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I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and overnight sleeping. When you figure those out, it’s time for preschool and rare naps. The cycle goes on and on.

The same applies for those of us working in design and development these days. Having worked on the web for almost three decades at this point, I’ve seen the regular wax and wane of ideas, techniques, and technologies. Each time that we as developers and designers get into a regular rhythm, some new idea or technology comes along to shake things up and remake our world.

How we got here

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 birth of web 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.

Picture this. You’ve joined a squad at your company that’s designing new product features with an emphasis on automation or AI. Or your company has just implemented a personalization engine. Either way, you’re designing with data. Now what? When it comes to designing for personalization, there are many cautionary tales, no overnight successes, and few guides for the perplexed. 

Between the fantasy of getting it right and the fear of it going wrong—like when we encounter “persofails” in the vein of a company repeatedly imploring everyday consumers to buy additional toilet seats—the personalization gap is real. It’s an especially confounding place to be a digital professional without a map, a compass, or a plan.

For those of you venturing into personalization, there’s no Lonely Planet and few tour guides because effective personalization is so specific to each organization’s talent, technology, and market position. 

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:

1. 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. .
2. 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.
3. 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.

I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the heroes 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. Yet my friends and I had movie ideas to make and sky 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 analysis is story. And you must show a compelling story to entice stakeholders, such as the product team and decision-makers, to learn more in order to get the most out of consumer research.

Think of your favourite film. It more than likely follows a three-act narrative construction: the layout, the turmoil, and the resolution. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to understand the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two sets the scene for the fight and the activity begins. Here, difficulties grow or get worse. The decision comes in 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 I think it can be particularly useful for explaining consumer research to others.

Use story as a framework for conducting research

It’s sad to say, but many have come to see studies as being inconsequential. Research is typically one of the first things to go when expenses or deadlines are tight. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That might lead to some clubs getting in the way, but it’s too easy to overlook the significant problems facing users. To remain user-centered, this is something we should avoid. User study improves style. It keeps it on trail, 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 customer research.

Act one: layout

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

What is the least practical ethnography that Erika Hall can do is spend fifteen minutes with a consumer and say,” Walk me through your day yesterday. That’s it. Current that one ask. Opened up and listen to them for 15 days. Do everything in your power to keep yourself and your pursuits out of it. Bam, you’re doing ethnography”. According to Hall, “[This ] will likely prove quite fascinating. In the very unlikely event that you didn’t learn anything new or helpful, carry on with increased confidence in your way”.

This makes perfect sense to me. And I love that this makes consumer research so visible. You can simply attract individuals 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 complement what you’ve heard in the fundamental studies by using any more user data that you can obtain, such as surveys or analytics, or if you can identify areas that need more investigation. Together, all this information creates a clearer picture of the state of things and all its inadequacies. And that’s the start of a gripping tale. It’s the place in the story where you realize that the principal characters—or the people in this case—are facing issues that they need to conquer. This is where you begin to develop compassion for the characters and support their success, much like in films. And finally partners are now doing the same. Their concern may be with their company, which may be losing money because people are unable to complete specific tasks. Or probably they do connect with people ‘ problems. In either case, work one serves as your main strategy to pique the interest and interest of the participants.

When partners begin to understand the value of basic research, that is open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making approach. And that can help item team become more user-centric. This rewards everyone—users, the goods, and partners. It’s similar to winning an Oscar for a film because it frequently results in a favorable and successful outcome for your item. And this can be an opportunity for participants to repeat this process with different items. The secret to this approach is storytelling, and knowing how to tell a compelling story is the only way to entice partners to do more research.

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

Act two: issue

Act two is all about digging deeper into the issues that you identified in action one. This typically involves conducting vertical study, such as accessibility tests, where you evaluate a potential solution ( such as a design ) to see if it addresses the problems you identified. The issues may include unfulfilled needs or problems with a circulation or procedure that’s tripping users off. Additional problems will arise in the course of action two of a film. It’s ok that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this work.

According to Jakob Nielsen, five users should be normally in usability tests, which means that this number of users can generally identify the majority of the issues:” As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the five user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings consistently but not learning much new.”

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

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

If conducting usability testing in the field is like watching a play that is staged and controlled, where any two sessions may be very different from one another. You can take usability testing into the field by creating a replica of the space where users interact with the product and then conduct your research there. Or you can 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. A wider audience can be reached through remote sessions. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. And they make access to a much wider range of users in their own country. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working.

You can ask real users questions to understand their thoughts and understanding of the solution as a result of usability testing, whether it is done remotely or in person. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. You can also test your own ideas and determine whether they are true. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. Act two is where the excitement is at the heart of the narrative, but there are also potential surprises. This is equally true of usability tests. Unexpected things that participants say frequently alter the way you look at things, and these unexpected revelations can lead to unexpected turns in the narrative.

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. Usability testing is often the only method of research that some stakeholders believe they ever need, especially in this regard. 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, whereas the first two acts are about understanding the context and the tensions that can compel stakeholders to act. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That includes the entire product team, including developers, UX experts, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other interested parties who have a say in the coming development. It allows the whole team to hear users ‘ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. Additionally, it enables the UX design and research teams to clarify, suggest alternatives, or provide more context for their decisions. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

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

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

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

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be as visual as quick sketches of a potential solution to a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the session is over, when you’ve concluded by bridging the gaps and offering suggestions for improvement. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage provides stakeholders with the next steps and, hoped, the motivation to take those steps!

While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. The three-act structure of user research contains all the components of a good story:

Act one: You meet the protagonists ( the users ) and the antagonists ( the problems affecting users ). The plot begins here. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. These techniques can produce personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards as output.

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

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

The researcher performs a number of tasks: they are the producer, the director, and the storyteller. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters ( in the research ). And the audience are the stakeholders. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users ‘ stories through research. By the end, the parties should have a goal and a desire to solve the product’s flaws.

So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. In the end, user research is beneficial to everyone, and all parties must be interested in the conclusion.

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

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

The drawbacks of feature-first creation

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

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

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

The significance of the foundation

What’s a better course of action then? How may we create products that are user-friendly, firm, and, most importantly, stick?

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

The core must be in and around the standard servicing journeys in the retail banking industry, which is where I work. People only look at their existing accounts once every five minutes, but they also look at it daily. They purchase a credit card every year or every other year, but they at least once a month examine their stability and pay their bills.

The key is in identifying the main tasks that people want to complete and working relentlessly to render them simple, reliable, and trustworthy.

But how do you reach the foundation? By focusing on the” MVP” strategy, giving convenience precedence, and working incrementally toward a clear value proposition. This entails removing needless functions and putting the emphasis on providing genuine value to your users.

It also requires some nerve, as your coworkers might not always agree on your vision at first. And dubiously, occasionally it can even suggest making it clear to customers that you won’t be coming to their house and making their breakfast. Sometimes you may need to use the sporadic “opinionated user interface design” ( i .e. clunky workaround for edge cases ) to test a concept or to give yourself some room to work on something more crucial stuff.

Functional methods for creating reliable economic products

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

1. What trouble are you trying to solve first and foremost with a distinct “why”? For whom? Before beginning any construction, make sure your vision is completely clear. Make certain it also aligns with the goals of your business.
2. Avoid the temptation to put too many characteristics at once by focusing on one, key feature and focusing on getting that right before moving on to something else. Choose one that actually adds price, and work from that.
3. When it comes to financial items, clarity is often over difficulty. Eliminate unwanted details and concentrate solely on what matters most.
4. Accept ongoing iteration: Bedrock is not a fixed destination; it is a fluid process. Continuously collect customer feedback, make improvements to your product, and move toward that foundation.
5. Halt, look, and listen: You don’t just have to test your product during the delivery process; you must also test it frequently in the field. Use it for yourself. Move the A/B checks. User comments on Gear. Talk to those who use it, and change things up correctly.

The “bedrock conundrum”

Building towards rock implies sacrificing some short-term growth prospective in favor of long-term balance, which is an interesting paradox at play here. But the reward is worthwhile because products built with a focus on bedrock will outlive and surpass their rivals over time and provide users with long-term value.

How do you begin your quest for rock, then? Take it slowly. Start by identifying the underlying factors that your customers actually care about. Focus on developing and improving a second, potent function that delivers real value. And most importantly, make an obsessive effort because, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker ( whew! The best way to foretell the future is to build it, he said.

Picture this: Two people are conversing in what appears to be the same talk about the same pattern issue in a conference room at your tech company. One is talking about whether the staff has the proper skills to handle it. The other is examining whether the solution really addresses the user’s issue. Similar room, the same issue, and entirely various perspectives.

This is the lovely, sometimes messy fact of having both a Design Manager and a Guide Designer on the same group. And if you’re wondering how to make this job without creating confusion, coincide, or the feared” to some cooks” situation, you’re asking the right issue.

The conventional solution has been to create clear traces on an organizational chart. The Design Manager handles persons, the Lead Designer handles art. Problem is fixed, isn’t it? Except for dream, fresh org charts. In fact, both roles care greatly about crew health, style quality, and shipping great work.

When you begin to think of your style organization as a style organism, the magic happens when you accept collide rather than fight it.

A Healthy Design Team’s Biology

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this formula: consider of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager concentrates on the emotional security, career advancement, team dynamics, and other factors. The Lead Designer is more focused on the body ( the user-generated design standards, the handcrafted skills ), than the hands-on work that is done.

But just like mind and body aren’t totally separate systems, but, also, do these tasks overlap in significant ways. Without working in harmony with one another, you didn’t have a healthier person. The technique is to know where those aligns are and how to manage them gently.

When we look at how good team really function, three critical devices emerge. Each requires the collaboration of both jobs, but one must assume the lead role in maintaining that system sturdy.

Folks & Psychology: The Nervous System

Major caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting position: Guide Custom

The anxious system is all about mental health, comments, and signals. When this technique is good, information flows easily, people feel safe to take risks, and the staff may react quickly to new problems.

The main caregiver here is the Design Manager. They are making sure the team’s emotional pulse is healthful, creating the ideal environment for growth, and keeping track of the team’s psychological pulse. They’re hosting job meetings, managing task, and making sure no single burns out.

However, the Lead Designer has a vital enabling position. They provide visual feedback on build development requirements, identifying stagnant design skills, and assisting with the Design Manager’s potential growth opportunities.

Design Manager tends to:

• discussions about careers and career development
• internal security and dynamics of the team
• Job management and resource allocation
• Performance evaluations and opinions management systems
• Providing opportunities for learning

Direct Custom supports by:

• Giving craft-specific evaluation of staff member growth
• identifying opportunities for growth and style talent gaps
• Providing style mentorship and assistance
• indicating when a group is prepared for more challenging tasks.

The Muscular System: Design & Execution

Major caregiver: Lead Designer
Supporting duties: Design Manager

Strength, cooperation, and skill development are the hallmarks of the skeletal system. When this technique is healthy, the team can do complicated design work with precision, maintain regular quality, and adjust their craft to fresh challenges.

The Lead Designer is in charge of everything here. They are establishing design standards, offering craft instruction, and making sure that shipping work meets the required standards. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

However, the Design Manager has a significant supporting role. They’re making sure the team has the resources and support they need to perform their best work, such as proper nutrition and time for an athlete recovering.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of system requirements and design standards
• Feedback on design work that meets the required standards
• Experience direction for the product
• Design choices and product-wide alignment
• advancement of craft and innovation

Design Manager supports by:

• ensuring that design standards are understood and accepted by all members of the team
• Confirming that a direction of experience is being pursued
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• facilitating design alignment among all teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles for outstanding craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy &amp, Flow

Shared caretakers: Lead Designer and Design Manager, respectively.

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

This is the true partnership that occurs. Although both roles are responsible for maintaining the circulation, they both have unique perspectives to offer.

Lead Designer contributes:

• The product fulfills the needs of the users.
• overall experience and product quality
• Strategic design initiatives
• User needs based on research for each initiative

Contributes the design manager:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Management of stakeholders and alignment
• Inter-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both parties work together on:

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

Keeping the Organism Healthy

Understanding that all three systems must work together is the key to making this partnership sing. A team will eventually lose their way despite excellent craftmanship and poor psychological safety. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team that has both but poor strategic planning will concentrate on the wrong things.

Be Specific About the System You’re Defending.

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

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

Create Positive Feedback Loops

The partnerships that I’ve seen have the most effective partnerships that create clear feedback loops between the systems:

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

The nervous system receives the message” The team’s craft skills are progressing more quickly than their project complexity.”

We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities, both systems say to the circulatory system.

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

When something switches from one system to another, this partnership’s most crucial moments occur. This might occur when a design standard ( muscular system ) needs to be implemented across the team ( nervous system ) or when a tactical initiative ( circulatory system ) requires specific craft execution ( muscular system ).

Make these transitions explicit. I’ve defined the new component requirements. Can you give me some ideas on how to get the team up to speed? or” We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. From here, I’ll concentrate on the specific user experience approach.

Stay curious and avoid being territorial.

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Even when they aren’t the primary caretaker, great design leadership requires both people to be as concerned with the entire organism.

This entails posing questions rather than making assumptions. ” What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area”? or” How do you think this is affecting team morale and workload”? keeps both viewpoints present in every choice.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go wrong. What are the most typical failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

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

The signs: Team members receive conflicting messages, poor morale, and poor communication.

Reconnect with other people and discuss shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? It’s typically excellent design work that arrives on time from a capable team. Discover how both systems accomplish that goal.

Poor Circulation

There is no clear strategic direction, shifting priorities, or accepting responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The signs are: Team members are unsure of their priorities, work is duplicated or dropped, and deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who is communicating with whom? How frequently? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

The other person’s expertise makes them feel threatened. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Design Manager is alleged to believe that the Lead Designer doesn’t understand craft.

The signs: defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members sucked into the middle.

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

The Payoff

Yes, there is more communication required with this model. Yes, both parties must be able to assume full responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are well-balanced and functioning well together, you get the best of both worlds: strong people leadership and deep craft knowledge. One person can help keep the team’s health when one is sick, on vacation, or overjoyed. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

The framework scales, which is most important. You can use the same system thinking to new challenges as your team grows. Need to launch a design system? Both the muscular system ( standards and implementation ), the nervous system (team adoption and change management ), and both have a tendency to circulate ( communication and stakeholder alignment ).

The End result

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. Multipliering impact is what is concerned with. Magic occurs when both roles are aware that they are tending to various components of the same healthy organism.

The mind and body work together. The team receives both the craft excellence and strategic thinking they need. And most importantly, the work that is distributed to users benefits both sides.

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

Trailers appear in this post for Season 2 Episode 4 of Peacemaker. No one is surprised to discover a strange alien in a DC Comics task at this point. Truly, we shouldn’t be surprised to find one in a work from James Gunn, the creator of the television series Broccoli and Starro the Conqueror. But ]… ]

What’s That Weird Alien, Episode 4 of Peacemaker? primary appeared on Den of Geek.

Fans have been asking themselves,” What the heck did the MCU type of Doctor Doom seem like?” since a green-clad find posed as Robert Downey Jr. at San Diego Comic-Con. We now have our truth, owing to a recently leaked part of promotional art. He resembles Doctor Doom in appearance.

We can then confirm that the MCU will release a faithful adaptation of Doctor Doom for the big screen in Avengers: Doomsday in the coming year owing to images shared by various online social media feeds, including Avengers Update, an earlier version of Twitter.

The MCU Doom is surrounded by a helmet that is attached to his clean cloak and has a helmet that has been twisted into a glowering picture. Natural fabric runs down the side of the not-so-good doctor’s body, with a harder material covering his stomach in a stone pattern. The songs running across his shoulders and his armour all have the same high-tech appearance. Armour has been added in place of the purely mechanical weapons, though. Although it’s interesting that there are now two different images on the discs on Doom’s neck, overall, this is a typical Doctor Doom.

It’s not like Doom has changed too much since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee first introduced the figure in the 1962 film Fantastic Four# 5? Kirby provided the figure with his distinctive clean tunic, ever-present metal face, and high-tech body armor. And the majority of the designers who followed knew they couldn’t make it better. Sure, Marvel occasionally has variations for a particular moment, such as the ghastly new armor he created when dedicating himself to sorcery during Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s legendary run ( seriously, look it up, it’s nasty ), but most of the time, especially given the upcoming Avengers movie slate, he has changed Doom&#8217’s color scheme ( mostnotably, he donned a white version for Secret Wars ). Not yet John Byrne, who flimsily messed up King Kirby’s artwork, departed from the traditional aesthetic.

Marvel reminds us that as much as they’ve been willing to experiment with the backstories and design elements of secondary characters ( making Star-Lord the son of Ego the Living Planet instead of J&#8217, Son of Spartax, streamlining Carol Danvers &#8217, backstory ), Marvel doesn’t mess with their A-listers. The big brands get their distinctive appearance in the same way that Spider-Man just underwent small adjustments to his wardrobe and that Hugh Jackman was fitted for a traditional yellow and blue Wolverine outfit as soon as he entered the MCU.

Which, of course, has always been Kevin Feige‘s calling cards. Feige advocated for comics-accurate portrayals of the heroes to appear onscreen even while working under Avi Arad on 2000s films like X-Men and Spider-Man. Which serves as a useful warning as we prepare for Doomsday.

While the announcement that Downey may make a comeback to the MCU, no as Tony Stark but as the tyrant of Latveria, undoubtedly piqued the interest of many Doom fans and laypeople, it was concerning Doom fans. Had the House of Ideas ‘ greatest character be reduced to a marketing ploy? May Downey be able to maintain his sassy on-screen image long enough to enable Doom to function? And most important, do Marvel be able to defy unmasking Downey when he is playing a character who reportedly and critically rarely shows his experience when they created a fresh cinema language to show Stark in the suit?

Does Marvel permit Downey to completely represent Doom and remain in costume? Or will RDJ’s beautiful mug be left alone for two hours while we focus on its excellent design? When Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters next year, we’ll get out.

On December 18, 2026, Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to release.

The author is Robert Downey Jr. The second post on Den of Geek was Doctor Doom Reveal Reminds Us Marvel Protects Its A-Listers.

The price of this addictive activity is the worst kept secret in entertainment. When there are bills to pay and other more crucial monetary obligations to attend to, purchasing a new game seems like a guilty delight given how expensive everything is these days. I have great news to share! Not every excellent game must [ …]…

The first article on Den of Geek was The Most Affordable Video Games To Get Right Now.

Fans have been asking themselves,” What the heck did the MCU type of Doctor Doom seem like?” since a green-clad find posed as Robert Downey Jr. at San Diego Comic-Con. We now have our truth, owing to a recently leaked part of promotional art. He appears to be Doctor Doom.

We can then say that the MCU may be bringing a devout type of Doctor Doom to the big screen second month in Avengers: Doomsday thanks to images shared by many online social media feeds, including Avengers Update on the game formerly known as Twitter.

The MCU Doom is surrounded by a helmet that is attached to his natural cloak and has a helmet that has been twisted to create a glowering picture. The not-so-good doctor’s body is covered in a stone design, with a harder substance on his abdomen. The rings running across his shoulders and the gauntlets have the same high-tech appearance as him. Armour has been replaced, though, with pure mechanical gear. Although it’s interesting that there are now two different images on the discs on Doom’s neck, overall, this is a typical Doctor Doom.

It’s not like Doom has changed too much since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee first introduced the figure in the 1962 film Fantastic Four# 5? Kirby provided the figure with his distinctive natural blouse, his ever-present metal encounter, and his high-tech body armor. And the majority of the artists who followed knew they couldn’t make it better. Sure, Marvel occasionally has variations for a particular moment, such as the ghastly new armor he created when dedicating himself to sorcery during Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s legendary run ( seriously, look it up, it’s nasty ), but most of the time, especially given the upcoming Avengers movie slate, he has changed Doom&#8217’s color scheme ( mostnotably, he donned a white version for Secret Wars ). However, never yet John Byrne, who flimsily snuck into King Kirby’s artwork, veered from the traditional aesthetic.

Marvel reminds us that as much as they &#8217, ve been willing to play around with the backstories and design elements of secondary characters—making Star-Lord the son of Ego the Living Planet instead of J&#8217, Son of Spartax, streamlining Carol Danvers &#8217, backstory, Marvel does n&#8217, t mess with their A-listers. The big brands find their distinctive appearance in the same way that Spider-Man merely had minor changes altered and that Hugh Jackman was fitted for a traditional yellow and blue Wolverine outfit as soon as he entered the MCU.

Which, of course, has been Kevin Feige‘s calling cards constantly. Feige advocated for comics-accurate portrayals of the heroes to seem onscreen even while working under Avi Arad on 2000s films like X-Men and Spider-Man. Which serves as a useful warning as we prepare for Doomsday.

While many MCU fans and casual viewers were overjoyed when it was revealed that Downey would make a comeback, no as Tony Stark, but as the tyrant of Latveria, it was concerning for Death fans. Had the House of Ideas ‘ greatest character be reduced to a marketing ploy? Do Downey be able to maintain his sassy on-screen image long enough to enable Doom to function? And most important, do Marvel be able to thwart downing Downey when he is playing a character who reportedly and critically rarely shows his face when they invented a fresh cinema language to show Stark in the suit?

Will Marvel permit Downey to remain in costume and fully embody Doom? Or will this amazing design be put aside so we can gaze upon RDJ’s handsome mug for two hours? When Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters next year, we’ll find out.

Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to release on December 18, 2026.

The author is Robert Downey Jr. The first post on Den of Geek was Doctor Doom Reveal Reminds Us Marvel Protects Its A-Listers.

The Long Walk trailers are included in this article. Stephen King’s debut book, The Long Walk, was published in 2007. Not the first guide to be released. Carrie, which was first published as a print in 1974, holds that distinction. However, King was writing The Long Walk as a freshman at the [ …] almost a decade prior.

The Long Walk Movie vs. What Persisted After the Book’s End? primary appeared on Den of Geek.

Fans have been asking themselves,” What the heck did the MCU type of Doctor Doom seem like?” since a green-clad find posed as Robert Downey Jr. at San Diego Comic-Con. We now have our truth, owing to a recently leaked part of promotional art. He appears to be Doctor Doom.

We can then confirm that the MCU will release a faithful adaptation of Doctor Doom to the large display next year in Avengers: Doomsday thanks to images shared by a number of online social media feeds, including Avengers Update, an app that was formerly known as Twitter.

The MCU Doom is surrounded by a helmet that is attached to his clean cloak and has a helmet that has been twisted into a glowering picture. The not-so-good doctor’s body is covered in a stone style, with a harder substance on his abdomen. The rings running across his shoulders and the gauntlets have the same high-tech appearance as Doom’s gauntlets. But, armour has been added in place of the simply mechanical gear. Although it’s interesting that there are now two different images on the discs on Doom’s chest, overall, this is a typical Doctor Doom.

It’s not like Doom has changed too much since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee first introduced the figure in the 1962 film Fantastic Four# 5? Kirby provided the figure with his distinctive natural tunic, ever-present metal face, and high-tech body armor. And the majority of the designers who followed knew they couldn’t make it better. Sure, Marvel occasionally has variations for a particular moment, such as the ghastly new armor he created when dedicating himself to sorcery during Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s legendary run ( seriously, look it up, it’s nasty ), but most of the time, especially given the upcoming Avengers movie slate, he has changed Doom&#8217’s color scheme ( mostnotably, he donned a white version for Secret Wars ). However, never yet John Byrne, who flimsily snuck into King Kirby’s artwork, veered from the traditional aesthetic.

Marvel reminds us that as much as they’ve been willing to play with the backstories and design elements of secondary characters ( making Star-Lord the son of Ego the Living Planet instead of J&#8217, Son of Spartax, streamlining Carol Danvers &#8217, backstory ), Marvel doesn’t mess with their A-listers. The big brands find their distinctive appearance in the same way that Spider-Man merely had minor changes altered and that Hugh Jackman was fitted for a traditional yellow and blue Wolverine outfit as soon as he entered the MCU.

Which, of course, has always been Kevin Feige&#8216 ,’s calling card. Feige advocated for comics-accurate portrayals of the heroes to appear onscreen even while working under Avi Arad on 2000s films like X-Men and Spider-Man. Which serves as a useful warning as we prepare for Doomsday.

While some Doom connoisseurs were enthralled to learn that Downey would make a comeback to the MCU instead of Tony Stark, it did dopamine followers and laypeople. Would one of the House of Ideas ‘ greatest figures been reduced to a marketing ploy? May Downey be able to maintain his aloof on-screen image long enough to enable Doom to function? And most important, would Marvel be able to stifle Downey when he is playing a character who reportedly and critically never shows his face when they invented a fresh cinema language to show Stark in the suit?

Will Marvel permit Downey to remain in costume and entirely embody Doom? Or does RDJ’s beautiful mug be left alone for two hours while we focus on its excellent design? When Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters next month, we’ll get out.

Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to release on December 18, 2026.

The author is Robert Downey Jr. The second post on Den of Geek was Doctor Doom Reveal Reminds Us Marvel Protects Its A-Listers.

Fans have been asking themselves,” What the heck did the MCU edition of Doctor Doom seem like?” always since a green-clad figure posed as Robert Downey Jr. walked onto the World stage at San Diego Comic-Con. Well, now we have our truth thanks to a just leaked part of promotional skill. ]… ]

The author is Robert Downey Jr. The second post on Den of Geek was Doctor Doom Reveal Reminds Us Marvel Protects Its A-Listers.

Fans have been asking themselves,” What the heck did the MCU type of Doctor Doom seem like?” since a green-clad find posed as Robert Downey Jr. at San Diego Comic-Con. Well, now we have our truth thanks to a just leaked part of promotional skill. He resembles Doctor Doom in appearance.

We can then confirm that the MCU will release a faithful adaptation of Doctor Doom for the big screen in Avengers: Doomsday in the coming year owing to images shared by various online social media feeds, including Avengers Update, an earlier version of Twitter.

The MCU Doom is surrounded by a helmet that is attached to his natural cloak and has a helmet that has been twisted to create a glowering countenance. The not-so-good doctor’s body is covered in a stone style, with a harder substance on his abdomen. The rings running across his shoulders and the armour have the same high-tech appearance as him. Armour has been added in place of the purely mechanical weapons, though. Although it’s interesting that Doom’s neck now has two distinct images on them, overall, this is a typical Doctor Doom.

Of course, it &#8217 ;s not like Doom has changed too much since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee first introduced the character in the 1960 film Fantastic Four# 5. Kirby provided the figure with his distinctive clean blouse, his ever-present metal encounter, and his high-tech body armor. And the majority of the artists who followed realized they couldn’t improve it. Sure, Marvel occasionally has variations for a particular moment, such as the ghastly new armor he created when dedicating himself to sorcery during Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s legendary run ( seriously, look it up, it’s nasty ), but most of the time, especially considering the upcoming Avengers movie slate, he donned a white version for Secret Wars. Not yet John Byrne, who flimsily messed up King Kirby’s artwork, departed from the traditional aesthetic.

Marvel reminds us that as much as they &#8217, ve been willing to play around with the backstories and design elements of secondary characters—making Star-Lord the son of Ego the Living Planet instead of J&#8217, Son of Spartax, streamlining Carol Danvers &#8217, backstory, Marvel does n&#8217, t mess with their A-listers. The big brands find their distinctive appearance in the same way that Spider-Man merely had minor changes altered and that Hugh Jackman was fitted for a traditional yellow and blue Wolverine outfit as soon as he entered the MCU.

Which, of course, has been Kevin Feige‘s calling card often. Feige advocated for comics-accurate portrayals of the heroes to seem onscreen even while working under Avi Arad on 2000s films like X-Men and Spider-Man. Which serves as a useful warning of Doomsday‘s looming significance.

While some Doom connoisseurs were enthralled to learn that Downey may make a comeback to the MCU instead of Tony Stark, it did dopamine fans and laypeople. Had the House of Ideas ‘ greatest character be reduced to a marketing ploy? Do Downey be able to maintain his aloof on-screen persona long enough to enable Doom to function? And most important, do Marvel be able to defy unmasking Downey when he is playing a character who reportedly and critically never shows his experience when they created a fresh cinema language to show Stark in the suit?

Does Marvel permit Downey to live up to the role of Doom in full outfit? Or will this amazing style been put aside so we can gaze upon RDJ’s beautiful mug for two hours? When Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters next year, we’ll get out.

On December 18, 2026, Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to release.

The author is Robert Downey Jr. The second post on Den of Geek was Doctor Doom Reveal Reminds Us Marvel Protects Its A-Listers.

There’s a good reason for that if it seems like it was just a quarter before when we experienced our final significant piece of corporate media combination. When tycoon David Ellison’s Skydance Media and Paramount Global merged, creating the colossal Paramount Skydance, it actually happened less than a month ago. Before Stephen, please.

On Den of Geek, the second post appeared: Obviously Paramount Skydance May Really Buy Everything Today.

Fans have been asking themselves,” What the heck did the MCU type of Doctor Doom seem like?” since a green-clad find posed as Robert Downey Jr. at San Diego Comic-Con. We now know the answer owing to a recently leaked part of promotional skill. He resembles Doctor Doom in appearance.

We can then say that the MCU may be bringing a devout type of Doctor Doom to the big screen second month in Avengers: Doomsday thanks to images shared by many online social media feeds, including Avengers Update on the game formerly known as Twitter.

The MCU Doom is surrounded by a helmet that is attached to his natural cloak and has a helmet that has been twisted to create a glowering visage. The not-so-good doctor’s body is covered in a stone style, with a harder substance on his abdomen. The rings running across his shoulders and the gauntlets have the same high-tech appearance as Doom’s gauntlets. But, armour has been added in place of the simply mechanical gear. Although it’s interesting that Doom’s neck now has two distinct images on them, overall, this is a typical Doctor Doom.

Of course, it &#8217 ;s not like Doom has changed too much since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee first introduced the character in the 1960 film Fantastic Four# 5. Kirby provided the figure with his distinctive natural blouse, his ever-present metal encounter, and his high-tech body armor. And the majority of the designers who followed knew they couldn’t make it better. Sure, Marvel occasionally has variations for a particular moment, such as the ghastly new armor he created when dedicating himself to sorcery during Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s legendary run ( seriously, look it up, it’s nasty ), but most of the time, especially given the upcoming Avengers movie slate, he has changed Doom&#8217’s color scheme ( mostnotably, he donned a white version for Secret Wars ). Not yet John Byrne, who flimsily messed up King Kirby’s artwork, departed from the traditional aesthetic.

Marvel reminds us that as much as they’ve been willing to experiment with the backstories and design elements of secondary characters ( making Star-Lord the son of Ego the Living Planet instead of J&#8217, Son of Spartax, streamlining Carol Danvers &#8217, backstory ), Marvel doesn’t mess with their A-listers. The big brands find their distinctive appearance in the same way that Spider-Man merely had minor changes altered and that Hugh Jackman was fitted for a traditional yellow and blue Wolverine outfit as soon as he entered the MCU.

Which, of course, has been Kevin Feige‘s calling cards constantly. Feige advocated for comics-accurate portrayals of the heroes to appear onscreen yet while working under Avi Arad on 2000s films like X-Men and Spider-Man. Which serves as a useful warning as we prepare for Doomsday.

While some Doom connoisseurs were enthralled to learn that Downey would make a comeback to the MCU instead of Tony Stark, it did dopamine fans and laypeople. Had the House of Ideas ‘ greatest character been reduced to a marketing ploy? Do Downey be able to maintain his sassy on-screen persona long enough to enable Doom to function? And most important, do Marvel be able to thwart downing Downey when he is playing a character who reportedly and critically rarely shows his experience when they invented a fresh cinema language to show Stark in the suit?

Will Marvel permit Downey to remain in costume and entirely embody Doom? Or will this amazing style been put aside so we can gaze upon RDJ’s beautiful mug for two hours? When Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters second year, we’ll get out.

Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to release on December 18, 2026.

The author is Robert Downey Jr. The second article on Den of Geek was Doctor Doom Reveal Reminds Us Marvel Protects Its A-Listers.