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The Truth About SEO, AI, and Content in 2025 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Selling

 The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Bruce Clay In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Bruce Clay, widely regarded as the” Father of SEO”. With a career spanning nearly three decades, Bruce has witnessed every major change in search engine optimization—from the first days of plain keyword ranking to today’s ]…]

The Truth About SEO, AI, and Content in 2025 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Selling



The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Bruce Clay

In this instance of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Bruce Clay, commonly regarded as the &#8220, Father of SEO. &#8221, With a career spanning nearly three decades, Bruce has witnessed every major change in search engine optimization—from the first days of plain term ranking to today’s AI-driven environment.

During our talk, Bruce shared effective insight into how Google position, AI-generated articles, and SEO technique are evolving in 2025. We discussed the effect of search engine algorithms, the role of content marketing, and why companies must rethink their approach to website optimization and organic traffic.

Search is changing rapidly, and Bruce Clay’s insights emphasize why businesses had adjust or risk being left behind. Whether you &#8217, re an SEO consultant, professional, or business owner, focusing on SEO technique, usefulness, and high-quality information will be important in 2025.

Chapters:

]00: 09 ] Introducing Bruce Clay
• ]00: 53] SEO in 1996
• ]04: 47] The Growing Importance of SEO
• ]11: 19] How to Create Quality Content for SEO
• ]14: 50] Is Zero-Click the End of SEO?
• ]18: 59] Guest Podcasting Can Help SEO

More About Bruce Clay:

Check out Bruce Clay &#8217, s Website
Connect with Bruce Clay on LinkedIn

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by

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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 favorite 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 characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two introduces the fight, where the action is. Here, difficulties 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 strong, 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 be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. User study puts style. It keeps it on trail, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of the issues with your product and reacting to them can help you stay away 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 look at the different functions and how they align with customer study.

Act one: installation

The setup is all about understanding the history, and that’s where basic research comes in. Basic research ( also called conceptual, discovery, or original research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. You’re learning about what exists today, the problems people have, and how the problems affect them—just like in the videos. 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.

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.

There is no better way to start a long and tedious scientific literature fans battle than by asking for a description of the music. But to keep things simple, let’s go with the Oxford Dictionary’s language:” Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advancements and significant social or environmental changes, generally portraying area or ]…]

The article Why Has Sci-Fi Television Stopped Imagining Our Future? appeared second on Den of Geek.

The cast process for any film is a hard point, one that involves complex factors such as figuring out schedules, accessibility, science, or even just aligned visions. And then there are instances where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic skills Flying Lotus had precisely such a time while looking for the prospect of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a time when he met Eiza González.

&#8220, It was the first point she said to me, &#8221, Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest talk while visiting the Den of Geek workshop at SXSW. &#8220, She said, &#8216, You know, the storyline reminds me of Silent Hill. ‘ &#8221, The smile practically bursts from the director &#8217, s face when the memory comes back. &#8220, I was like she&#8217, s best! &#8221,

When you see the finished picture, the effects are accurate. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery &#8212, and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González &#8217, s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a film told wholly from Riya&#8217, s personal point-of-view literalizes it in a battle field with scalpels, fire, and apparently a martial art legend.

&#8220, It reminded me of Silent Hill 2, &#8221, González specifies about the whole video. &#8220, I used to perform Silent Hill eagerly and]Ash ] really reminded me of that feeling. ]And this ] strength was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person view in films. It only gives you a sense of being in it, and even creates so much worry. I thought that was heroin. &#8221,

The relationship between Ash and memorable video game pictures is n&#8217, t fully an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming equipment when designing photos for the movie: &#8220, I spent a lot of time learning False Engine and trying to learn visible results because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I really was n&#8217, t satisfied with my designs, &#8221, he explains.

Yes, that &#8217, s a unique technique for video growth, but Ash is an exclusive taking on the proverbial disturbed spacecraft video. &#8220, The script]written by Jonni Remmler ] came like a jigsaw puzzle, &#8221, Flying Lotus observes. &#8220, It didn&#8217, t have to be constructed that means, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, &#8216, What is this? ‘ &#8221,

When Ash begins, González &#8217, s figure Riya awakens on a desolated flight with no clear recollection of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for sure is the world outside is bleakly harsh, gloomy in menacing psychedelic colors and pinks. But that seems pitcuresque when compared to how evidently all of Riya&#8217, s personnel onboard the ship has been wiped out by&#8230, things.

&#8220, The video is from Riya&#8217, s view, and the colors and the physical tone is a reflection of her mood, &#8221, the helmer says about his movie&#8217, s expressive look. &#8220, I don&#8217, t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she&#8217, s dealing with emotionally. &#8221,

&#8220, It&#8217, s purposeful, &#8221, González agrees. &#8220, The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they &#8217, re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance. &#8221, It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia does n&#8217, t even know herself.

&#8220, She&#8217, s sort of like a newborn baby, &#8221, González says. &#8220, It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron. &#8221,

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad&#8216, s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

&#8220, This]script] came to Eiza and I&#8217, s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other &#8217, s back from the beginning, &#8221, Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya does n&#8217, t know anything that is going on, Paul&#8217, s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

&#8220, When he shows up, he&#8217, s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he has n&#8217, t been with the group for some time, &#8221, Paul says. &#8220, He&#8217, s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from]Riya ] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he&#8217, s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her. &#8221,

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film &#8217, s composer.

&#8220, It&#8217, s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together, &#8221, Flying Lotus says of the film &#8217, s hypnotic soundscape. &#8220, The original thing I wanted to do just was n&#8217, t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started]to become ] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter &#8216, s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, &#8216, What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself? ‘ &#8221,

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies &#8212, as well as independent cinema.

&#8220, Independent filmmaking is challenging, &#8221, González points out. And with Ash, she says &#8220, here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that &#8217, s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That&#8217, s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking. &#8221,

For Flying Lotus, he&#8217, s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. &#8220, Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in. &#8221,

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus ‘ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

Michael. Freddy. Chucky. Jason. These symbols of dread defined the music and set the standard for a great horror movie. They taught the world that villains needed a unique look, a peculiar story, and a set of guidelines for defeating them. Moreover, they established that monsters needed a gimmick, some specific manner for taking out ]… ]

The article The Final Destination Franchise Saved American Horror in the 2000s appeared initially on Den of Geek.

The cast process for any film is a hard point, one that involves complex factors such as figuring out schedules, accessibility, science, or even just aligned visions. And then there are occasions where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic skills Flying Lotus had precisely such a time while looking for the prospect of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a time when he met Eiza González.

&#8220, It was the first point she said to me, &#8221, Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest talk while visiting the Den of Geek workshop at SXSW. &#8220, She said, &#8216, You know, the storyline reminds me of Silent Hill. ‘ &#8221, The smile practically bursts from the director &#8217, s face when the memory comes back. &#8220, I was like she&#8217, s best! &#8221,

When you see the finished picture, the effects are accurate. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery &#8212, and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González &#8217, s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a video told wholly from Riya&#8217, s personal point-of-view literalizes it in a battle field with scalpels, fire, and apparently a martial art legend.

&#8220, It reminded me of Silent Hill 2, &#8221, González specifies about the whole picture. &#8220, I used to enjoy Silent Hill eagerly and]Ash ] really reminded me of that feeling. ]And this ] strength was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person view in films. It only gives you a sense of being in it, and even creates so much worry. I thought that was heroin. &#8221,

The relationship between Ash and memorable video game pictures is n&#8217, t fully an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming equipment when designing photos for the movie: &#8220, I spent a lot of time learning False Engine and trying to learn visible results because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I really was n&#8217, t satisfied with my designs, &#8221, he explains.

Yes, that &#8217, s a unique technique for video growth, but Ash is an exclusive taking on the proverbial disturbed spacecraft video. &#8220, The script]written by Jonni Remmler ] came like a jigsaw puzzle, &#8221, Flying Lotus observes. &#8220, It didn&#8217, t have to be constructed that means, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, &#8216, What is this? ‘ &#8221,

When Ash begins, González &#8217, s personality Riya awakens on a desolated flight with no clear recollection of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for sure is the world outside is bleakly harsh, gloomy in menacing kaleidoscopic reds and pinks. But that seems pitcuresque when compared to how evidently all of Riya&#8217, s personnel onboard the ship has been wiped out by&#8230, things.

&#8220, The video is from Riya&#8217, s view, and the colors and the physical tone is a reflection of her mood, &#8221, the stamper says about his movie&#8217, s expressive look. &#8220, I don&#8217, t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she&#8217, s dealing with emotionally. &#8221,

&#8220, It&#8217, s purposeful, &#8221, González agrees. &#8220, The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they &#8217, re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance. &#8221, It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia does n&#8217, t even know herself.

&#8220, She&#8217, s sort of like a newborn baby, &#8221, González says. &#8220, It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron. &#8221,

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad&#8216, s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

&#8220, This]script] came to Eiza and I&#8217, s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other &#8217, s back from the beginning, &#8221, Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya does n&#8217, t know anything that is going on, Paul&#8217, s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

&#8220, When he shows up, he&#8217, s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he has n&#8217, t been with the group for some time, &#8221, Paul says. &#8220, He&#8217, s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from]Riya ] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he&#8217, s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her. &#8221,

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film &#8217, s composer.

&#8220, It&#8217, s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together, &#8221, Flying Lotus says of the film &#8217, s hypnotic soundscape. &#8220, The original thing I wanted to do just was n&#8217, t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started]to become ] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter &#8216, s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, &#8216, What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself? ‘ &#8221,

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies &#8212, as well as independent cinema.

&#8220, Independent filmmaking is challenging, &#8221, González points out. And with Ash, she says &#8220, here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that &#8217, s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That&#8217, s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking. &#8221,

For Flying Lotus, he&#8217, s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. &#8220, Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in. &#8221,

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus ‘ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

The castings process for any film is a tricky point, one that involves complex factors such as figuring out schedules, accessibility, science, or even just aligned visions. And then there are instances where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of]… ]

The article Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Get Us Inside Flying Lotus ‘ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared second on Den of Geek.

The cast process for any film is a hard point, one that involves complex factors such as figuring out schedules, accessibility, science, or even just aligned visions. And then there are instances where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic skills Flying Lotus had precisely such a time while looking for the prospect of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a time when he met Eiza González.

&#8220, It was the first point she said to me, &#8221, Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest talk while visiting the Den of Geek workshop at SXSW. &#8220, She said, &#8216, You know, the storyline reminds me of Silent Hill. ‘ &#8221, The smile practically bursts from the director &#8217, s face when the memory comes back. &#8220, I was like she&#8217, s best! &#8221,

When you see the finished picture, the effects are accurate. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery &#8212, and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González &#8217, s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a film told wholly from Riya&#8217, s personal point-of-view literalizes it in a battle field with scalpels, fire, and apparently a martial art legend.

&#8220, It reminded me of Silent Hill 2, &#8221, González specifies about the whole video. &#8220, I used to enjoy Silent Hill eagerly and]Ash ] really reminded me of that feeling. ]And this ] strength was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person view in films. It only gives you a sense of being in it, and even creates so much worry. I thought that was heroin. &#8221,

The relationship between Ash and memorable video game pictures is n&#8217, t fully an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming equipment when designing photos for the movie: &#8220, I spent a lot of time learning False Engine and trying to learn visible results because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I really was n&#8217, t satisfied with my designs, &#8221, he explains.

Yes, that &#8217, s a special technique for video growth, but Ash is an unique take on the proverbial disturbed spacecraft video. &#8220, The script]written by Jonni Remmler ] came like a jigsaw puzzle, &#8221, Flying Lotus observes. &#8220, It didn&#8217, t have to be constructed that way, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, &#8216, What is this? ‘ &#8221,

When Ash begins, González &#8217, s character Riya awakens on a desolated shuttle with no clear memory of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for certain is the planet outside is bleakly oppressive, overcast in menacing psychedelic reds and purples. Yet that seems pitcuresque when compared to how seemingly all of Riya&#8217, s crew onboard the ship has been wiped out by&#8230, something.

&#8220, The movie is from Riya&#8217, s perspective, and the colors and the visual tone is a reflection of her headspace, &#8221, the helmer says about his movie&#8217, s evocative look. &#8220, I don&#8217, t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she&#8217, s dealing with emotionally. &#8221,

&#8220, It&#8217, s purposeful, &#8221, González agrees. &#8220, The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they &#8217, re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance. &#8221, It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia does n&#8217, t even know herself.

&#8220, She&#8217, s sort of like a newborn baby, &#8221, González says. &#8220, It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron. &#8221,

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad&#8216, s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

&#8220, This]script] came to Eiza and I&#8217, s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other &#8217, s back from the beginning, &#8221, Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya does n&#8217, t know anything that is going on, Paul&#8217, s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

&#8220, When he shows up, he&#8217, s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he has n&#8217, t been with the group for some time, &#8221, Paul says. &#8220, He&#8217, s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from]Riya ] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he&#8217, s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her. &#8221,

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film &#8217, s composer.

&#8220, It&#8217, s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together, &#8221, Flying Lotus says of the film &#8217, s hypnotic soundscape. &#8220, The original thing I wanted to do just was n&#8217, t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started]to become ] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter &#8216, s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, &#8216, What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself? ‘ &#8221,

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies &#8212, as well as independent cinema.

&#8220, Independent filmmaking is challenging, &#8221, González points out. And with Ash, she says &#8220, here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that &#8217, s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That&#8217, s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking. &#8221,

For Flying Lotus, he&#8217, s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. &#8220, Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in. &#8221,

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The article Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Get Us Inside Flying Lotus ‘ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared second on Den of Geek.

Screenlife films have become a style of their own in recent years – the idea being that a story is told about completely through the glass of a cellphone, tablet, or computer screen. We’ve seen screenlife horror movies like Outed and Guest, and screenlife movies like Searching and Missing, but LifeHack is taking the music ]…]

The article New Screenlife Heist Movie Does Scare You Into Changing ALL Your Passwords appeared initially on Den of Geek.

The cast process for any film is a hard point, one that involves complex factors such as figuring out schedules, accessibility, science, or even just aligned visions. And then there are instances where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic skills Flying Lotus had precisely such a time while looking for the prospect of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a time when he met Eiza González.

&#8220, It was the first point she said to me, &#8221, Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest talk while visiting the Den of Geek workshop at SXSW. &#8220, She said, &#8216, You know, the text reminds me of Silent Hill. ‘ &#8221, The smile practically bursts from the director &#8217, s face when the memory comes back. &#8220, I was like she&#8217, s best! &#8221,

When you see the finished picture, the effects are accurate. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery &#8212, and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González &#8217, s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a film told wholly from Riya&#8217, s personal point-of-view literalizes it in a battle field with scalpels, fire, and apparently a martial art legend.

&#8220, It reminded me of Silent Hill 2, &#8221, González specifies about the whole picture. &#8220, I used to perform Silent Hill eagerly and]Ash ] really reminded me of that feeling. ]And this ] strength was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person view in films. It only gives you a sense of being in it, and even creates so much worry. I thought that was heroin. &#8221,

The relationship between Ash and memorable video game pictures is n&#8217, t fully an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming equipment when designing photos for the movie: &#8220, I spent a lot of time learning False Engine and trying to learn visible results because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I really was n&#8217, t satisfied with my designs, &#8221, he explains.

Yes, that &#8217, s a unique technique for video growth, but Ash is an exclusive taking on the proverbial disturbed spacecraft video. &#8220, The script]written by Jonni Remmler ] came like a jigsaw puzzle, &#8221, Flying Lotus observes. &#8220, It didn&#8217, t have to be constructed that means, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, &#8216, What is this? ‘ &#8221,

When Ash begins, González &#8217, s figure Riya awakens on a desolated flight with no clear recollection of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for sure is the world outside is bleakly harsh, gloomy in menacing psychedelic colors and pinks. But that seems pitcuresque when compared to how evidently all of Riya&#8217, s personnel onboard the ship has been wiped out by&#8230, things.

&#8220, The video is from Riya&#8217, s view, and the colors and the physical tone is a reflection of her atmosphere, &#8221, the stamper says about his movie&#8217, s expressive look. &#8220, I don&#8217, t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she&#8217, s dealing with emotionally. &#8221,

&#8220, It&#8217, s purposeful, &#8221, González agrees. &#8220, The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they &#8217, re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance. &#8221, It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia does n&#8217, t even know herself.

&#8220, She&#8217, s sort of like a newborn baby, &#8221, González says. &#8220, It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron. &#8221,

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad&#8216, s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

&#8220, This]script] came to Eiza and I&#8217, s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other &#8217, s back from the beginning, &#8221, Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya does n&#8217, t know anything that is going on, Paul&#8217, s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

&#8220, When he shows up, he&#8217, s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he has n&#8217, t been with the group for some time, &#8221, Paul says. &#8220, He&#8217, s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from]Riya ] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he&#8217, s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her. &#8221,

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film &#8217, s composer.

&#8220, It&#8217, s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together, &#8221, Flying Lotus says of the film &#8217, s hypnotic soundscape. &#8220, The original thing I wanted to do just was n&#8217, t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started]to become ] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter &#8216, s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, &#8216, What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself? ‘ &#8221,

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies &#8212, as well as independent cinema.

&#8220, Independent filmmaking is challenging, &#8221, González points out. And with Ash, she says &#8220, here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that &#8217, s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That&#8217, s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking. &#8221,

For Flying Lotus, he&#8217, s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. &#8220, Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in. &#8221,

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus ‘ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

Looney Tunes is an American organization. Everyone and their mother—and possibly their mother’s mother—knows who Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian, and Taz are. The company has been going robust for almost a decade, but recent activities have resulted in their memory getting stuck in purgatory. The heavily maligned cancellation of the Coyote vs. Acme flick ]… ]

The article The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie Review appeared initially on Den of Geek.

The castings process for any film is a tricky point, one that involves complex factors such as figuring out schedules, accessibility, science, or even just aligned visions. And then there are occasions where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic skills Flying Lotus had precisely such a time while looking for the prospect of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a time when he met Eiza González.

&#8220, It was the first point she said to me, &#8221, Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest talk while visiting the Den of Geek workshop at SXSW. &#8220, She said, &#8216, You know, the storyline reminds me of Silent Hill. ‘ &#8221, The smile practically bursts from the director &#8217, s face when the memory comes back. &#8220, I was like she&#8217, s great! &#8221,

When you see the finished picture, the effects are accurate. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery &#8212, and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González &#8217, s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a film told wholly from Riya&#8217, s personal point-of-view literalizes it in a battle field with scalpels, fire, and apparently a martial art legend.

&#8220, It reminded me of Silent Hill 2, &#8221, González specifies about the whole picture. &#8220, I used to enjoy Silent Hill eagerly and]Ash ] really reminded me of that feeling. ]And this ] strength was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person view in films. It only gives you a sense of being in it, and even creates so much worry. I thought that was heroin. &#8221,

The relationship between Ash and memorable video game pictures is n&#8217, t fully an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming equipment when designing photos for the movie: &#8220, I spent a lot of time learning False Engine and trying to learn visible results because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I really was n&#8217, t satisfied with my designs, &#8221, he explains.

Yes, that &#8217, s a unique technique for video growth, but Ash is an exclusive taking on the proverbial disturbed spacecraft video. &#8220, The script]written by Jonni Remmler ] came like a jigsaw puzzle, &#8221, Flying Lotus observes. &#8220, It didn&#8217, t have to be constructed that means, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, &#8216, What is this? ‘ &#8221,

When Ash begins, González &#8217, s personality Riya awakens on a desolated flight with no clear recollection of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for sure is the world outside is bleakly harsh, gloomy in menacing kaleidoscopic reds and pinks. But that seems pitcuresque when compared to how evidently all of Riya&#8217, s personnel onboard the ship has been wiped out by&#8230, things.

&#8220, The video is from Riya&#8217, s view, and the colors and the physical tone is a reflection of her mood, &#8221, the stamper says about his movie&#8217, s expressive look. &#8220, I don&#8217, t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she&#8217, s dealing with emotionally. &#8221,

&#8220, It&#8217, s purposeful, &#8221, González agrees. &#8220, The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they &#8217, re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance. &#8221, It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia does n&#8217, t even know herself.

&#8220, She&#8217, s sort of like a newborn baby, &#8221, González says. &#8220, It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron. &#8221,

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad&#8216, s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

&#8220, This]script] came to Eiza and I&#8217, s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other &#8217, s back from the beginning, &#8221, Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya does n&#8217, t know anything that is going on, Paul&#8217, s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

&#8220, When he shows up, he&#8217, s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he has n&#8217, t been with the group for some time, &#8221, Paul says. &#8220, He&#8217, s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from]Riya ] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he&#8217, s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her. &#8221,

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film &#8217, s composer.

&#8220, It&#8217, s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together, &#8221, Flying Lotus says of the film &#8217, s hypnotic soundscape. &#8220, The original thing I wanted to do just was n&#8217, t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started]to become ] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter &#8216, s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, &#8216, What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself? ‘ &#8221,

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies &#8212, as well as independent cinema.

&#8220, Independent filmmaking is challenging, &#8221, González points out. And with Ash, she says &#8220, here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that &#8217, s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That&#8217, s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking. &#8221,

For Flying Lotus, he&#8217, s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. &#8220, Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in. &#8221,

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus ‘ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

So like … a dragon is just a horse with a whistle, right? Sure, the magical beasts are usually associated with another supernatural features in the cryptozoological cannon. In some tales, they soar through the clouds via the power of compassion and colors. In others, they grant extended ( if cursed ) life to the drinker of their ]… ]

The article Death of a Unicorn Review: A24 Offers Bloody, Horn-y Fun appeared second on Den of Geek.

The cast process for any film is a hard point, one that involves complex factors such as figuring out schedules, accessibility, science, or even just aligned visions. And then there are instances where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic skills Flying Lotus had precisely such a time while looking for the prospect of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a time when he met Eiza González.

&#8220, It was the first point she said to me, &#8221, Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest talk while visiting the Den of Geek workshop at SXSW. &#8220, She said, &#8216, You know, the storyline reminds me of Silent Hill. ‘ &#8221, The smile practically bursts from the director &#8217, s face when the memory comes back. &#8220, I was like she&#8217, s best! &#8221,

When you see the finished picture, the effects are accurate. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery &#8212, and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González &#8217, s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a video told wholly from Riya&#8217, s personal point-of-view literalizes it in a battle field with scalpels, fire, and apparently a martial art legend.

&#8220, It reminded me of Silent Hill 2, &#8221, González specifies about the whole picture. &#8220, I used to perform Silent Hill eagerly and]Ash ] really reminded me of that feeling. ]And this ] strength was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person view in films. It only gives you a sense of being in it, and even creates so much worry. I thought that was rad. &#8221,

The relationship between Ash and memorable video game pictures is n&#8217, t fully an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming equipment when designing photos for the movie: &#8220, I spent a lot of time learning False Engine and trying to learn visible results because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I really was n&#8217, t satisfied with my designs, &#8221, he explains.

Yes, that &#8217, s a unique technique for video growth, but Ash is an exclusive taking on the proverbial disturbed spacecraft video. &#8220, The script]written by Jonni Remmler ] came like a jigsaw puzzle, &#8221, Flying Lotus observes. &#8220, It didn&#8217, t have to be constructed that means, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, &#8216, What is this? ‘ &#8221,

When Ash begins, González &#8217, s personality Riya awakens on a desolated flight with no clear recollection of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for sure is the world outside is bleakly harsh, gloomy in menacing kaleidoscopic reds and pinks. But that seems pitcuresque when compared to how evidently all of Riya&#8217, s personnel onboard the ship has been wiped out by&#8230, things.

&#8220, The video is from Riya&#8217, s view, and the colors and the physical tone is a reflection of her atmosphere, &#8221, the stamper says about his movie&#8217, s expressive look. &#8220, I don&#8217, t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she&#8217, s dealing with emotionally. &#8221,

&#8220, It&#8217, s purposeful, &#8221, González agrees. &#8220, The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they &#8217, re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance. &#8221, It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia does n&#8217, t even know herself.

&#8220, She&#8217, s sort of like a newborn baby, &#8221, González says. &#8220, It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron. &#8221,

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad&#8216, s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

&#8220, This]script] came to Eiza and I&#8217, s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other &#8217, s back from the beginning, &#8221, Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya does n&#8217, t know anything that is going on, Paul&#8217, s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

&#8220, When he shows up, he&#8217, s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he has n&#8217, t been with the group for some time, &#8221, Paul says. &#8220, He&#8217, s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from]Riya ] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he&#8217, s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her. &#8221,

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film &#8217, s composer.

&#8220, It&#8217, s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together, &#8221, Flying Lotus says of the film &#8217, s hypnotic soundscape. &#8220, The original thing I wanted to do just was n&#8217, t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started]to become ] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter &#8216, s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, &#8216, What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself? ‘ &#8221,

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies &#8212, as well as independent cinema.

&#8220, Independent filmmaking is challenging, &#8221, González points out. And with Ash, she says &#8220, here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that &#8217, s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That&#8217, s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking. &#8221,

For Flying Lotus, he&#8217, s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. &#8220, Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in. &#8221,

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus ‘ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

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

But strangely enough, manufacturers use personalities to encourage their style for the real world.

Personas: A action up

Most manufacturers have created, used, or come across personalities at least once in their job. In their content” Personas- A Plain Introduction”, the Interaction Design Foundation defines profile as “fictional characters, which you create based upon your study in order to reflect the unique user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand”. In their most complete expression, personas typically consist of a name, profile picture, quotes, demographics, goals, needs, behavior in relation to a certain service/product, emotions, and motivations ( for example, see Creative Companion’s Persona Core Poster ). The purpose of personas, as stated by design agency Designit, is” to make the research relatable, ]and ] easy to communicate, digest, reference, and apply to product and service development”.

The decontextualization of identities

Personas are common because they make “dry” research information more realistic, more people. However, this approach constrains the study’s data research in such a way that the investigated customers are removed from their unique settings. As a result, personalities don’t describe important factors that make you realize their decision-making method or allow you to connect to users ‘ thoughts and behavior, they lack stories. You understand what the image did, but you don’t have the background to know why. You end up with depictions of people that are really less people.

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

Identities assume people are dynamic

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

Modern psychology agree that while persons usually behave according to certain styles, it’s actually a combination of history and culture that determines how people act and take decisions. The context—the atmosphere, the effect of other people, your feelings, the whole story that led up to a situation—determines the kind of person you are in each particular moment.

In their attempt to simplify reality, personas do not take this variability into account, they present a user as a fixed set of features. Like personality tests, personas snatch people away from real life. Even worse, people are reduced to a label and categorized as” that kind of person” with no means to exercise their innate flexibility. This practice reinforces stereotypes, lowers diversity, and doesn’t reflect reality.

Personas focus on individuals, not the environment

In the real world, you’re designing for a context, not for an individual. Each person lives in a family, a community, an ecosystem, where there are environmental, political, and social factors you need to consider. A design is never meant for a single user. Rather, you design for one or more particular contexts in which many people might use that product. Personas, however, show the user alone rather than describe how the user relates to the environment.

Would you always make the same decision over and over again? Maybe you’re a committed vegan but still decide to buy some meat when your relatives are coming over. As they depend on different situations and variables, your decisions—and behavior, opinions, and statements —are not absolute but highly contextual. The persona that “represents” you wouldn’t take into account this dependency, because it doesn’t specify the premises of your decisions. It doesn’t provide a justification of why you act the way you do. Personas enact the well-known bias called fundamental attribution error: explaining others ‘ behavior too much by their personality and too little by the situation.

As mentioned by the Interaction Design Foundation, personas are usually placed in a scenario that’s a” specific context with a problem they want to or have to solve “—does that mean context actually is considered? Unfortunately, what often happens is that you take a fictional character and based on that fiction determine how this character might deal with a certain situation. This is made worse by the fact that you haven’t even fully investigated and understood the current context of the people your persona seeks to represent, so how could you possibly understand how they would act in new situations?

Personas are meaningless averages

As mentioned in Shlomo Goltz’s introductory article on Smashing Magazine,” a persona is depicted as a specific person but is not a real individual, rather, it is synthesized from observations of many people”. A well-known critique to this aspect of personas is that the average person does not exist, as per the famous example of the USA Air Force designing planes based on the average of 140 of their pilots ‘ physical dimensions and not a single pilot actually fitting within that average seat.

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

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

The relatability of personas is deceiving

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

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

To do good design research, we should report the reality “as-is” and make it relatable for our audience, so everyone can use their own empathy and develop their own interpretation and emotional response.

Dynamic Selves: The alternative to personas

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

Designit has proposed using Mindsets instead of personas. Each Mindset is a” spectrum of attitudes and emotional responses that different people have within the same context or life experience”. It challenges designers to not get fixated on a single user’s way of being. Unfortunately, while being a step in the right direction, this proposal doesn’t take into account that people are part of an environment that determines their personality, their behavior, and, yes, their mindset. Therefore, Mindsets are also not absolute but change in regard to the situation. The question remains, what determines a certain Mindset?

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

In developing an alternative to personas, we aim to transform the standard design process to be context-based. Contexts are generalizable and have patterns that we can identify, just like we tried to do previously with people. So how do we identify these patterns? How do we ensure truly context-based design?

Understand real individuals in multiple contexts

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

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

1. Choose the right sample

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

In qualitative research, validity does not derive from quantity but from accurate sampling. You select the people that best represent the “population” you’re designing for. If this sample is chosen well, and you have understood the sampled people in sufficient depth, you’re able to infer how the rest of the population thinks and behaves. There’s no need to study seven Susans and five Yuriys, one of each will do.

Similarly, you don’t need to understand Susan in fifteen different contexts. Once you’ve seen her in a couple of diverse situations, you’ve understood the scheme of Susan’s response to different contexts. Not Susan as an atomic being but Susan in relation to the surrounding environment: how she might act, feel, and think in different situations.

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

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

In our example project, we were designing an application for those who own a smart thermostat. In the future, everyone could have a smart thermostat in their house. Right now, though, only early adopters own one. To build a significant sample, we needed to understand the reason why these early adopters became such. We therefore recruited by asking people why they had a smart thermostat and how they got it. There were those who had chosen to buy it, those who had been influenced by others to buy it, and those who had found it in their house. So we selected representatives of these three situations, from different age groups and geographical locations, with an equal balance of tech savvy and non-tech savvy participants.

2. Conduct your research

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

To gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and decision-making trade-offs, the research focus was not limited to the interviewee alone but deliberately included the whole family. Each interviewee would tell a story that would then become much more lively and precise with the corrections or additional details coming from wives, husbands, children, or sometimes even pets. We also focused on the relationships with other meaningful people ( such as colleagues or distant family ) and all the behaviors that resulted from those relationships. This wide research focus allowed us to shape a vivid mental image of dynamic situations with multiple actors.

It’s essential that the scope of the research remains broad enough to be able to include all possible actors. Therefore, it normally works best to define broad research areas with macro questions. Interviews are best set up in a semi-structured way, where follow-up questions will dive into topics mentioned spontaneously by the interviewee. This open-minded “plan to be surprised” will yield the most insightful findings. When we asked one of our participants how his family regulated the house temperature, he replied,” My wife has not installed the thermostat’s app—she uses WhatsApp instead. If she wants to turn on the heater and she is not home, she will text me. I am her thermostat”.

3. Analysis: Create the Dynamic Selves

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

To capture exact quotes, interviews need to be video-recorded and notes need to be taken verbatim as much as possible. This is essential to the truthfulness of the several Selves of each participant. In the case of real-life ethnographic research, photos of the context and anonymized actors are essential to build realistic Selves. Ideally, these photos should come directly from field research, but an evocative and representative image will work, too, as long as it’s realistic and depicts meaningful actions that you associate with your participants. For example, one of our interviewees told us about his mountain home where he used to spend every weekend with his family. Therefore, we portrayed him hiking with his little daughter.

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

4. Identify design opportunities

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

In our example project, there was a particularly interesting insight around the concept of humidity. We realized that people don’t know what humidity is and why it is important to monitor it for health: an environment that’s too dry or too wet can cause respiratory problems or worsen existing ones. This highlighted a big opportunity for our client to educate users on this concept and become a health advisor.

Benefits of Dynamic Selves

When you use the Dynamic Selves approach in your research, you start to notice unique social relations, peculiar situations real people face and the actions that follow, and that people are surrounded by changing environments. In our thermostat project, we have come to know one of the participants, Davide, as a boyfriend, dog-lover, and tech enthusiast.

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

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

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

If you take a real person as inspiration for your design, you no longer need to create an artificial character. No more inventing details to make the character more “realistic”, no more unnecessary additional bias. It’s simply how this person is in real life. In fact, in our experience, personas quickly become nothing more than a name in our priority guides and prototype screens, as we all know that these characters don’t really exist.

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

And finally, real people in their specific contexts are a better basis for anecdotal storytelling and therefore are more effective in persuasion. Documentation of real research is essential in achieving this result. It adds weight and urgency behind your design arguments:” When I met Alessandra, the conditions of her workplace struck me. Noise, bad ergonomics, lack of light, you name it. If we go for this functionality, I’m afraid we’re going to add complexity to her life”.

Conclusion

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

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

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