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The same applies for those of us working in design and development these times. Having worked on the web for about three years at this point, I’ve seen the typical wax and wane of concepts, strategies, and systems. Each day that we as developers and designers get into a regular rhythm, some innovative idea or technology comes down to shake things up and copy our world.

How we got below

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

The beginning of website standards

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

Server-side languages like PHP, Java, and.NET overtook Perl as the predominant back-end processors, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the trash bin. With these better server-side tools came the first era of web applications, starting with content-management systems ( particularly in the blogging space with tools like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress ). In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened doors for asynchronous interaction between the front end and back end. Suddenly, pages could update their content without needing to reload. A crop of JavaScript frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and jQuery arose to help developers build more reliable client-side interaction across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement let crafty designers and developers display fonts of their choosing. And technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and even more interactivity.

These new technologies, standards, and techniques reinvigorated the industry in many ways. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. But we still relied on tons of hacks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes ( such as rounded or angled corners ) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks ). Complicated layouts required all manner of nested floats or absolute positioning ( or both ). Flash and image replacement for custom fonts was a great start toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. And JavaScript libraries made it easy for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, although at the cost of doubling or even quadrupling the download size of simple websites.

The web as software platform

The symbiosis between the front end and back end continued to improve, and that led to the current era of modern web applications. Between expanded server-side programming languages ( which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others ) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Alongside these tools came others, including collaborative version control, build automation, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

At the same time, mobile devices became more capable, and they gave us internet access in our pockets. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

This combination of capable mobile devices and powerful development tools contributed to the waxing of social media and other centralized tools for people to connect and consume. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media offered connections on a global scale, with both the good and bad that that entails.

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

Where we are now

In the last couple of years, it’s felt like we’ve begun to reach another major inflection point. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. There are many different ways to make a website, from the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators to content management systems of all flavors. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other tools of the IndieWeb can help with this, but they’re still relatively underimplemented and hard to use for the less nerdy. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

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

Today, with a few commands and a couple of lines of code, we can prototype almost any idea. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. But the upfront cost that these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes due as upgrading and maintaining them becomes a part of our technical debt.

If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks—which used to let us adopt new techniques sooner—have now become hindrances instead. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail ( whether through poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors ), there’s often no alternative, leaving users with blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Today’s hacks help to shape tomorrow’s standards. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks —for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we’re unwilling to admit that they’re hacks or we hesitate to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

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

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

Design with care. Whether your craft is code, pixels, or processes, consider the impacts of each decision. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Rather than rushing headlong to “move fast and break things”, use the time saved by modern tools to consider more carefully and design with deliberation.

Always be learning. If you’re always learning, you’re also growing. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. You might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year, even if you were to focus solely on learning standards. ( Remember XHTML? ) But constant learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the hacks that you learn one day may help to inform different experiments another day.

Play, experiment, and be weird! This web that we’ve built is the ultimate experiment. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be courageous and try new things. Build a playground for ideas. Make goofy experiments in your own mad science lab. Start your own small business. There has never been a more empowering place to be creative, take risks, and explore what we’re capable of.

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

Go forth and make

As designers and developers for the web ( and beyond ), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s imbue our values into the things that we create, and let’s make the web a better place for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then share it, make it better, make it again, or make something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Every time you think that you’ve mastered the web, everything will change.

Between the dream of getting it right and the fear of it going wrong—like when we encounter “persofails” in the vein of a company constantly imploring daily consumers to buy more toilet seats—the personalization gap is true. It’s an particularly confusing place to be a modern professional without a map, a map, or a strategy.

For those of you venturing into customisation, there’s no Lonely Planet and some tour guides because powerful personalization is so specific to each group’s skills, systems, and market place.

But you can ensure that your team has packed its bags sensibly.

There’s a DIY formula to increase your chances for success. At minimum, you’ll defuse your boss’s irrational exuberance. Before the party you’ll need to effectively prepare.

We call it prepersonalization.

Behind the music

Consider Spotify’s DJ feature, which debuted this past year.

We’re used to seeing the polished final result of a personalization feature. Before the year-end award, the making-of backstory, or the behind-the-scenes victory lap, a personalized feature had to be conceived, budgeted, and prioritized. Before any personalization feature goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a backlog of worthy ideas for expressing customer experiences more dynamically.

So how do you know where to place your personalization bets? How do you design consistent interactions that won’t trip up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve found that for many budgeted programs to justify their ongoing investments, they first needed one or more workshops to convene key stakeholders and internal customers of the technology. Make yours count.

​ From Big Tech to fledgling startups, we’ve seen the same evolution up close with our clients. In our experiences with working on small and large personalization efforts, a program’s ultimate track record—and its ability to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and organize its design and technology efforts—turns on how effectively these prepersonalization activities play out.

Time and again, we’ve seen effective workshops separate future success stories from unsuccessful efforts, saving countless time, resources, and collective well-being in the process.

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

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

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

Set your kitchen timer

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The surrounding assessment activities that we recommend including can ( and often do ) span weeks. For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Here’s a summary of our broader approach along with details on the essential first-day activities.

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

Kickstart: This sets the terms of engagement as you focus on the opportunity as well as the readiness and drive of your team and your leadership..
1. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
2. Work your plan: This phase is all about creating a competitive environment for team participants to individually pitch 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: Whet your appetite

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

Spark conversation by naming consumer examples and business-to-business examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike. 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 catalog of these in the cards. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

This is all about setting the table. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? If you want a broader view, here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework.

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 divide connected experiences into five levels: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to focus the conversation on the merits of ongoing investment as well as the gap between what you deliver today and what you want to deliver in the future.

Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is critical because it emphasizes how personalization can not only help your external customers but also affect your own ways of working. 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 vote on where they see your product or service putting its emphasis. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. The intention here is to flesh out how different departments may view their own upsides to the effort, which can vary from one 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 naming your personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will data and privacy compliance be too big of a challenge? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? ( We’re pretty sure that you do: it’s just a matter of recognizing the relative size of that need and its remedy. ) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. Our Detractor card, for example, lists six stakeholder behaviors that hinder progress.

Effectively collaborating and managing expectations is critical to your success. Consider the potential barriers to your future progress. Press the participants to name specific steps to overcome or mitigate those barriers in your organization. As studies have shown, personalization efforts face many common barriers.

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

Hit that test kitchen

Next, let’s look at what you’ll need to bring your personalization recipes to life. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. Their capabilities are sweeping and powerful, and they present broad options for how your organization can conduct its activities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

What’s important here is to avoid treating the installed software like it were a dream kitchen from some fantasy 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.

The ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together over the course of the workshop. 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 come from recipes, and those recipes have set ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

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

This isn’t just about discovering requirements. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team:

1. compare findings toward a unified approach for developing features, not unlike when artists paint with the same palette,
2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar,
3. and develop parity across performance measurements and key performance indicators too.

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.

Compose your recipe

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

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

We first developed these cards and card categories five years ago. We regularly play-test their fit with conference audiences and clients. And we still encounter new possibilities. But they all follow an underlying who-what-when-why logic.

Here are three examples for a subscription-based reading app, which you can generally follow along with right to left in the cards in the accompanying photo below.

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: When there’s a newly registered user, an email is generated to call out the breadth of the content catalog and to make them a happier subscriber.
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.

A useful preworkshop activity may be to think through a first draft of what these cards might be for your organization, although we’ve also found that this process sometimes flows best through cocreating the recipes themselves. 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.

You can think of the later stages of the workshop as moving from recipes toward a cookbook in focus—like 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 kitchens require better architecture

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

When personalization becomes a laugh line, it’s because a team is overfitting: they aren’t designing with their best data. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. Your AI’s output quality, for example, is indeed limited 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 definitely stand the heat …

Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a disciplined and highly collaborative approach will bring about the necessary focus and intention to succeed. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, hit the test kitchen to save time, preserve job satisfaction and security, and safely dispense with the fanciful ideas that originate upstairs of the doers in your organization. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

This workshop framework gives you a fighting shot at lasting success as well as sound beginnings. Wiring up your information layer isn’t an overnight affair. But if you use the same cookbook and shared recipes, you’ll have solid footing for success. We designed these activities to make your organization’s needs concrete and clear, long before the hazards pile up.

While there are associated costs toward investing in this kind of technology and product design, your ability to size up and confront your unique situation and your digital capabilities is time well spent. Don’t squander it. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Always since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated with movies. I loved the heroes and the excitement—but most of all the reports. I wanted to be an actor. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on fascinating experiences. I also dreamed up suggestions for videos that my friends and I could render and sun in. But they never went any farther. I did, however, end up working in user experience ( UX). 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 consumer research, you need to show a good account where you bring stakeholders—the solution team and choice makers—along and getting them interested in learning more.

Think of your favourite film. More than likely it follows a three-act construction that’s frequently seen in story: the layout, the fight, and the quality. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to know the figures and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two introduces the turmoil, where the action is. Here, issues grow or get worse. And the third and final work is the solution. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. I believe that this architecture is also a great way to think about customer study, and I think that it can be particularly helpful in explaining person exploration to others.

Use story as a framework to complete research

It’s sad to say, but many have come to see studies as being dispensable. If finances or timelines are small, analysis tends to be one of the first points to go. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may get clubs some of the way, but that strategy is so easily miss out on solving people ‘ real problems. To remain user-centered, this is something we should avoid. User research elevates design. It keeps it on track, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of the issues with your product and reacting to them can help you stay ahead of your competitors.

In the three-act structure, each act corresponds to a part of the process, and each part is critical to telling the whole story. Let’s look at the different acts and how they align with user research.

Act one: setup

The setup is all about understanding the background, and that’s where foundational research comes in. Foundational research ( also called generative, discovery, or initial research ) helps you understand users and identify their problems. You’re learning about what exists today, the challenges users have, and how the challenges affect them—just like in the movies. To do foundational research, you can conduct contextual inquiries or diary studies ( or both! ), which can help you start to identify problems as well as opportunities. It doesn’t need to be a huge investment in time or money.

Erika Hall writes about minimum viable ethnography, which can be as simple as spending 15 minutes with a user and asking them one thing:”‘ Walk me through your day yesterday.’ That’s it. Present that one request. Shut up and listen to them for 15 minutes. Do your damndest to keep yourself and your interests out of it. Bam, you’re doing ethnography”. According to Hall, “]This ] will probably prove quite illuminating. In the highly unlikely case that you didn’t learn anything new or useful, carry on with enhanced confidence in your direction”.

This makes total sense to me. And I love that this makes user research so accessible. You don’t need to prepare a lot of documentation, you can just recruit participants and do it! This can yield a wealth of information about your users, and it’ll help you better understand them and what’s going on in their lives. That’s really what act one is all about: understanding where users are coming from.

Jared Spool talks about the importance of foundational research and how it should form the bulk of your research. If you can draw from any additional user data that you can get your hands on, such as surveys or analytics, that can supplement what you’ve heard in the foundational studies or even point to areas that need further investigation. Together, all this data paints a clearer picture of the state of things and all its shortcomings. And that’s the beginning of a compelling story. It’s the point in the plot where you realize that the main characters—or the users in this case—are facing challenges that they need to overcome. Like in the movies, this is where you start to build empathy for the characters and root for them to succeed. And hopefully stakeholders are now doing the same. Their sympathy may be with their business, which could be losing money because users can’t complete certain tasks. Or maybe they do empathize with users ‘ struggles. Either way, act one is your initial hook to get the stakeholders interested and invested.

Once stakeholders begin to understand the value of foundational research, that can open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making process. And that can guide product teams toward being more user-centered. This benefits everyone—users, the product, and stakeholders. It’s like winning an Oscar in movie terms—it often leads to your product being well received and successful. And this can be an incentive for stakeholders to repeat this process with other products. Storytelling is the key to this process, and knowing how to tell a good story is the only way to get stakeholders to really care about doing 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 usually involves directional research, such as usability tests, where you assess a potential solution ( such as a design ) to see whether it addresses the issues that you found. The issues could include unmet needs or problems with a flow or process that’s tripping users up. Like act two in a movie, more issues will crop up along the way. It’s here that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this act.

Usability tests should typically include around five participants according to Jakob Nielsen, who found that that number of users can usually identify most of the problems:” 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. Having fewer participants means that each user’s struggles will be more memorable and easier to relay to other stakeholders when talking about 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.

Researchers have run usability tests in person for decades, but you can also conduct usability tests remotely using tools 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 can think of in-person usability tests like going to a play and remote sessions as more like watching a movie. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. In-person usability research is a much richer experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. You also get real-time reactions—including surprise, agreement, disagreement, and discussions about what they’re seeing. Much like going to a play, where audiences get to take in the stage, the costumes, the lighting, and the actors ‘ interactions, in-person research lets you see users up close, including their body language, how they interact with the moderator, and how the scene is set up.

If in-person usability testing is like watching a play—staged and controlled—then conducting usability testing in the field is like immersive theater where any two sessions might 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 go out to meet users at their location to do 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. As researchers, you have less control over how these sessions go, but this can sometimes 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 provide another level of detail that’s often missing from remote usability tests.

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

The benefit of usability testing, whether remote or in person, is that you get to see real users interact with the designs in real time, and you can ask them questions to understand their thought processes and grasp of the solution. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Furthermore, you can test hypotheses and gauge whether your thinking is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. Act two is the heart of the story—where the excitement is—but there can be surprises too. This is equally true of usability tests. Often, participants will say unexpected things, which change the way that you look at things —and these twists in the story can move things in new directions.

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

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 illustrates the importance of doing both foundational and directional 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 help motivate stakeholders to address the issues that come up.

Act three: resolution

While the first two acts are about understanding the background and the tensions that can propel stakeholders into action, the third part is about resolving the problems from the first two acts. 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 means the whole product team, including developers, UX practitioners, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other stakeholders that have a say in the next steps. It allows the whole team to hear users ‘ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. And it lets the UX research and design teams clarify, suggest alternatives, or give more context behind their decisions. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

This act is mostly 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 give the stakeholders their recommendations and their guidance on creating this vision.

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. ” The most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved”, writes Duarte. ” That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently”.

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

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be visual, like quick mockups of how a new design could look that solves a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the end of the session when you’ve wrapped everything up in the conclusion by summarizing the main issues and suggesting a way forward. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage gives stakeholders the next steps and hopefully the momentum to take those steps!

While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. All the elements of a good story are there in the three-act structure of user research:

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

Act two: Next, there’s character development. There’s conflict and tension as the protagonists encounter problems and challenges, which they must overcome. In act two, researchers might use methods including usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and heuristics evaluation. The output of these can include usability findings reports, UX strategy documents, usability guidelines, and best practices.

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

The researcher has multiple roles: they’re the storyteller, the director, and the producer. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters ( in the research ). And the stakeholders are the audience. 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 stakeholders should walk away with a purpose and an eagerness to resolve the product’s ills.

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. Ultimately, user research is a win-win for everyone, and you just need to get stakeholders interested in how the story ends.

Netflix is kicking off the quarter powerful with the launch of their animated Devil May Cry set on April 3. Based on the video game series of the same name, Devil May Cry follows demon hunter Dante as he tries to keep the peace between the human and demon realms, not realizing he might be]… ]

The article Netflix New Releases: April 2025 appeared second on Den of Geek.

Danny and Michael Philippou were already well known in the YouTube community when they took Hollywood by surprise with their A24 scary hit, Talk to Me. That haunting divine dread explored grief and loss through the lens of a crazy party activity, which saw adolescents take turns being possessed by a peculiar object.

During the trailer launch for and sneak peak of their follow-up, Bring Her Back—a film that follows foster kids Andy ( Billy Barratt ) and Piper ( Sora Wong ) as they are taken in by an eccentric and possibly dangerous woman ( Sally Hawkins ) —the pair shared that just like their massively successful first feature, Bring Her Back was shaped by a devastating loss in the Australian twins &#8217, own lives. &nbsp,

” In the middle of writing Bring Her Back my niece lost her two year old”, Danny Philippou shared. ” We were in the clinic, and I was really seeing her on the bed, holding this person, and the household were all around him, and they were holding his ft and his hands and his nose and his arms, and eventually, over time, people let him go. My aunt was the last one to permit him go”.

&#8220, The idea of her not being okay always again after that, that was an inspiration place, &#8221, He continued. &#8220, And how far she would go to recover herself from it. The idea of a never-ending pain pattern is terrifying to me. &#8221,

If it seems like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back are atmospherically and philosophically connected, that’s because they were developed continuously, both inspired by the same costs, as well as Micheal&#8217, s passion for The Movie.

” I think it’s the greatest film ever made so that makes me move towards hands automatically”, Michael told a group of journalists. ” There&#8217, s something so terrifying]about it], it feels so real to see somebody where something else is inhabiting their bodies. Connecting the stuff that makes you feel nervous or frightened, or oddities you out and then communicate those items on display. &#8221,

Danny added”, Then leaning into how far you &#8217, d go to bring someone back that you love. Those deep questions that you wonder and think about. That&#8217, s something that we didn&#8217, t fully get out with Talk to Me, so this is another iteration. &#8221,

As Bring Her Back went into pre-production another tragedy struck as a close family friend died at the age of only 23. Alerted by their mother, the twins were suddenly once again crafting a film while dealing with the death of a loved one.

&#8220, The grief was so raw that in the moment we didn&#8217, t really have time to properly process it,” Danny admitted”. We were doing pre-production meetings, then we started shooting, and there was no time to properly sort through those emotions. They sort of poured themselves out in the script and in conversations with Sally, so that bled into the character of Laura and scenes that were meant to be scary suddenly turned sad. So that just becomes part of the process, I think there’s a rawness in it that wasn’t in Talk to Me. &#8221,

To the brothers, horror offers a lighter way to explore dark themes and experiences like the loss of their cousin&#8217, s child, even becoming &#8220, fun&#8221, if they approach it in the right way. &nbsp,

From what we saw—two clips and the recently released first full trailer—Bring Her Back is a far darker and more somber take on horror than their previous endeavor, which still freaked out audiences around the world. According to Micheal, horror was always in their blood and their unusual childhood meant that the brothers carved a bloody path to adulthood and filmmaking. &nbsp,

&#8220, Our parents were never home, &#8221, he said. &#8220, Our grandfather raised us to a certain point, and he passed away when we were really young. And once he did, there was no parental supervision, and our childhood was Lord of the Flies. There&#8217, s footage of us as 10 year olds covered in blood, like actual blood, from backyard wrestling and fucking each other up that way, it just became our love language: violence and psychopathy-ness. &#8221, &nbsp,

Perhaps that &#8217, s why Bring Her Back centers on three children, Andy, Piper, and Ollie ( Jonah Wren Phillips ) thrown into a world of violence and ritual under the watchful—and potentially malevolent—eye of grieving mother Laura. Working with Hawkins was something of a dream come true for the brothers who eagerly gushed about her performance. And it marks a landmark moment for the actress too as she ventures into horror for the very first time. &nbsp,

&#8220, We did not think she would say yes, we sent her the script, and then she got back right away and said she was in love with it, how much it meant to her, how much she connected to it. ” Danny recalled. Her role was inspired by so-called &#8220, Psycho-biddy movies &#8221, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage, and Straight Jacket. Thus Bring Her Back promises to show a side of Hawkins audiences have yet to see.

” I’m in awe of her. She’s genuinely incredible. And in certain scenes so terrifying as well,” Danny teased.

Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30 2025.

The post Bring Her Back: Philippou Brothers Reveal Real-Life Trauma That Inspired New A24 Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

One of HBO’s hottest line, The Last of Us, arrives for a second time on April 13. Based on the video game series of the same name, this show is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a zombie-like fungal infection has wiped out a lot of the population and forever changed the world as we ]… ]

The article HBO and Max New Releases: April 2025 appeared initially on Den of Geek.

Danny and Michael Philippou were already well known in the YouTube community when they took Hollywood by surprise with their A24 scary hit, Talk to Me. That haunting divine dread explored grief and loss through the lens of a crazy party activity, which saw adolescents take turns being possessed by a peculiar object.

During the trailer launch for and sneak peak of their follow-up, Bring Her Back—a film that follows foster kids Andy ( Billy Barratt ) and Piper ( Sora Wong ) as they are taken in by an eccentric and possibly dangerous woman ( Sally Hawkins ) —the pair shared that just like their massively successful first feature, Bring Her Back was shaped by a devastating loss in the Australian twins &#8217, own lives. &nbsp,

” In the middle of writing Bring Her Back my niece lost her two year old”, Danny Philippou shared. ” We were in the clinic, and I was really seeing her on the bed, holding this person, and the household were all around him, and they were holding his ft and his hands and his nose and his arms, and eventually, over time, people let him go. My aunt was the last one to permit him go”.

&#8220, The idea of her not being okay always again after that, that was an inspiration place, &#8221, He continued. &#8220, And how far she would go to treat herself from it. The idea of a never-ending pain pattern is terrifying to me. &#8221,

If it seems like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back are atmospherically and philosophically connected, that’s because they were developed continuously, both inspired by the same costs, as well as Micheal&#8217, s passion for The Movie.

” I think it’s the greatest film ever made so that makes me move towards hands automatically”, Michael told a group of journalists. ” There&#8217, s something so terrifying]about it], it feels so real to see somebody where something else is inhabiting their bodies. Connecting the stuff that makes you feel nervous or frightened, or oddities you out and then communicate those items on display. &#8221,

Danny added”, Then leaning into how far you &#8217, d go to bring someone back that you love. Those deep questions that you wonder and think about. That&#8217, s something that we didn&#8217, t fully get out with Talk to Me, so this is another iteration. &#8221,

As Bring Her Back went into pre-production another tragedy struck as a close family friend died at the age of only 23. Alerted by their mother, the twins were suddenly once again crafting a film while dealing with the death of a loved one.

&#8220, The grief was so raw that in the moment we didn&#8217, t really have time to properly process it,” Danny admitted”. We were doing pre-production meetings, then we started shooting, and there was no time to properly sort through those emotions. They sort of poured themselves out in the script and in conversations with Sally, so that bled into the character of Laura and scenes that were meant to be scary suddenly turned sad. So that just becomes part of the process, I think there’s a rawness in it that wasn’t in Talk to Me. &#8221,

To the brothers, horror offers a lighter way to explore dark themes and experiences like the loss of their cousin&#8217, s child, even becoming &#8220, fun&#8221, if they approach it in the right way. &nbsp,

From what we saw—two clips and the recently released first full trailer—Bring Her Back is a far darker and more somber take on horror than their previous endeavor, which still freaked out audiences around the world. According to Micheal, horror was always in their blood and their unusual childhood meant that the brothers carved a bloody path to adulthood and filmmaking. &nbsp,

&#8220, Our parents were never home, &#8221, he said. &#8220, Our grandfather raised us to a certain point, and he passed away when we were really young. And once he did, there was no parental supervision, and our childhood was Lord of the Flies. There&#8217, s footage of us as 10 year olds covered in blood, like actual blood, from backyard wrestling and fucking each other up that way, it just became our love language: violence and psychopathy-ness. &#8221, &nbsp,

Perhaps that &#8217, s why Bring Her Back centers on three children, Andy, Piper, and Ollie ( Jonah Wren Phillips ) thrown into a world of violence and ritual under the watchful—and potentially malevolent—eye of grieving mother Laura. Working with Hawkins was something of a dream come true for the brothers who eagerly gushed about her performance. And it marks a landmark moment for the actress too as she ventures into horror for the very first time. &nbsp,

&#8220, We did not think she would say yes, we sent her the script, and then she got back right away and said she was in love with it, how much it meant to her, how much she connected to it. ” Danny recalled. Her role was inspired by so-called &#8220, Psycho-biddy movies &#8221, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage, and Straight Jacket. Thus Bring Her Back promises to show a side of Hawkins audiences have yet to see.

” I’m in awe of her. She’s genuinely incredible. And in certain scenes so terrifying as well,” Danny teased.

Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30 2025.

The post Bring Her Back: Philippou Brothers Reveal Real-Life Trauma That Inspired New A24 Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

Lacrosse swapped for sport. Weapons for weapons. Jeans for trousers. Sidewalks for asphalt. The lush cities and dirty town streets of New Jersey swapped for the leafy neighbourhoods and dirty city pavements of Greater Manchester. A character named” Tripp” renamed” Doug” … Until now, all of the Netflix Harlan Coben TV adaptations have translated the books ‘ ] … ]

The article I Will Get You: New Harlan Coben Adaptation Is a Netflix First appeared first on Den of Geek.

Danny and Michael Philippou were already well known in the YouTube community when they took Hollywood by surprise with their A24 dread hit, Talk to Me. That haunting divine dread explored grief and loss through the lens of a crazy party activity, which saw adolescents take turns being possessed by a peculiar object.

During the trailer launch for and sneak peak of their follow-up, Bring Her Back—a film that follows foster kids Andy ( Billy Barratt ) and Piper ( Sora Wong ) as they are taken in by an eccentric and possibly dangerous woman ( Sally Hawkins ) —the pair shared that just like their massively successful first feature, Bring Her Back was shaped by a devastating loss in the Australian twins &#8217, own lives. &nbsp,

” In the middle of writing Bring Her Back my niece lost her two year old”, Danny Philippou shared. ” We were in the clinic, and I was really seeing her on the bed, holding this person, and the household were all around him, and they were holding his ft and his hands and his nose and his arms, and eventually, over time, people let him go. My aunt was the last one to permit him go”.

&#8220, The idea of her not being okay always again after that, that was an inspiration place, &#8221, He continued. &#8220, And how far she would go to treat herself from it. The idea of a never-ending pain pattern is terrifying to me. &#8221,

If it seems like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back are atmospherically and philosophically connected, that’s because they were developed continuously, both inspired by the same costs, as well as Micheal&#8217, s passion for The Movie.

” I think it’s the greatest film ever made so that makes me lean towards hands automatically”, Michael told a group of journalists. ” There&#8217, s something so terrifying]about it], it feels so real to see somebody where something else is inhabiting their bodies. Connecting the stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable or frightened, or oddities you out and then communicate those items on display. &#8221,

Danny added”, Then leaning into how far you &#8217, d go to bring someone back that you love. Those deep questions that you wonder and think about. That&#8217, s something that we didn&#8217, t fully get out with Talk to Me, so this is another iteration. &#8221,

As Bring Her Back went into pre-production another tragedy struck as a close family friend died at the age of only 23. Alerted by their mother, the twins were suddenly once again crafting a film while dealing with the death of a loved one.

&#8220, The grief was so raw that in the moment we didn&#8217, t really have time to properly process it,” Danny admitted”. We were doing pre-production meetings, then we started shooting, and there was no time to properly sort through those emotions. They sort of poured themselves out in the script and in conversations with Sally, so that bled into the character of Laura and scenes that were meant to be scary suddenly turned sad. So that just becomes part of the process, I think there’s a rawness in it that wasn’t in Talk to Me. &#8221,

To the brothers, horror offers a lighter way to explore dark themes and experiences like the loss of their cousin&#8217, s child, even becoming &#8220, fun&#8221, if they approach it in the right way. &nbsp,

From what we saw—two clips and the recently released first full trailer—Bring Her Back is a far darker and more somber take on horror than their previous endeavor, which still freaked out audiences around the world. According to Micheal, horror was always in their blood and their unusual childhood meant that the brothers carved a bloody path to adulthood and filmmaking. &nbsp,

&#8220, Our parents were never home, &#8221, he said. &#8220, Our grandfather raised us to a certain point, and he passed away when we were really young. And once he did, there was no parental supervision, and our childhood was Lord of the Flies. There&#8217, s footage of us as 10 year olds covered in blood, like actual blood, from backyard wrestling and fucking each other up that way, it just became our love language: violence and psychopathy-ness. &#8221, &nbsp,

Perhaps that &#8217, s why Bring Her Back centers on three children, Andy, Piper, and Ollie ( Jonah Wren Phillips ) thrown into a world of violence and ritual under the watchful—and potentially malevolent—eye of grieving mother Laura. Working with Hawkins was something of a dream come true for the brothers who eagerly gushed about her performance. And it marks a landmark moment for the actress too as she ventures into horror for the very first time. &nbsp,

&#8220, We did not think she would say yes, we sent her the script, and then she got back right away and said she was in love with it, how much it meant to her, how much she connected to it. ” Danny recalled. Her role was inspired by so-called &#8220, Psycho-biddy movies &#8221, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage, and Straight Jacket. Thus Bring Her Back promises to show a side of Hawkins audiences have yet to see.

” I’m in awe of her. She’s genuinely incredible. And in certain scenes so terrifying as well,” Danny teased.

Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30 2025.

The post Bring Her Back: Philippou Brothers Reveal Real-Life Trauma That Inspired New A24 Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

This quarter on Hulu, The Handmaid’s Tale returns for its sixth and final time. June Osborne’s ( Elisabeth Moss ) journey is coming to an end as her fight against the oppressive regime Gilead gains momentum. Will she be successful in taking them over and reuniting with her child? We’ll have to tune in and find out. ]… ]

The article Hulu New Releases: April 2025 appeared initially on Den of Geek.

Danny and Michael Philippou were already well known in the YouTube community when they took Hollywood by surprise with their A24 despair hit, Talk to Me. That haunting divine dread explored grief and loss through the lens of a crazy party activity, which saw adolescents take turns being possessed by a peculiar object.

During the trailer launch for and sneak peak of their follow-up, Bring Her Back—a film that follows foster kids Andy ( Billy Barratt ) and Piper ( Sora Wong ) as they are taken in by an eccentric and possibly dangerous woman ( Sally Hawkins ) —the pair shared that just like their massively successful first feature, Bring Her Back was shaped by a devastating loss in the Australian twins &#8217, own lives. &nbsp,

” In the middle of writing Bring Her Back my niece lost her two year old”, Danny Philippou shared. ” We were in the clinic, and I was really seeing her on the bed, holding this person, and the household were all around him, and they were holding his ft and his hands and his nose and his arms, and eventually, over time, people let him go. My aunt was the last one to allow him go”.

&#8220, The idea of her not being okay always again after that, that was an inspiration place, &#8221, He continued. &#8220, And how far she would go to recover herself from it. The idea of a never-ending pain pattern is terrifying to me. &#8221,

If it seems like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back are atmospherically and philosophically connected, that’s because they were developed continuously, both inspired by the same costs, as well as Micheal&#8217, s passion for The Movie.

” I think it’s the greatest film ever made so that makes me lean towards hands automatically”, Michael told a group of journalists. ” There&#8217, s something so terrifying]about it], it feels so real to see somebody where something else is inhabiting their bodies. Connecting the stuff that makes you feel nervous or frightened, or oddities you out and then communicate those items on display. &#8221,

Danny added”, Then leaning into how far you &#8217, d go to bring someone back that you love. Those deep questions that you wonder and think about. That&#8217, s something that we didn&#8217, t fully get out with Talk to Me, so this is another iteration. &#8221,

As Bring Her Back went into pre-production another tragedy struck as a close family friend died at the age of only 23. Alerted by their mother, the twins were suddenly once again crafting a film while dealing with the death of a loved one.

&#8220, The grief was so raw that in the moment we didn&#8217, t really have time to properly process it,” Danny admitted”. We were doing pre-production meetings, then we started shooting, and there was no time to properly sort through those emotions. They sort of poured themselves out in the script and in conversations with Sally, so that bled into the character of Laura and scenes that were meant to be scary suddenly turned sad. So that just becomes part of the process, I think there’s a rawness in it that wasn’t in Talk to Me. &#8221,

To the brothers, horror offers a lighter way to explore dark themes and experiences like the loss of their cousin&#8217, s child, even becoming &#8220, fun&#8221, if they approach it in the right way. &nbsp,

From what we saw—two clips and the recently released first full trailer—Bring Her Back is a far darker and more somber take on horror than their previous endeavor, which still freaked out audiences around the world. According to Micheal, horror was always in their blood and their unusual childhood meant that the brothers carved a bloody path to adulthood and filmmaking. &nbsp,

&#8220, Our parents were never home, &#8221, he said. &#8220, Our grandfather raised us to a certain point, and he passed away when we were really young. And once he did, there was no parental supervision, and our childhood was Lord of the Flies. There&#8217, s footage of us as 10 year olds covered in blood, like actual blood, from backyard wrestling and fucking each other up that way, it just became our love language: violence and psychopathy-ness. &#8221, &nbsp,

Perhaps that &#8217, s why Bring Her Back centers on three children, Andy, Piper, and Ollie ( Jonah Wren Phillips ) thrown into a world of violence and ritual under the watchful—and potentially malevolent—eye of grieving mother Laura. Working with Hawkins was something of a dream come true for the brothers who eagerly gushed about her performance. And it marks a landmark moment for the actress too as she ventures into horror for the very first time. &nbsp,

&#8220, We did not think she would say yes, we sent her the script, and then she got back right away and said she was in love with it, how much it meant to her, how much she connected to it. ” Danny recalled. Her role was inspired by so-called &#8220, Psycho-biddy movies &#8221, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage, and Straight Jacket. Thus Bring Her Back promises to show a side of Hawkins audiences have yet to see.

” I’m in awe of her. She’s genuinely incredible. And in certain scenes so terrifying as well,” Danny teased.

Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30 2025.

The post Bring Her Back: Philippou Brothers Reveal Real-Life Trauma That Inspired New A24 Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

The long-awaited transfer of Andor is finally here, as the line returns for a minute and last year on April 22. This season will tell the next chapter of Cassian Andor’s ( Diego Luna ) life as we watch him become the rebel spy we meet in Rogue One. The stakes are high as the Empire continues ]… ]

The post Disney + New Releases: April 2025 appeared first on Den of Geek.

Danny and Michael Philippou were already well known in the YouTube community when they took Hollywood by surprise with their A24 scary hit, Talk to Me. That haunting divine dread explored grief and loss through the lens of a crazy party activity, which saw adolescents take turns being possessed by a peculiar object.

During the trailer launch for and sneak peak of their follow-up, Bring Her Back—a film that follows foster kids Andy ( Billy Barratt ) and Piper ( Sora Wong ) as they are taken in by an eccentric and possibly dangerous woman ( Sally Hawkins ) —the pair shared that just like their massively successful first feature, Bring Her Back was shaped by a devastating loss in the Australian twins &#8217, own lives. &nbsp,

” In the middle of writing Bring Her Back my niece lost her two year old”, Danny Philippou shared. ” We were in the clinic, and I was really seeing her on the bed, holding this person, and the household were all around him, and they were holding his ft and his hands and his nose and his arms, and eventually, over time, people let him go. My aunt was the last one to permit him go”.

&#8220, The idea of her not being okay always again after that, that was an inspiration place, &#8221, He continued. &#8220, And how far she would go to treat herself from it. The idea of a never-ending pain pattern is terrifying to me. &#8221,

If it seems like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back are atmospherically and philosophically connected, that’s because they were developed continuously, both inspired by the same costs, as well as Micheal&#8217, s passion for The Movie.

” I think it’s the greatest film ever made so that makes me lean towards hands automatically”, Michael told a group of journalists. ” There&#8217, s something so terrifying]about it], it feels so real to see somebody where something else is inhabiting their bodies. Connecting the stuff that makes you feel nervous or frightened, or oddities you out and then communicate those items on display. &#8221,

Danny added”, Next leaning into how much you &#8217, d come to bring people back that you love. Those heavy questions that you wonder and think about. That&#8217, s everything that we didn&#8217, t thoroughly find out with Talk to Me, so this is another generation. &#8221,

As Bring Her Back went into pre-production another horror struck as a close family friend died at the age of just 23. Alerted by their mother, the sisters were immediately after once crafting a video while dealing with the demise of a loved one.

&#8220, The pain was so natural that in the instant we didn&#8217, t actually have time to properly system it,” Danny admitted”. We were doing pre-production discussions, then we started shooting, and there was no time to properly sort through those thoughts. They type of poured themselves out in the script and in conversations with Sally, but that bled into the character of Laura and scenes that were meant to be terrible suddenly turned unhappy. So that just becomes part of the process, I think there’s a rawness in it that wasn’t in Talk to Me. &#8221,

To the brothers, horror offers a lighter way to explore dark themes and experiences like the loss of their cousin&#8217, s child, even becoming &#8220, fun&#8221, if they approach it in the right way. &nbsp,

From what we saw—two clips and the recently released first full trailer—Bring Her Back is a far darker and more somber take on horror than their previous endeavor, which still freaked out audiences around the world. According to Micheal, horror was always in their blood and their unusual childhood meant that the brothers carved a bloody path to adulthood and filmmaking. &nbsp,

&#8220, Our parents were never home, &#8221, he said. &#8220, Our grandfather raised us to a certain point, and he passed away when we were really young. And once he did, there was no parental supervision, and our childhood was Lord of the Flies. There&#8217, s footage of us as 10 year olds covered in blood, like actual blood, from backyard wrestling and fucking each other up that way, it just became our love language: violence and psychopathy-ness. &#8221, &nbsp,

Perhaps that &#8217, s why Bring Her Back centers on three children, Andy, Piper, and Ollie ( Jonah Wren Phillips ) thrown into a world of violence and ritual under the watchful—and potentially malevolent—eye of grieving mother Laura. Working with Hawkins was something of a dream come true for the brothers who eagerly gushed about her performance. And it marks a landmark moment for the actress too as she ventures into horror for the very first time. &nbsp,

&#8220, We did not think she would say yes, we sent her the script, and then she got back right away and said she was in love with it, how much it meant to her, how much she connected to it. ” Danny recalled. Her role was inspired by so-called &#8220, Psycho-biddy movies &#8221, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage, and Straight Jacket. Thus Bring Her Back promises to show a side of Hawkins audiences have yet to see.

” I’m in awe of her. She’s genuinely incredible. And in certain scenes so terrifying as well,” Danny teased.

Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30 2025.

The post Bring Her Back: Philippou Brothers Reveal Real-Life Trauma That Inspired New A24 Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

This assessment contains The Replacement episode trailers. Reward be for the three-parter. Even when the storyline wheels come out, as they did in amazing fashion in The Replacement’s absurdly exaggerated finale, you’re however quids-in when it comes to your period investment. A dodgy last hour after two decent instalments is forgivable, especially when it’s all ]… ]

The article The Replacement Ending Is Ridiculously Exaggerated appeared initially on Den of Geek.

Danny and Michael Philippou were already well known in the YouTube community when they took Hollywood by surprise with their A24 scary hit, Talk to Me. That haunting divine dread explored grief and loss through the lens of a crazy party activity, which saw adolescents take turns being possessed by a peculiar object.

During the trailer launch for and sneak peak of their follow-up, Bring Her Back—a film that follows foster kids Andy ( Billy Barratt ) and Piper ( Sora Wong ) as they are taken in by an eccentric and possibly dangerous woman ( Sally Hawkins ) —the pair shared that just like their massively successful first feature, Bring Her Back was shaped by a devastating loss in the Australian twins &#8217, own lives. &nbsp,

” In the middle of writing Bring Her Back my niece lost her two year old”, Danny Philippou shared. ” We were in the clinic, and I was really seeing her on the bed, holding this person, and the household were all around him, and they were holding his ft and his hands and his nose and his arms, and eventually, over time, people let him go. My aunt was the last one to permit him go”.

&#8220, The idea of her not being okay always again after that, that was an inspiration place, &#8221, He continued. &#8220, And how far she would go to heal herself from it. The idea of a never-ending grief cycle is terrifying to me. &#8221,

If it seems like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back are atmospherically and thematically connected, that’s because they were developed concurrently, both inspired by the same losses, as well as Micheal&#8217, s love for The Exorcist.

” I think it’s the greatest film ever made so that makes me lean towards possession automatically”, Michael told a group of journalists. ” There&#8217, s something so terrifying]about it], it feels so real to see somebody where something else is inhabiting their bodies. Connecting the stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable or nervous, or freaks you out and then express those things on screen. &#8221,

Danny added”, Then leaning into how far you &#8217, d go to bring someone back that you love. Those deep questions that you wonder and think about. That&#8217, s something that we didn&#8217, t fully get out with Talk to Me, so this is another iteration. &#8221,

As Bring Her Back went into pre-production another tragedy struck as a close family friend died at the age of only 23. Alerted by their mother, the twins were suddenly once again crafting a film while dealing with the death of a loved one.

&#8220, The grief was so raw that in the moment we didn&#8217, t really have time to properly process it,” Danny admitted”. We were doing pre-production meetings, then we started shooting, and there was no time to properly sort through those emotions. They sort of poured themselves out in the script and in conversations with Sally, so that bled into the character of Laura and scenes that were meant to be scary suddenly turned sad. So that just becomes part of the process, I think there’s a rawness in it that wasn’t in Talk to Me. &#8221,

To the brothers, horror offers a lighter way to explore dark themes and experiences like the loss of their cousin&#8217, s child, even becoming &#8220, fun&#8221, if they approach it in the right way. &nbsp,

From what we saw—two clips and the recently released first full trailer—Bring Her Back is a far darker and more somber take on horror than their previous endeavor, which still freaked out audiences around the world. According to Micheal, horror was always in their blood and their unusual childhood meant that the brothers carved a bloody path to adulthood and filmmaking. &nbsp,

&#8220, Our parents were never home, &#8221, he said. &#8220, Our grandfather raised us to a certain point, and he passed away when we were really young. And once he did, there was no parental supervision, and our childhood was Lord of the Flies. There&#8217, s footage of us as 10 year olds covered in blood, like actual blood, from backyard wrestling and fucking each other up that way, it just became our love language: violence and psychopathy-ness. &#8221, &nbsp,

Perhaps that &#8217, s why Bring Her Back centers on three children, Andy, Piper, and Ollie ( Jonah Wren Phillips ) thrown into a world of violence and ritual under the watchful—and potentially malevolent—eye of grieving mother Laura. Working with Hawkins was something of a dream come true for the brothers who eagerly gushed about her performance. And it marks a landmark moment for the actress too as she ventures into horror for the very first time. &nbsp,

&#8220, We did not think she would say yes, we sent her the script, and then she got back right away and said she was in love with it, how much it meant to her, how much she connected to it. ” Danny recalled. Her role was inspired by so-called &#8220, Psycho-biddy movies &#8221, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage, and Straight Jacket. Thus Bring Her Back promises to show a side of Hawkins audiences have yet to see.

” I’m in awe of her. She’s genuinely incredible. And in certain scenes so terrifying as well,” Danny teased.

Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30 2025.

The post Bring Her Back: Philippou Brothers Reveal Real-Life Trauma That Inspired New A24 Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

You say you want a trend? Well, at a Cinema Con event that featured multiple Spider-Men, Tomcats, and characters of various methods, it was striking that the mic drop second came not from a webslinger or one of his countless variations, it arrived by way of the solid show of a “four-film cinematic function”, it ]…]

The article Sam Mendes ‘ Beatles Cast Only Invented the Music Biopic Shared Universe appeared initially on Den of Geek.

Danny and Michael Philippou were already well known in the YouTube community when they took Hollywood by surprise with their A24 despair hit, Talk to Me. That haunting divine dread explored grief and loss through the lens of a crazy party activity, which saw adolescents take turns being possessed by a peculiar object.

During the trailer launch for and sneak peak of their follow-up, Bring Her Back—a film that follows foster kids Andy ( Billy Barratt ) and Piper ( Sora Wong ) as they are taken in by an eccentric and possibly dangerous woman ( Sally Hawkins ) —the pair shared that just like their massively successful first feature, Bring Her Back was shaped by a devastating loss in the Australian twins &#8217, own lives. &nbsp,

” In the middle of writing Bring Her Back my niece lost her two year old”, Danny Philippou shared. ” We were in the clinic, and I was really seeing her on the bed, holding this person, and the household were all around him, and they were holding his feet and his hands and his nose and his arms, and eventually, over time, people let him go. My cousin was the last one to let him go”.

&#8220, The idea of her never being okay ever again after that, that was an inspiration point, &#8221, He continued. &#8220, And how far she would go to heal herself from it. The idea of a never-ending grief cycle is terrifying to me. &#8221,

If it seems like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back are atmospherically and thematically connected, that’s because they were developed concurrently, both inspired by the same losses, as well as Micheal&#8217, s love for The Exorcist.

” I think it’s the greatest film ever made so that makes me lean towards possession automatically”, Michael told a group of journalists. ” There&#8217, s something so terrifying]about it], it feels so real to see somebody where something else is inhabiting their bodies. Connecting the stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable or nervous, or freaks you out and then express those things on screen. &#8221,

Danny added”, Then leaning into how far you &#8217, d go to bring someone back that you love. Those deep questions that you wonder and think about. That&#8217, s something that we didn&#8217, t fully get out with Talk to Me, so this is another iteration. &#8221,

As Bring Her Back went into pre-production another tragedy struck as a close family friend died at the age of only 23. Alerted by their mother, the twins were suddenly once again crafting a film while dealing with the death of a loved one.

&#8220, The grief was so raw that in the moment we didn&#8217, t really have time to properly process it,” Danny admitted”. We were doing pre-production meetings, then we started shooting, and there was no time to properly sort through those emotions. They sort of poured themselves out in the script and in conversations with Sally, so that bled into the character of Laura and scenes that were meant to be scary suddenly turned sad. So that just becomes part of the process, I think there’s a rawness in it that wasn’t in Talk to Me. &#8221,

To the brothers, horror offers a lighter way to explore dark themes and experiences like the loss of their cousin&#8217, s child, even becoming &#8220, fun&#8221, if they approach it in the right way. &nbsp,

From what we saw—two clips and the recently released first full trailer—Bring Her Back is a far darker and more somber take on horror than their previous endeavor, which still freaked out audiences around the world. According to Micheal, horror was always in their blood and their unusual childhood meant that the brothers carved a bloody path to adulthood and filmmaking. &nbsp,

&#8220, Our parents were never home, &#8221, he said. &#8220, Our grandfather raised us to a certain point, and he passed away when we were really young. And once he did, there was no parental supervision, and our childhood was Lord of the Flies. There&#8217, s footage of us as 10 year olds covered in blood, like actual blood, from backyard wrestling and fucking each other up that way, it just became our love language: violence and psychopathy-ness. &#8221, &nbsp,

Perhaps that &#8217, s why Bring Her Back centers on three children, Andy, Piper, and Ollie ( Jonah Wren Phillips ) thrown into a world of violence and ritual under the watchful—and potentially malevolent—eye of grieving mother Laura. Working with Hawkins was something of a dream come true for the brothers who eagerly gushed about her performance. And it marks a landmark moment for the actress too as she ventures into horror for the very first time. &nbsp,

&#8220, We did not think she would say yes, we sent her the script, and then she got back right away and said she was in love with it, how much it meant to her, how much she connected to it. ” Danny recalled. Her role was inspired by so-called &#8220, Psycho-biddy movies &#8221, like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage, and Straight Jacket. Thus Bring Her Back promises to show a side of Hawkins audiences have yet to see.

” I’m in awe of her. She’s genuinely incredible. And in certain scenes so terrifying as well,” Danny teased.

Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30 2025.

The post Bring Her Back: Philippou Brothers Reveal Real-Life Trauma That Inspired New A24 Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.