Days of Future Present ) or as a brand-new Galactus in Alex Ross ‘ Earth X series. Franklin has also been a tool for rebooting continuity, most famously in the Heroes Reborn/ Heroes Return mess that followed Marvel’s entire Onslaught story.

After the Fantastic Four and Avengers were slain by a new villain called Onslaught, Franklin recreates them in a brand-new reality, one that just so happened to be done by famous 90s figures like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (yes, that’s where the name of Captain America comes from ). Marvel published a story in which Franklin reintegrates the FF and the Avengers into mainstream reality and immediately loses his abilities after the edgy reboots were rejected by fans.

Of course, Franklin regained his powers once more before eventually losing them, which would be annoying if the stories weren’t that good. A case in point is 2024&#8217, a Fantastic Four# 14, a writer and artist named Carlos Gómez who claims a former demagogue, has stripped his abilities away himself. His powers are renewed once a year, where he explores realities and puts an end to threats that his family and other Marvel heroes cannot stop, before returning to normal life as a child.

Just a Boy

Franklin &#8217 ;s appeal and that of the entire Fantastic Four are pivotal in making the decision to return to being a regular kid. The Fantastic Four must be a family first, regular people who love one another, regardless of how amazing the adventures are.

Given the alternate 1960s in which First Steps takes place, it &#8217, s hard to believe that Franklin &#8217, s reality-warping powers might have a role in integrating the team into the MCU&#8217, s Earth-616 &#8212, given that the aforementioned Fantastic Four #604 comes in the run-up to Secret Wars, the story that will become 2027&#8217, s Avengers: Secret Wars.

However, the trailer’s emphasis on Reed and Sue fretting about being parents and Johnny and Ben celebrating their uncle status, shows that First Steps is placing the family first, which is the most crucial element of any Franklin Richards story.

On July 24, 2025, The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be released in theaters.

The post Fantastic Four Trailer Teases Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival and It Isn’t Galactus first appeared on Den of Geek.

He is approaching. The Fantastic Four: First Steps may offer an extremely powerful personality to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, somebody whose mere presence would possess reverberations across realities, had rumors and first looks for a long time. Although the most recent First Steps video doesn’t completely show this character, we do notice a harbinger revealing his [ …]]…

The second post Den of Geek Teases Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Entrance and It Isn’t Galactus appeared second.

He is approaching. The Fantastic Four: First Steps may create an extremely powerful personality to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, somebody whose mere presence would possess reverberations across realities, had rumors and first looks for a long time. Although the most recent First Steps video doesn’t entirely show this character, we do notice a harbinger annonce his arrival and its effects on group leader Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic.

What? No, the title isn’t Galan, better known as Galactus, but rather Galan. Well, the world-devourer does indeed appear in the form of a dark and a base ( not a cloud! ). The video teases Franklin, the oldest child of Reed and Sue Richards, a child who can alter reality with his mind, as the most effective character.

Franklin’s entry

The Fantastic Four were initially a home, then experts, and heroines, from the moment they first appeared in 1961. So it was only a matter of time before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the film’s designers, got married to Sue Storm and gave birth to Franklin Benjamin Richards, who was born in 1968’s Fantastic Four Monthly# 6. Fantastic Four Quarterly# 6 is a mind-bending, psychedelic trip into the Bad Area that follows Reed and his colleagues Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm as they try to find the one thing that can save Sue, whose delivery is threatened by her exposure to celestial rays.

Reed and Sue chose to hire the witch Agatha Harkness (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ), who is portrayed as a nanny. Lee and Kirby&#8217, s larger-than-life approach to family details also highlights Franklin &#8217, s odd life. However, Franklin &#8217’s life becomes even stranger when he begins to manifest abilities, even as a youngster. At first, it appeared as though Franklin had psychic abilities that enabled him to change the minds of others and even see the future. This led to him adopting the name Tattletale and joining a group of young superheroes called the Power Pack.

However, Reed realized when he looked deeper that Franklin wasn’t seeing the future, he was actually creating it. Franklin had the ability to create and re-create reality, abilities that were unconsciously present. Additionally, Reed and Sue discovered that Franklin’s abilities were derived from an “X-Gene,” which officially designates him as a mutant in the manner of the X-Men.

So Franklin Richards quickly transitioned from being the child of two superheroes to a person with connections to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. This, of course, allowed for some outrageous stories.

Fantastic Franklin

Late in the 2012 story &#8220, Forever, &#8221, the Fantastic Four stand at the edge of oblivion. The Four and their super-talented friends from the Avengers and the X-Men were unable to stand up to the Mad Celestials, literal gods who have lost their minds and have plans to undo reality, despite their remarkable abilities.

Reed and Sue audibly audibly a well-known, if slightly altered, voice yell, Rise! The adult Franklin, who has arrived from the future to assist his family in dealing with the Mad Celestials, has the voice. &#8220, Rise! Rise! Franklin keeps repeating this until a huge figure appears in the skyline, ready to face the Celestials. Franklin orders, &#8220, To me, my Galactus! upon seeing him. &#8221,

Perhaps the best scene from the Fantastic Four #604 featuring Franklin displaying his abilities, but it isn’t the only one. It was written by Jonathan Hickman and penciled by Steve Epting. Franklin frequently recreates reality, sometimes in small ways, by assisting his godfather The Thing defeat Yancey Street rivals on a galactic scale.

Adult Franklin frequently appears in time travel tales, including Alex Ross ‘ new Earth X character, Days of Future Past, a beloved X-Men two-parter, and more recently, in the less effective sequel Days of Future Present. Franklin has also been a tool for rebooting continuity, most famously in the Heroes Reborn/ Heroes Return mess that followed Marvel’s entire Onslaught story.

After the Fantastic Four and Avengers were killed by a new villain called Onslaught, Franklin recreates them in a brand-new reality, one that just so happened to be written and drawn by famous 90s figures like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (yes, that &#8217 is where the image of Captain America comes from ). Marvel published a story in which Franklin reintegrates the FF and the Avengers into mainline reality and immediately loses his abilities after the edgy reboots were rejected by fans.

Of course, Franklin regained his abilities only to lose them later, which would be grating if the stories weren’t that good. Case in point is 2024&#8217, s Fantastic Four# 14, which was written by Ryan North and penciled by Carlos Gómez, in which a once-depowered Franklin awakes with his abilities intact and claims that he&#8217, s stripped them away himself. His powers are restored once a year, in which he explores realities and puts an end to threats that his family and other Marvel heroes cannot stop, before returning to being a typical child.

Just a Boy

Franklin &#8217 ;s appeal and that of the entire Fantastic Four are pivotal in making the decision to return to being a regular kid. The Fantastic Four must be a regular bunch of people who love one another, regardless of how incredible the adventures are.

It’s difficult to believe that Franklin’s reality-warping powers might have a role in integrating the team into the MCU with the exception of the fact that the aforementioned Fantastic Four #604 appears in the run-up to Secret Wars, the story that will become 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars.

The most crucial element of any Franklin Richards story is the family, which is the focus of the trailer, which emphasizes Johnny and Ben celebrating their uncle status and Reed and Sue fretting about being parents.

On July 24, 2025, The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be released in theaters.

The post Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival, Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival, and It Isn’t Galactus first appeared on Den of Geek.

We are now actually in the middle of WWE World Series 41. Las Vegas, the capital of sin, threat, and invention, is now a part of WWE. Isn’t it fun to knit, isn’t it? Because this year’s Mania is a complete update of the past, not just another website in Tournament history. Legends burgeon, parties fall, and disappointments turn friends into foes, all in one place. The]… in Vegas

The post How Did John Cena’s Story Come To an End appeared first on WrestleMania 41 Estimates. second appeared on Den of Geek.

He is approaching. The Fantastic Four: First Steps may present an extremely powerful personality to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, somebody whose mere existence would possess reverberations across all other worlds, had it much been predicted by synopses and second looks. The most recent First Steps video doesn’t completely show this figure, but we do notice a harbinger annonce his introduction and its effects on group leader Reed Richards a.k .a. Mister Fantastic.

What? No, the title isn’t Galan, much known as Galactus, but rather Galan. Yes, the world-devourer does take the form of a shadow and a foot ( not a cloud )! The most prominent figure in the video is Franklin, the oldest child of Reed and Sue Richards, a child who can alter reality with his mind.

Franklin’s entry

The Fantastic Four were a family initially, scientists first, and characters following from their first presence in 1961. So it was only a matter of time before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the film’s designers, got married to Sue Storm, who was also the father of Franklin Benjamin Richards, who was born in 1968’s Fantastic Four Monthly# 6. Fantastic Four Yearly# 6 follows Reed and her colleagues Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm as they search for the one factor that can save Sue, whose delivery is threatened by her exposure to celestial waves. It is a mind-bending, psychedelic trip into the Bad Area.

Reed and Sue’s decision to hire the witch Agatha Harkness (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ), mark Franklin &#8217, s odd life, as seen by Lee and Kirby&#8217, s decision to hire her as a nanny (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ). However, Franklin &#8217’s life becomes even stranger when he begins manifesting abilities, even as a young child. At first, it appeared as though Franklin had mental abilities that enabled him to change the minds of others and even see the coming. This led to him adopting the name Tattletale and joining a group of young superheroes called the Power Pack.

However, Reed realized when he looked deeper that Franklin wasn’t seeing the prospect, he was actually creating it. Franklin had the ability to create and re-create truth, abilities that were unconsciously present. Additionally, Reed and Sue discovered that Franklin’s abilities were derived from an “X-Gene,” which actually designates him as a mutation in the manner of the X-Men.

Thus Franklin Richards rapidly transitioned from being the child of two superheroes to someone who had ties to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and who could radically alter the world. This, of course, allowed for some ridiculous tales.

Fantastic Franklin

Later in the 2012 account &#8220, Forever, &#8221, the Fantastic Four have at the edge of nothingness. The Four and their super-talented friends from the Avengers and the X-Men were unable to stand up to the Mad Celestials, precise gods who have lost their minds and have plans to undo reality, despite their amazing abilities.

Reed and Sue are overheard a well-known, if slightly altered, message yell, &#8220, Rise! The child Franklin, who has arrived from the potential to assist his family in dealing with the Mad Celestials, has the tone. &#8220, Rise! Surge! Franklin keeps repeating this until a huge figure appears in the horizon, ready to face the Stars. When Franklin notices him, Franklin says,” To me, my Galactus! &#8221,

Probably the best picture from the Fantastic Four #604 featuring Franklin displaying his abilities, but it isn’t the sole one. It was written by Jonathan Hickman and penciled by Steve Epting. Franklin frequently recreates truth, often in small methods, by assisting his uncle the Thing defeat Yancey Street rivals in matches, and occasionally on a celestial scale.

Adult Franklin frequently appears in time travel tales, including the adored X-Men two-parter Days of Future Past ( and even more so in the less effective sequel Days of Future Present ) or as a brand-new Galactus in Alex Ross ‘ Earth X series. Franklin has also been a tool for rebooting stability, most notably in the Champions Reborn/ Heroes Return mess that followed Marvel’s entire Onslaught story.

After the Fantastic Four and Avengers were slain by a fresh criminal called Onslaught, Franklin recreates them in a brand-new world, one that coincidentally was created by famous 90s figures like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (yes, that’s where the name of Captain America comes from ). Marvel published a story in which Franklin reintegrates the F and the Avengers into mainstream truth and immediately loses his abilities after the trendy reboots were rejected by fans.

Of course, Franklin regained his abilities only to drop them afterward, which would be grating if the stories weren’t that great. A case in point is 2024&#8217, s Fantastic Four# 14, which was written by Ryan North and penciled by Carlos Gómez, in which a once-depowered Franklin awakes with his powers alive and claims that he has stripped them absent himself. His forces are renewed once a year, where he explores experiences and puts an end to threats that his family and various World heroes cannot stop, before returning to normal life as a child.

Only a Son

Franklin’s elegance and the whole Fantastic Four’s decision to return to being a normal child are crucial. No matter how incredible the journeys are, the Fantastic Four may be first and foremost a family of people who love one another.

Given the different 1960s in which First Steps takes place, it’s difficult to imagine that Franklin’s reality-warping powers may have a role in integrating the group into the MCU and Earth-616. In fact, the above Fantastic Four #604 appears in the run-up to Secret Wars, the story that will become 2027 and Avengers: Key Wars.

However, the trailer’s rely on Reed and Sue fretting about being families and Johnny and Ben celebrating their aunt position, shows that First Steps is putting the family first, which is the most crucial aspect of any Franklin Richards history.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps premieres in theaters on July 24, 2025.

The post Fantastic Four Trailer Teases Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival and It Isn’t Galactus first appeared on Den of Geek.

The ladies of WWE are at the forefront of sports entertainment like never before. And Chelsea Green, one of the newest historical figures, is accepting that duty. The veteran heel recently broke new ground by becoming the first woman to hold the title of WWE Women’s United States Champion ( and “longest-running,” as she frequently jokes ), stepping into a completely different kind of role.

On Den of Geek, Chelsea Green was the first to share her available for her starring position.

He is approaching. The Fantastic Four: First Steps may create an extremely powerful personality to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, somebody whose mere presence would possess reverberations across all of the world, had it long been predicted. Although the most recent First Steps truck doesn’t entirely show this character, we do notice a harbinger annonce his arrival and its effects on group leader Reed Richards aka Mister Fantastic.

What? No, the title isn’t Galan, better known as Galactus, but rather Galan. Yes, the world-devourer actually appears in the form of a shadow and a foot ( not a cloud )! The most prominent figure in the video is Franklin, the oldest child of Reed and Sue Richards, a child who can alter reality with his mind.

The Franklin’s appearance

The Fantastic Four were initially a home, then experts, and heroines, from the moment they first appeared in 1961. So it was only a matter of time before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the film’s designers, got married to Sue Storm, who was also the father of Franklin Benjamin Richards, who was born in 1968’s Fantastic Four Monthly# 6. Fantastic Four Monthly# 6 follows Reed and her colleagues Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm as they search for the one factor that can save Sue, whose delivery is threatened by her exposure to celestial waves. It is a mind-bending, psychedelic trip into the Bad Area.

Reed and Sue chose to hire the witch Agatha Harkness (originally a sage elderly woman in the comics, not snarky Kathryn Hahn ), who is portrayed as a nanny. Lee and Kirby&#8217, s larger-than-life approach to family details also highlights Franklin &#8217, s odd life. However, Franklin &#8217’s life becomes even stranger when he begins manifesting abilities, even as a young child. At first, it appeared as though Franklin had mental abilities that enabled him to change other people’s minds or even see the coming. This led to him adopting the name Tattletale and joining a group of young superheroes called the Power Pack.

But, Reed realized when he looked deeper that Franklin wasn’t seeing the prospect, he was actually creating it. Franklin had the ability to create and re-create fact, abilities that were so great that they were present on a subliminal level. Additionally, Reed and Sue discovered that Franklin’s forces were derived from what is known as the X-Gene in the Marvel Universe, making him a designated mutation in the manner of the X-Men.

But Franklin Richards rapidly transitioned from being the child of two superheroes to a person with connections to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. This, of course, allowed for some absurd tales.

Fantastic Franklin

Later in the 2012 account &#8220, Forever, &#8221, the Fantastic Four have at the edge of nothingness. The Four and their super-talented friends from the Avengers and the X-Men were unable to stand up to the Mad Celestials, factual gods who have lost their minds and have plans to undo reality, despite their amazing abilities.

Reed and Sue audibly audibly a well-known, if slightly altered, message yell, Rise! The child Franklin, who has arrived from the prospect to assist his family in dealing with the Mad Celestials, has the voice. &#8220, Rise! Increase! Franklin keeps repeating this until a huge figure appears in the horizon, ready to face the Stars. Franklin orders, &#8220, To me, my Galactus! upon seeing him. &#8221,

Probably the best picture from the Fantastic Four #604 featuring Franklin displaying his abilities, but it isn’t the sole one. It was written by Jonathan Hickman and penciled by Steve Epting. Franklin frequently recreates truth, often in small methods, by assisting his uncle, The Point, defeat Yancey Street rivals, occasionally on a celestial scale.

Adult Franklin frequently appears in time travel tales, including the beloved X-Men two-parter Days of Future Past ( and more so in the less effective sequel Days of Future Present ) or as a brand-new Galactus in Alex Ross ‘ Earth X series. Franklin has also been a tool for writers to reset consistency, most notably in the Champions Reborn/ Heroes Return bbcurios that followed Marvel&#8217’s company-wide Onslaught story.

After the Fantastic Four and Avengers were slain by a fresh villain called Onslaught, Franklin recreates them in a brand-new real, one that just so happened to be done by famous 90s figures like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (yes, that’s where the name of Captain America comes from ). Marvel published a story in which Franklin reintegrates the F and the Avengers into mainstream truth and immediately loses his abilities after the trendy reboots were rejected by fans.

Of course, Franklin regained his powers afterward only to lose them afterwards, which would be annoying if the stories weren’t that great. Case in point is 2024&#8217, s Fantastic Four# 14, which was written by Ryan North and penciled by Carlos Gómez, in which a once-depowered Franklin awakes with his powers alive and claims that he&#8217, s stripped them absent himself. His forces are renewed once a year, where he explores experiences and puts an end to threats that his family and various World heroes cannot stop, before returning to normal life as a child.

Only a Son

Franklin &#8217, s appeal, and the whole Fantastic Four’s decision to return to being a normal person are crucial to this decision. No matter how incredible the journeys are, the Fantastic Four may be first and foremost a family of people who love one another.

It’s difficult to believe that Franklin’s reality-warping powers may have a role in integrating the team into the MCU with the exception of the fact that the above Fantastic Four #604 appears in the run-up to Secret Wars, the story that will become 2027’s Avengers: Key Wars.

However, the trailer’s rely on Reed and Sue fretting about being families and Johnny and Ben celebrating their aunt position, shows that First Steps is putting the family first, which is the most crucial aspect of any Franklin Richards history.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps premieres in theaters on July 24, 2025.

The post Fantastic Four Trailer Teases Marvel’s Most Powerful Character’s Arrival and It Isn’t Galactus first appeared on Den of Geek.

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

However, oddly enough, people are personas to serve as a source of inspiration for architecture in the real world.

Personas: A action up

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

The decontextualization of identities

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

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

People are assumed to be stable, according to people.

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

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

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

Personas rely on people, not the environment

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

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

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

Personas are meaningless averages

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

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

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

People’s relatability can be deceiving.

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

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

Everyone should use their own empathy and develop their own interpretation and emotional response if we want to conduct good design research by reporting the reality “as-is” and making it relatable for our audience.

Dynamic Selves: The alternative to personas

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

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

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

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

Understand real individuals in multiple contexts

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

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

1. Choose the right sample

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Conduct your research

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

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

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

3. Analysis: Create the Dynamic Selves

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

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

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

4. Identify creative uses

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

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

Benefits of Dynamic Selves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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