Category: Blog

I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the figures and the excitement—but most of all the reports. I aspired to be an artist. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on fascinating experiences. I also came up with concept movies that my friends and I could create and sun in. But they never went any farther. However, I did end up in the user experience ( UX) field. 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 you must show a compelling story to entice stakeholders, such as the product team and decision-makers, to learn more in order to get the most out of consumer research.

Think of your favorite film. It more than likely follows a three-act construction that’s frequently seen in movies: the layout, the conflict, and the resolution. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to know the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two sets the scene for the fight and the activity begins. Here, issues grow or get worse. The decision is the third and final action. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This architecture, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about consumer research, and it might be particularly useful for introducing user research to others.

Use story as a framework when conducting research.

It’s sad to say, but many have come to view studies as being inconsequential. Research is typically one of the first things to go when expenses or deadlines are tight. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may get groups a little bit out of the way, but that approach is therefore easily miss out on resolving people ‘ real issues. To be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. User study improves pattern. It keeps it on record, pointing to problems and opportunities. You can keep back of your competition by being aware of the problems with your goods and fixing them.

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

Act one: layout

Fundamental analysis comes in handy because the setup is all about comprehending the background. Basic research ( also called relational, discovery, or preliminary research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. You’re learning about the difficulties people face now, what options are available, and how those challenges impact them, just like in the films. To do basic research, you may conduct situational inquiries or journal studies ( or both! ), which may assist you in identifying both problems and opportunities. It doesn’t need to get a great investment in time or money.

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

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

Maybe Spool talks about the importance of basic research and how it may type the bulk of your research. If you can supplement what you’ve heard in the fundamental studies by using any more user data that you can obtain, such as surveys or analytics, to make recommendations that may need to be investigated further, you might as well use those that can be drawn from those that you can obtain. Together, all this information creates a clearer picture of the state of things and all its inadequacies. And that’s the start of a gripping tale. It’s the place in the story where you realize that the principal characters—or the people in this case—are facing issues that they need to conquer. This is where you begin to develop compassion for the characters and support their success, much like in films. And finally participants are now doing the same. Their concern may be with their company, which may be losing money because consumers are unable to complete specific tasks. Or probably they do connect with customers ‘ problems. In either case, work one serves as your main strategy to pique the interest and interest of the participants.

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

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

Act two: issue

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

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

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

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

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

That’s not to say that the “movies” —remote sessions—aren’t a good option. A wider audience can be reached through remote sessions. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. Additionally, they make the doors accessible to a much wider range 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.

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

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

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

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

Act three: resolution

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

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

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. The most effective presenters” set up a conflict that needs to be resolved” using the same methods as great storytellers, Duarte writes. ” That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. In the end, user research is beneficial for everyone, and all you need to do is pique stakeholders ‘ interest in how the story ends.

The personalization gap is real, between the dream of getting it right and the worry of it going wrong ( like when we encounter “persofails” similar to a company’s repeated pleas for more toilet seats from regular people ). It’s an particularly confusing place to be a modern professional without a map, a map, or a strategy.

There are no Lonely Planet and some tour guides for those of you who want to personalize because powerful customisation is so dependent on each group’s talent, technology, and market position.

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

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

We refer to it as prepersonalization.

Behind the song

Take into account the DJ have on Spotify, which was introduced last month.

We’re used to seeing the polished final outcome of a personalization function. A personal have had to be developed, budgeted, and given priority before the year-end prize, the making-of-backstory, or the behind-the-scenes success chest. Before any customisation have goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a delay of valuable ideas for expressing consumer experiences more automatically.

How do you decide where to position personalisation wagers? How do you design regular interactions that hasn’t journey up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve found that for many well-known budgeted programs to support their continued investments, they initially required one or more workshops to join vital technologies users and stakeholders. Make it count.

We’ve closely monitored the same evolution with our consumers, from major software to young companies. In our experience with working on small and large personalization work, a program’s best monitor record—and its capacity to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and manage its design and engineering efforts—turns on how successfully these prepersonalization activities play out.

Effective workshops consistently separate successful future endeavors from unsuccessful ones, saving countless hours of time, resources, and overall well-being.

A personalization practice involves a multiyear effort of testing and feature development. It’s not a tech stack switch-flip. 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 ( like 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. These cards won’t be necessary for you. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

Set the timer for the kitchen.

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The evaluation activities that we suggest including can ( and frequently do ) last for weeks. For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Details on the essential first-day activities are included in a summary of our broad approach.

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

Kickstart: This specifies the terms of engagement as you concentrate on the potential, 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 stage essentially entails creating a competitive environment in which team members can individually present their own pilots that each contain a proof-of-concept project, its business case, and its operating model.

Give yourself at least a day, split into two large time blocks, to power through a concentrated version of those first two phases.

Kickstart: Apt your appetite

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

Create a conversation by mentioning consumer 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. These are in the cards, which we have a catalog of. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

It’s all about setting the tone. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? Here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework for a broad perspective.

Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature ( or something similar ). In our cards, we break down connected experiences into five categories: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to draw attention to both the benefits of ongoing investment and the difference between what you currently offer and what you intend to deliver in the future.

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

Each team member should decide where they would like to place your company’s emphasis on your product or service. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. Here, the goal is to demonstrate how various departments may view their own advantages over the effort, which can be different from one department to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

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

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

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

Hit that test kitchen

Next, let’s take a look at what you’ll need to create personalization recipes. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. They give you a variety of options for how your organization can conduct its activities because of their broad and potent capabilities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

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

Over the course of the workshop, the ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together. And creating “dishes” is the way that you’ll have individual team stakeholders construct personalized interactions that serve their needs or the needs of others.

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

Verify your ingredients

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

This is not just about identifying needs. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team:

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

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

Create a recipe.

What ingredients are important to you? Consider the construct “what-what-when-why”

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

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

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

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

A good preworkshop activity might be to consider a first draft of what these cards might be for your organization, though we’ve also found that cocreating the recipes themselves can sometimes help this process. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

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

Architecture must be improved to produce better kitchens.

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

When a team is overfitting, it’s because they aren’t designing with their best data, which is why personalization turns into a laugh line. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. For instance, your AI’s output quality is in fact impacted by your IA. Spotify’s poster-child prowess today was unfathomable before they acquired a seemingly modest metadata startup that now powers its underlying information architecture.

You can withstand the heat without a doubt.

Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a deliberate and cooperative approach will produce the desired outcome. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, head to the test kitchen to save time, preserve job security, and avoid imagining the creative concepts that come from your organization’s masters. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

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

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

The same holds true for those of us who are currently employed in design and development. Having worked on the web for about three years at this point, I’ve seen the typical wax and wane of concepts, strategies, and systems. Every day we as developers and designers get into a routine pattern, a brand-new concept or technology emerges to shake things up and completely alter our planet.

How we got below

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

the development of online requirements

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

Server-side language like PHP, Java, and.NET took Perl as the primary back-end computers, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the garbage bin. The first age of internet programs started with content-management systems (especially those used in blogs like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress ), with these better server-side equipment. In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened gates for sequential interaction between the front end and back close. Pages was now revise their content without having to reload it. A grain of Script frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and ruby arose to aid developers develop more credible client-side conversation across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement enable skilled designers and developers to use fonts of their choosing. And technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and even more interactivity.

These new methods, standards, and technologies greatly boosted the sector’s growth. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. However, we still relied on numerous hacks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes ( such as rounded or angled corners ) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks ). All kinds of nested floats or absolute positioning ( or both ) were necessary for complicated layouts. Flash and image replacement for custom fonts was a great start toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. Additionally, JavaScript libraries made it simple to add a dash of interaction to pages without having to spend the money to double or even quadruple the download size for basic websites.

The web as software platform

The front-end and back-end symbiosis continued to improve, leading to the development of the modern web application. Between expanded server-side programming languages ( which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others ) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Along with these tools, there were additional options, such as collaborative build automation, collaborative version control, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

Mobile devices increased in their capabilities as well, and they gave us access to the internet in our pockets at the same time. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

This fusion of potent mobile devices and potent development tools contributed to the growth of social media and other centralized tools for people to use and interact with. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media made connections on a global scale, with both positive and negative outcomes.

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

Where we are now

It seems like we’ve been at a new significant inflection point over the past couple of years. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. There are many different ways to create websites, from the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators to content management systems of all kinds. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other IndieWeb tools can be useful in this regard, but they’re still largely underdeveloped and difficult to use for the less geeky. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

Browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other web components has increased, particularly with initiatives like Interop. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. I frequently find out about a new feature and check its browser support only to discover that its coverage has already exceeded 80 %. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

We can prototype almost any idea today with just a few commands and a few lines of code. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. However, as we upgrade and maintain these frameworks, we eventually pay the upfront costs that these frameworks may initially save in terms of our technical debt.

If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks, which once made it easier to adopt new techniques sooner, have since evolved into obstacles. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail ( whether due to poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors ), users frequently have no choice but to use blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Hacks of today help to shape standards for the future. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks —for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we refuse to acknowledge that they are hacks or when we refuse to take their place. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

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

Start with the basics. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. Not all third-party frameworks are the same. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the’ 90s still work just fine today. The same can’t be said about websites created with frameworks even after a few years.

Design with care. Consider the effects of each choice, whether it is your craft, which is code, pixels, or processes. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Use the time saved by modern tools to think more carefully and make decisions with care rather than rushing to “move fast and break things.”

Always be learning. If you’re constantly learning, you’re also developing. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. Even if you were to concentrate solely on learning standards, you might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year. ( Remember XHTML? ) However, ongoing learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the techniques you learn in one day may be used to guide different experiments in the future.

Play, experiment, and be weird! This website we created is the most incredible experiment. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be brave and make new friends. Build a playground for ideas. In your own bizarre science lab, conduct absurd experiments. Start your own small business. There has never been a place where we have more room to be creative, take risks, and discover our potential.

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

Go ahead and create a masterpiece.

As designers and developers for the web ( and beyond ), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s incorporate our values into the products we produce, and let’s improve the world for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then share it, improve it, re-use it, or create something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Everything will change whenever you believe you have the ability to use the internet.

For almost 20 years, LEGO Batman has been performing well. The Caped Crusader has been a steady income cattle for the doll company since its initial work in 2006-2008 and its resurrection in 2012 with the theme. In fact, despite the rest of LEGO’s DC exports, such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, fading off ]… ]

The second post Spills and Gossips: The New 2025 Batmobile from the LEGO Batman Forever Set appeared first on Den of Geek.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There have been a good deal of pieces to keep us eager for the tale to come, from interviews with the throw to brief glances in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a complete video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and a closer look at what their stories may entail this year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle sweeps him all over. Tony Gilroy, the creator of the series, formerly hinted that the display may be traveling to a common world this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t eager to see it here. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters, which serves as a critical setting for the campaign to appear, though we may not have seen the bottom in its early stages until this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the Connect fighter and Cassian in the aircraft was previously teased, but then we get a better sense of it in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this fleet, this video shows him flying it over a niche to capture what is most likely an Imperial minister, is it? Further in the video, there is a scene that appears to show him attempting to run away from the ship as it scuttles against the roof of an Imperial aircraft amid the trooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its weight grows, this now seems to be one of the many fascinating action scenes this time.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating weight, Saw Gerrera is set to return this time. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. As far as rebel cell go, Saw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently opting for more violent forms of resistance than some rebels are used to. However, as Multi states at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a battle,” which makes it much easier to cross traces in the name of freedom. It will be interesting to see what Saw’s position in the rebellion this period is given that he is an important player in Rogue One.

The Death Star and Orson Krennic

The production of the Death Star was made clear in the post-credits field of winter 1. The equipment pieces that Cassian and the other captives of Narkina 5 used. And in this truck, we get a glimpse of this huge weapon being built as well as the return of Orson Krennic, the mastermind behind the project. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s position in the years leading up to those events is significantly different because he is ready to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire in Rogue One. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This video gives us yet another glance at K-2SO, our favourite sassy machine ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first meet, this time is likely to provide us with insight into how this partnership and subsequent friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one interesting aspect of the truck has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We also witness her doing a dance at one place. It appears to be a Chandrilan party, possibly a pre- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started arranging a marriage for the previous season. This was essential for Mon Mothma to win the confidence of a bank official who could assist her in keeping her finances, particularly those that kept the Empire from knowing about the funds being used to fund the rebellion, safe. Given how angry she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult decision for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The article Andor Season 2 Video Break: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared initially on Den of Geek.

The world of Star Trek is incredibly well mapped out for a company whose core principle is exploring the unfamiliar. We can build a very complete timeline of events from the year of the Bell Riots, European reconciliation, and the first manned mission following the events described by its TV shows and movies.

The first article on Den of Geek was Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The Motion Photo Novel, which Presents a Pretty Unique View of the Trek Universe.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There are plenty of crumbs to keep us eagerly anticipating the story to come, from put interviews to snippets in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a complete video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and a closer look at what their stories may entail this year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle swirls around him. Tony Gilroy, the father of the line, formerly hinted that the display may be traveling to a common planet this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t eager to see it here. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters and serves as a crucial setting for the fight to come, though we haven’t seen the base in its early stages as we might this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the TIE fighter and Cassian in the cockpit was previously teased, but more of it is now visible in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this ship, this trailer shows him flying it over a field to capture what is most likely an Imperial envoy. A scene further in the trailer that appears to show him struggling to get away from the ship as it bumps up against the ceiling of an Imperial hangar amid a barrage of Stormtrooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its resistance grows, this already appears to be one of the many exciting action scenes this season.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating resistance, Saw Gerrera is set to return this season. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. As far as rebel cells go, Saw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently opting for more violent forms of resistance than some rebels are used to. However, as Cassian states at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a war,” and war makes it much easier to cross lines in the name of freedom. Saw is a significant component of Rogue One, and it’ll be interesting to see what his part in the rebellion this season is.

The Death Star and Orson Krennic

The production of the Death Star was made possible by Cassian and the other prisoners in Narkina 5’s post-credits scene. And in this trailer, we get a glimpse of this massive weapon being built as well as the return of Orson Krennic, the mastermind behind the project. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s stance is significantly different in the years leading up to those events, but in Rogue One, Krennic is willing to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This trailer gives us yet another look at K-2SO, our favorite sassy robot ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first meet, this season is likely to provide us with insight into how this partnership and eventual friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one intriguing aspect of the trailer has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We even witness her doing a dance at one point. It appears to be a Chandrilan celebration, possibly a pre- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started making wedding arrangements last season. In order to protect her finances, especially those that were secretly funding the rebellion, Mon Mothma needed to gain the trust of a banking official. Given how unhappy she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult choice for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

Fits LA may not be the first attempt at a subsidiary of the popular Suits series from USA Network, but it is the first one since the first one became a Netflix streaming story. Suit ended almost six years ago, and this spinoff is not only taking us from New York to the […]

The article Meets LA Cast: Join the Doctors, Clients, and More of the West Coast Spinoff appeared first on Den of Geek.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There have been plenty of pieces to keep us eager for the story to appear, from conversations with the cast to snippets in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a complete video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and take a closer look at what their stories may entail for the year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle swirls around him. Although the show has recently announced that it will be visiting this familiar planet this season, series creator Tony Gilroy is also looking forward to seeing it there. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters and serves as a critical setting for the fight to appear, though we haven’t seen the foundation in its early stages as we might this period.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the Link fighter and Cassian in the aircraft was previously teased, but we now get a closer look at it in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this fleet, this video shows him flying it over a niche to capture what is most likely an Imperial minister, is it? A picture further in the video that appears to show him attempting to run away from the ship as it slams against the roof of an Imperial hangar amid a bombardment of Stormtrooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its weight grows, this now seems to be one of the many fascinating action scenes this time.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating weight, Saw Gerrera is set to return this time. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. In terms of insurgent tissues, Swaw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently choosing to form weight in a more bloody way than some rebels are used to. However, as Multi states at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a battle,” which makes it much easier to cross traces in the name of freedom. It’ll be interesting to see what Saw’s position in the revolution this year is because he’s an important player in Rogue One.

Orson Krennic and the Death Star

The production of the Death Star was made possible by Cassian and the other prisoners in Narkina 5’s post-credits field. And in this video, we get a glimpse of Orson Krennic, the architect behind the project, as well as a glimpse of this huge weapon being built. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s position in the years leading up to those events is significantly different because he is ready to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire in Rogue One. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This video gives us yet another glance at K-2SO, our favourite sassy machine ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first meet, this year is likely to provide insight into how this partnership and subsequent friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one interesting aspect of the trailer has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. She occasionally dances along with us. It appears to be a Chandrilan party, possibly a post- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started arranging a marriage for the previous season. This was essential for Mon Mothma to win the support of a bank official who could assist her in keeping her finances, particularly those that helped keep the Empire’s secret, clean. Given how angry she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult decision for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The article Andor Season 2 Video Break: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared initially on Den of Geek.

Up until now, we’ve been thoroughly teased by sneak peeks of the upcoming second season of Andor. From interviews with the cast to small glimpses in Disney’s 2025 preview, there have been a decent amount of crumbs to keep us excited for the story to come. Today, however, we’ve finally been served a full trailer […]

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

Up until now, we’ve been thoroughly teased by sneak peeks of the upcoming second season of Andor. From interviews with the cast to small glimpses in Disney’s 2025 preview, there have been a decent amount of crumbs to keep us excited for the story to come. Today, however, we’ve finally been served a full trailer outside of D23, and there’s a lot here that leaves us hungry for more.

While there’s not a lot of new information shown, we do get to see a lot of familiar faces and a closer look at what their stories might entail this season. From the return of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the trailer below a watch, and then read on to check out our breakdown of the most intriguing bits.

Yavin 4

For the first time since Rogue One, we get to see Cassian (Diego Luna) on Yavin 4 as the hustle and bustle of the rebel base moves all around him. Series creator Tony Gilroy previously revealed that the show would be making the journey to this familiar planet this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still excited to see a glimpse of it here. Yavin 4 becomes the home of the Rebel Alliance and is a crucial backdrop in the fight to come, though we’ve yet to really see the base in its early days, as we might this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

Previous teasers showed us a glimpse of this updated version of the TIE fighter and of Cassian in the cockpit, but now we get to see more of it in action. Why Cassian appears to be stealing this ship has yet to be revealed, but this trailer shows him flying it over a field to take out what is likely some kind of Imperial envoy. There’s also a scene further into the trailer that seems to show him struggling to escape with the ship as it bumps up against the ceiling of an Imperial hangar amidst a barrage of Stormtrooper blaster fire. This is already looks like one of many exciting action sequences this season, as the fight between the Empire and its resistance escalates.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating resistance, Saw Gerrera is set to return this season. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) last season, so who’s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. Saw Gerrera has always been an outlier as far as rebel cells go, often opting for a more violent form of resistance than some rebels are comfortable with. But as Cassian says at the beginning of the trailer, “we’re in a war,” and war makes it a lot easier to cross lines in the name of freedom. Saw is an important part of Rogue One, and it’ll be interesting to see what his role is in the rebellion this season.

Orson Krennic and the Death Star

The post-credits scene of season 1 revealed that the machine parts that Cassian and the other prisoners of Narkina 5 were for the production of the Death Star. And in this trailer we not only see a glimpse of this massive weapon under construction, we also see the return of the mastermind behind the project, Orson Krennic. In Rogue One, Krennic is willing to do whatever it takes to move ahead in the Empire, and it’s doubtful that his stance is much different in the years leading up to those events. If Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This trailer gives us yet another look at K-2SO, our favorite sassy robot (don’t tell B2EMO). While we still don’t know exactly how he and Cassian meet, this season is likely to give us insight into how this partnership and eventual friendship came to be.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While a lot of the sneak peeks mentioned previously are new looks at things we already knew were coming, there is one new and intriguing part of this trailer that has us really excited. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We even get to see her dance along at one point. It looks like this is some kind of Chandrilan celebration, potentially a pre or post wedding event for her daughter, who she began to arrange a marriage for last season. This was necessary for Mon Mothma to gain the trust of a banking official who could help her keep her finances (especially those secretly funding the rebellion) clean in the eyes of the Empire. It was clear that this was a hard choice for her, given how unhappy she is in her own arranged marriage, but nevertheless it seems like she had to go through with it, and may still be regretting it.

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

This post contains spoilers for Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah. Paul Atreides wasn’t the only one sad to see Duncan Idaho die while battling Sardaukar troops in Dune. Audiences also mourned the loss of Idaho’s performer Jason Momoa, whose carefree attitude lightened the sometimes too-heavy mood. While everyone else is brooding about prophecies and land rights, […]

The post Dune 3 Cast Rumor Just Set Up a Controversial Dune Messiah Storyline appeared first on Den of Geek.

Up until now, we’ve been thoroughly teased by sneak peeks of the upcoming second season of Andor. From interviews with the cast to small glimpses in Disney’s 2025 preview, there have been a decent amount of crumbs to keep us excited for the story to come. Today, however, we’ve finally been served a full trailer outside of D23, and there’s a lot here that leaves us hungry for more.

While there’s not a lot of new information shown, we do get to see a lot of familiar faces and a closer look at what their stories might entail this season. From the return of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the trailer below a watch, and then read on to check out our breakdown of the most intriguing bits.

Yavin 4

For the first time since Rogue One, we get to see Cassian (Diego Luna) on Yavin 4 as the hustle and bustle of the rebel base moves all around him. Series creator Tony Gilroy previously revealed that the show would be making the journey to this familiar planet this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still excited to see a glimpse of it here. Yavin 4 becomes the home of the Rebel Alliance and is a crucial backdrop in the fight to come, though we’ve yet to really see the base in its early days, as we might this season.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

Previous teasers showed us a glimpse of this updated version of the TIE fighter and of Cassian in the cockpit, but now we get to see more of it in action. Why Cassian appears to be stealing this ship has yet to be revealed, but this trailer shows him flying it over a field to take out what is likely some kind of Imperial envoy. There’s also a scene further into the trailer that seems to show him struggling to escape with the ship as it bumps up against the ceiling of an Imperial hangar amidst a barrage of Stormtrooper blaster fire. This is already looks like one of many exciting action sequences this season, as the fight between the Empire and its resistance escalates.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating resistance, Saw Gerrera is set to return this season. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) last season, so who’s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. Saw Gerrera has always been an outlier as far as rebel cells go, often opting for a more violent form of resistance than some rebels are comfortable with. But as Cassian says at the beginning of the trailer, “we’re in a war,” and war makes it a lot easier to cross lines in the name of freedom. Saw is an important part of Rogue One, and it’ll be interesting to see what his role is in the rebellion this season.

Orson Krennic and the Death Star

The post-credits scene of season 1 revealed that the machine parts that Cassian and the other prisoners of Narkina 5 were for the production of the Death Star. And in this trailer we not only see a glimpse of this massive weapon under construction, we also see the return of the mastermind behind the project, Orson Krennic. In Rogue One, Krennic is willing to do whatever it takes to move ahead in the Empire, and it’s doubtful that his stance is much different in the years leading up to those events. If Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This trailer gives us yet another look at K-2SO, our favorite sassy robot (don’t tell B2EMO). While we still don’t know exactly how he and Cassian meet, this season is likely to give us insight into how this partnership and eventual friendship came to be.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While a lot of the sneak peeks mentioned previously are new looks at things we already knew were coming, there is one new and intriguing part of this trailer that has us really excited. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We even get to see her dance along at one point. It looks like this is some kind of Chandrilan celebration, potentially a pre or post wedding event for her daughter, who she began to arrange a marriage for last season. This was necessary for Mon Mothma to gain the trust of a banking official who could help her keep her finances (especially those secretly funding the rebellion) clean in the eyes of the Empire. It was clear that this was a hard choice for her, given how unhappy she is in her own arranged marriage, but nevertheless it seems like she had to go through with it, and may still be regretting it.

The post Andor Season 2 Trailer Breakdown: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

Thor needs Thor below. Immortal Thor# 23, written by Al Ewing and illustrated by Jan Bazaldua, may close this May as the God of Thunder. At this point, some visitors will undoubtedly move their vision. After all, every Marvel warrior has passed away and returned more than once, with Thor being the exception. ]… ]

The first article on Den of Geek was Marvel Really Confirmed It’s Killing Off Another Avenger.

We’ve been carefully teased by hints of the upcoming second year of Andor up until now. There have been plenty of pieces to keep us eager for the story to appear, from conversations with the cast to snippets in Disney’s 2025 demo. Now, however, we’ve suddenly been served a full video outside of D23, and there’s a lot around that leaves us thirsty for more.

Although there isn’t much new information presented, we do get to see a lot of recognizable faces and a closer look at what their stories may entail this year. From the return of Saw Gerrera ( Forest Whitaker ) and Orson Krennic ( Ben Mendelsohn ) to a potential Chandrilan celebration, there’s plenty to unpack. If you haven’t already, give the video below a view, and then read on to check out our collapse of the most interesting pieces.

Yavin 4

We see Cassian ( Diego Luna ) on Yavin 4 for the first time since Rogue One as the rebel base’s hustle and bustle sweeps him all over. Tony Gilroy, the father of the series, formerly hinted that the display may be traveling to a common world this season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t eager to see it here. The Rebel Alliance occupies Yavin 4 as its headquarters and serves as a critical setting for the fight to appear, though we haven’t seen the foundation in its early stages as we might this period.

Cassian Steals a TIE Avenger

This updated version of the Connect warrior and Cassian in the aircraft was previously teased, but more of it is now visible in action. Although it hasn’t been revealed why Cassian appears to be stealing this fleet, this video shows him flying it over a niche to capture what is most likely some sort of Imperial minister. Further in the video, there is a picture that appears to show him attempting to run away from the ship as it scuttles against the roof of an Imperial aircraft amid the trooper blaster fire. As the conflict between the Empire and its opposition grows, this now appears to be one of the many fascinating action scenes this period.

Saw Gerrera

Speaking of escalating weight, Saw Gerrera is set to return this time. He had a tenuous relationship with Luthen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) last season, so who&#8217, s to say where these two might lie when season 2 picks up five years later. As far as rebel tissue go, Saw Gerrera has always been an outsider, frequently opting for more violent forms of resistance than some rebels are used to. However, as Cassian claims at the beginning of the trailer,” we’re in a battle,” which makes it much easier to mix traces in the name of freedom. It’ll be interesting to see what Saw’s position in the revolution this year is because he’s an important player in Rogue One.

The Death Star and Orson Krennic

The production of the Death Star was made possible by Cassian and the other prisoners in Narkina 5’s post-credits field. And in this truck, we not only see a view of this huge weapon being built, but also the return of Orson Krennic, the mastermind behind the project. It’s doubtful that Krennic’s approach is significantly different in the years leading up to those situations, but in Rogue One, Krennic is ready to do whatever it takes to advance in the Empire. If Dedra Meero ( Denise Gough ) and Krennic don’t end up at odds, each fighting to get rid of the rebels themselves, then they just might make a formidable team.

K-2SO

This video gives us yet another glance at K-2SO, our favourite sassy machine ( don’t tell B2EMO). Although we’re still unsure of how he and Cassian first connected, this time is likely to provide insight into how this partnership and subsequent friendship developed.

Mon Mothma Dancing?

While many of the previously mentioned sneak peeks are fresh take on things we were anticipating, one amazing aspect of the truck has us very excited. Mon Mothma ( GenevieveO’Reilly ) appears to be at a party of some sort, full of dancing and merriment. We also witness her doing a dance at one place. It appears to be a Chandrilan party, possibly a prior- or post-wedding celebration for her daughter, with whom she started arranging a marriage for the previous season. This was essential for Mon Mothma to win the support of a bank official who could assist her in keeping her finances, particularly those that helped keep the Empire’s secret, clear. Given how angry she is with her own arranged marriage, it was obvious that this was a difficult decision for her, but it still appears as though she had to go along with it and may still be regretting it.

The article Andor Season 2 Video Break: Krennic, The Death Star, K-2SO, Saw Gerrera, and More appeared initially on Den of Geek.

This Person Does Not Exist is a website that generates human faces with a machine learning algorithm. It takes real portraits and recombines them into fake human faces. We recently scrolled past a LinkedIn post stating that this website could be useful “if you are developing a persona and looking for a photo.” 

We agree: the computer-generated faces could be a great match for personas—but not for the reason you might think. Ironically, the website highlights the core issue of this very common design method: the person(a) does not exist. Like the pictures, personas are artificially made. Information is taken out of natural context and recombined into an isolated snapshot that’s detached from reality. 

But strangely enough, designers use personas to inspire their design for the real world. 

Personas: A step back

Most designers have created, used, or come across personas at least once in their career. In their article “Personas – A Simple Introduction,” the Interaction Design Foundation defines personas as “fictional characters, which you create based upon your research in order to represent the different 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 personas

Personas are popular because they make “dry” research data more relatable, more human. However, this method constrains the researcher’s data analysis in such a way that the investigated users are removed from their unique contexts. As a result, personas don’t portray key factors that make you understand their decision-making process or allow you to relate to users’ thoughts and behavior; they lack stories. You understand what the persona did, but you don’t have the background to understand why. You end up with representations of users that are actually less human.

This “decontextualization” we see in personas happens in four ways, which we’ll explain below. 

Personas assume people are static 

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 differently according to the situations you experience. You appear different to different people; you might act friendly to some, rough to others. And you change your mind all the time about decisions you’ve taken. 

Modern psychologists agree that while people generally behave according to certain patterns, it’s actually a combination of background and environment that determines how people act and take decisions. The context—the environment, the influence of other people, your mood, the entire history that led up to a situation—determines the kind of person you are in each specific 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.