Category: Blog

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. With these improved server-side equipment, the first period of internet programs started with content-management methods (especially those used in blogs like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress ) In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened gates for sequential interaction between the front end and back finish. 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 picture alternative enable the use of fonts by skilled developers and developers. And technology like Flash made it possible to include movies, sports, and even more engagement.

These new methods, requirements, and technologies greatly reenergized the sector. Web style flourished as creators and designers explored more different styles and designs. However, we also depend 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. Display and photo substitute for specialty styles was a great start toward varying the designs from the big five, but both tricks introduced convenience and efficiency issues. Additionally, JavaScript libraries made it simple for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, even at the expense of double or even quadrupling the download size of basic websites.

The web as software platform

The balance between the front end and the back end continued to improve, leading to the development of the current web application era. 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 shared package libraries, build automation, and collaborative version control. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

Mobile devices also increased in their capabilities, and they gave us access to 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. Additionally, Neal Agarwal takes a fascinating tour of” Internet Artifacts.”

Where we are now

It seems like we’ve reached yet another significant turning point in recent years. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. From the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators and content management systems of all kinds, there are many different ways to create websites. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. The IndieWeb‘s Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other tools can assist with this, 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. When I first learn about a new feature, I frequently discover that its coverage is already over 80 % when I check the browser support. 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.

With a few commands and a few lines of code, we can currently prototype almost any concept. 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 previously 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 ), there is frequently no other option, leaving users with blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Hacks of today help to shape standards for tomorrow. 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 costs associated with those user-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What does each user pay? 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 standards. 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. Even after a few years, the same can’t be said about websites created with frameworks.

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 constantly learn, you also develop. 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 neural connections, and the techniques you learn in one day may be useful for guiding future experiments.

Play, experiment, and be weird! The ultimate experiment is this web that we’ve created. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be brave and try something new. Build a playground for ideas. Create absurd experiments in your own crazy science lab. Start your own small business. There is no better place for being more creative, risk-taking, and expressing our creativity.

Share and amplify. Share what you think has worked for you as you go through testing, playing, and learning. 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-create it, or create something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Everything will change whenever you believe you’ve mastered the web.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes … and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m not trying to reject any of what he’s saying, but rather to give some context to initiatives and options where AI may produce real, positive impacts on people with disabilities. To be clear, I want to take some time to speak about what’s possible in hope that we’ll get there one day. There are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday.

Other text

Joe’s article spends a lot of time examining how computer vision models can create other word. He raises a lot of valid points about the state of the world right now. And while computer-vision concepts continue to improve in the quality and complexity of information in their information, their benefits aren’t wonderful. He argues to be accurate that the state of image research is currently very poor, especially for some graphic types, in large part due to the absence of contextual contexts in which to look at images ( as a result of having separate “foundation” models for words analysis and image analysis ). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant ( should probably have descriptions ) and those that are purely decorative ( couldn’t possibly need a description ) either. Nonetheless, I still think there’s possible in this area.

As Joe points out, far text editing via human-in-the-loop should be a given. And if AI can intervene to provide a starting place for alt text, even if the swift might say What is this BS? That’s not correct at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that’s a win.

If we can specifically station a design to examine image usage in context, this may help us more quickly determine which images are likely to be elegant and which ones are likely to be descriptive. That will clarify which situations require image descriptions, and it will increase authors ‘ effectiveness in making their sites more visible.

While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way ( even for humans ), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s say you came across a map that was simply the description of the chart’s name and the type of representation it was: Pie map comparing smartphone usage to have phone usage in US households earning under$ 30, 000 annually. ( That would be a pretty bad alt text for a chart because it would frequently leave many unanswered questions about the data, but let’s just assume that that was the description in place. ) If your website knew that that picture was a pie graph ( because an ship model concluded this ), imagine a world where people could ask questions like these about the creative:

• Do more people use smartphones or other types of smartphones?
• How many more are there?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
• What number is that?

For a moment, the chance to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for people with low vision and blindness as well as for those with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and other issues. It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

What if you could ask your browser to make a complicated chart simpler? What if you demanded that the line graph be isolated into just one line? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you could ask it to switch colors for patterns? That seems like a possibility given the chat-based interfaces and our current ability to manipulate images in the AI tools of today.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. For instance, it might be able to convert that pie chart (or, better yet, a number of pie charts ) into more usable ( and useful ) formats, like spreadsheets. That would be incredible!

Matching algorithms

When Safiya Umoja Noble chose to write her book Algorithms of Oppression, she hit the nail on the head. Although her book focused on the ways that search engines can foster racism, I believe it to be equally accurate to say that all computer models have the potential to amplify conflict, bias, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A large portion of this is a result of a lack of diversity in the people who design and construct them. There is still a lot of potential for algorithm development when these platforms are built with inclusive features in mind.

Take Mentra, for example. They serve as a network of employment for people who are neurodivers. They match job seekers with potential employers using an algorithm based on more than 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. It takes into account the workplace, the communication environment, and other factors. Mentra made the decision to change the script when it came to typical employment websites because it was run by neurodivergent people. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in, reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

When more people with disabilities are involved in the development of algorithms, this can lower the likelihood that these algorithms will harm their communities. That’s why diverse teams are so crucial.

Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For instance, if you were to follow a group of non-disabled white male academics who talk about AI, it might be advisable to follow those who are disabled, aren’t white, or aren’t men who also talk about AI. If you followed its advice, you might gain a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward ) those groups.

Other ways that AI can assist people with disabilities

If I weren’t attempting to combine this with other tasks, I’m sure I could go on and on, giving various examples of how AI could be used to assist people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round. In no particular order:

Voice preservation You may be aware of the voice-prescribing options from Microsoft, Acapela, or others, or you may have seen the announcement for VALL-E or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS ( Lou Gehrig’s disease ) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This technology can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so we need to approach it responsibly, but the technology has truly transformative potential.
• Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are currently hiring people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they intend to expand this list as the project develops. More people with disabilities will be able to use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as a result of this research, which will result in more inclusive data sets that will enable them to use their computers and other devices more easily and with just their voices.
• Text transformation. The most recent generation of LLMs is capable of altering already-existing text without giving off hallucinations. This is incredibly empowering for those who have cognitive disabilities and who may benefit from text summaries, simplified versions, or even text that has been prepared for Bionic Reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

Our differences must be acknowledged as important. The intersections of the identities we live in have an impact on our lived experiences. These lived experiences—with all their complexities ( and joys and pain ) —are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences must be reflected in the data we use to develop new models, and those who provide it need to be compensated for doing so. Inclusive data sets produce stronger models that promote more justifiable outcomes.

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you include information about disabilities that is written by people who have a range of disabilities and that is well represented in the training data.

Want a model that uses ableist language without using it? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. Despite this, AI models won’t soon replace human copy editors when it comes to sensitivity reading.

Want a coding copilot who can provide you with useful recommendations after the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

I have no doubts about how dangerous AI will be for people today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the world. However, I also think we should acknowledge this and make thoughtful, thoughtful, and intentional changes to our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for supporting the development of this article, Ashley Bischoff for providing me with invaluable editorial support, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

I am a creative. What I do is alchemy. It is a mystery. I do not so much do it, as let it be done through me.

I am a creative. Not all creative people like this label. Not all see themselves this way. Some creative people see science in what they do. That is their truth, and I respect it. Maybe I even envy them, a little. But my process is different—my being is different.

Apologizing and qualifying in advance is a distraction. That’s what my brain does to sabotage me. I set it aside for now. I can come back later to apologize and qualify. After I’ve said what I came to say. Which is hard enough. 

Except when it is easy and flows like a river of wine.

Sometimes it does come that way. Sometimes what I need to create comes in an instant. I have learned not to say it at that moment, because if you admit that sometimes the idea just comes and it is the best idea and you know it is the best idea, they think you don’t work hard enough.

Sometimes I work and work and work until the idea comes. Sometimes it comes instantly and I don’t tell anyone for three days. Sometimes I’m so excited by the idea that came instantly that I blurt it out, can’t help myself. Like a boy who found a prize in his Cracker Jacks. Sometimes I get away with this. Sometimes other people agree: yes, that is the best idea. Most times they don’t and I regret having  given way to enthusiasm. 

Enthusiasm is best saved for the meeting where it will make a difference. Not the casual get-together that precedes that meeting by two other meetings. Nobody knows why we have all these meetings. We keep saying we’re doing away with them, but then just finding other ways to have them. Sometimes they are even good. But other times they are a distraction from the actual work. The proportion between when meetings are useful, and when they are a pitiful distraction, varies, depending on what you do and where you do it. And who you are and how you do it. Again I digress. I am a creative. That is the theme.

Sometimes many hours of hard and patient work produce something that is barely serviceable. Sometimes I have to accept that and move on to the next project.

Don’t ask about process. I am a creative.

I am a creative. I don’t control my dreams. And I don’t control my best ideas.

I can hammer away, surround myself with facts or images, and sometimes that works. I can go for a walk, and sometimes that works. I can be making dinner and there’s a Eureka having nothing to do with sizzling oil and bubbling pots. Often I know what to do the instant I wake up. And then, almost as often, as I become conscious and part of the world again, the idea that would have saved me turns to vanishing dust in a mindless wind of oblivion. For creativity, I believe, comes from that other world. The one we enter in dreams, and perhaps, before birth and after death. But that’s for poets to wonder, and I am not a poet. I am a creative. And it’s for theologians to mass armies about in their creative world that they insist is real. But that is another digression. And a depressing one. Maybe on a much more important topic than whether I am a creative or not. But still a digression from what I came here to say.

Sometimes the process is avoidance. And agony. You know the cliché about the tortured artist? It’s true, even when the artist (and let’s put that noun in quotes) is trying to write a soft drink jingle, a callback in a tired sitcom, a budget request.

Some people who hate being called creative may be closeted creatives, but that’s between them and their gods. No offense meant. Your truth is true, too. But mine is for me. 

Creatives recognize creatives.

Creatives recognize creatives like queers recognize queers, like real rappers recognize real rappers, like cons know cons. Creatives feel massive respect for creatives. We love, honor, emulate, and practically deify the great ones. To deify any human is, of course, a tragic mistake. We have been warned. We know better. We know people are just people. They squabble, they are lonely, they regret their most important decisions, they are poor and hungry, they can be cruel, they can be just as stupid as we can, because, like us, they are clay. But. But. But they make this amazing thing. They birth something that did not exist before them, and could not exist without them. They are the mothers of ideas. And I suppose, since it’s just lying there, I have to add that they are the mothers of invention. Ba dum bum! OK, that’s done. Continue.

Creatives belittle our own small achievements, because we compare them to those of the great ones. Beautiful animation! Well, I’m no Miyazaki. Now THAT is greatness. That is greatness straight from the mind of God. This half-starved little thing that I made? It more or less fell off the back of the turnip truck. And the turnips weren’t even fresh.

Creatives knows that, at best, they are Salieri. Even the creatives who are Mozart believe that. 

I am a creative. I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 years, but in my nightmares, it’s my former creative directors who judge me. And they are right to do so. I am too lazy, too facile, and when it really counts, my mind goes blank. There is no pill for creative dysfunction.

I am a creative. Every deadline I make is an adventure that makes Indiana Jones look like a pensioner snoring in a deck chair. The longer I remain a creative, the faster I am when I do my work and the longer I brood and walk in circles and stare blankly before I do that work. 

I am still 10 times faster than people who are not creative, or people who have only been creative a short while, or people who have only been professionally creative a short while. It’s just that, before I work 10 times as fast as they do, I spend twice as long as they do putting the work off. I am that confident in my ability to do a great job when I put my mind to it. I am that addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement. I am still that afraid of the jump.

I am not an artist.

I am a creative. Not an artist. Though I dreamed, as a lad, of someday being that. Some of us belittle our gifts and dislike ourselves because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. That is narcissism—but at least we aren’t in politics.

I am a creative. Though I believe in reason and science, I decide by intuition and impulse. And live with what follows—the catastrophes as well as the triumphs. 

I am a creative. Every word I’ve said here will annoy other creatives, who see things differently. Ask two creatives a question, get three opinions. Our disagreement, our passion about it, and our commitment to our own truth are, at least to me, the proofs that we are creatives, no matter how we may feel about it.

I am a creative. I lament my lack of taste in the areas about which I know very little, which is to say almost all areas of human knowledge. And I trust my taste above all other things in the areas closest to my heart, or perhaps, more accurately, to my obsessions. Without my obsessions, I would probably have to spend my time looking life in the eye, and almost none of us can do that for long. Not honestly. Not really. Because much in life, if you really look at it, is unbearable.

I am a creative. I believe, as a parent believes, that when I am gone, some small good part of me will carry on in the mind of at least one other person.

Working saves me from worrying about work.

I am a creative. I live in dread of my small gift suddenly going away.

I am a creative. I am too busy making the next thing to spend too much time deeply considering that almost nothing I make will come anywhere near the greatness I comically aspire to.

I am a creative. I believe in the ultimate mystery of process. I believe in it so much, I am even fool enough to publish an essay I dictated into a tiny machine and didn’t take time to review or revise. I won’t do this often, I promise. But I did it just now, because, as afraid as I might be of your seeing through my pitiful gestures toward the beautiful, I was even more afraid of forgetting what I came to say. 

There. I think I’ve said it. 

Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.

This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.

The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work. 

The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.

The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).

But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.

When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.

The Nervous System: People & Psychology

Primary caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting role: Lead Designer

The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.

The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.

But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.

Design Manager tends to:

• Career conversations and growth planning
• Team psychological safety and dynamics
• Workload management and resource allocation
• Performance reviews and feedback systems
• Creating learning opportunities

Lead Designer supports by:

• Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
• Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
• Offering design mentorship and guidance
• Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges

The Muscular System: Craft & Execution

Primary caretaker: Lead Designer
Supporting role: Design Manager

The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.

The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of design standards and system usage
• Feedback on what design work meets the standard
• Experience direction for the product
• Design decisions and product-wide alignment
• Innovation and craft advancement

Design Manager supports by:

• Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
• Confirming experience direction is being followed
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• Facilitating design alignment across teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow

Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer

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

This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.

Lead Designer contributes:

• User needs are met by the product
• Overall product quality and experience
• Strategic design initiatives
• Research-based user needs for each initiative

Design Manager contributes:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Stakeholder management and alignment
• Cross-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both collaborate on:

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

Keeping the Organism Healthy

The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.

Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending

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

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

Create Healthy Feedback Loops

The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:

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

Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.

Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).

Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”

Stay Curious, Not Territorial

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.

This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

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

The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.

The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.

Poor Circulation

Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.

The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.

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

The Payoff

Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).

The Bottom Line

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.

The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.

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

As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months.

Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on the line, user expectations running high, and a crowded market, it’s tempting to throw as many features at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why:

The pitfalls of feature-first development

When you start building a financial product from the ground up, or are migrating existing customer journeys from paper or telephony channels onto online banking or mobile apps, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating new features. You might think, “If I can just add one more thing that solves this particular user problem, they’ll love me!” But what happens when you inevitably hit a roadblock because the narcs (your security team!) don’t like it? When a hard-fought feature isn’t as popular as you thought, or it breaks due to unforeseen complexity?

This is where the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in. Jason Fried’s book Getting Real and his podcast Rework often touch on this idea, even if he doesn’t always call it that. An MVP is a product that provides just enough value to your users to keep them engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or difficult to maintain. It sounds like an easy concept but it requires a razor sharp eye, a ruthless edge and having the courage to stick by your opinion because it is easy to be seduced by “the Columbo Effect”… when there’s always “just one more thing…” that someone wants to add.

The problem with most finance apps, however, is that they often become a reflection of the internal politics of the business rather than an experience solely designed around the customer. This means that the focus is on delivering as many features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and desires of competing internal departments, rather than providing a clear value proposition that is focused on what the people out there in the real world want. As a result, these products can very easily bloat to become a mixed bag of confusing, unrelated and ultimately unlovable customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The importance of bedrock

So what’s a better approach? How can we build products that are stable, user-friendly, and—most importantly—stick?

That’s where the concept of “bedrock” comes in. Bedrock is the core element of your product that truly matters to users. It’s the fundamental building block that provides value and stays relevant over time.

In the world of retail banking, which is where I work, the bedrock has got to be in and around the regular servicing journeys. People open their current account once in a blue moon but they look at it every day. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their balance and pay their bill at least once a month.

Identifying the core tasks that people want to do and then relentlessly striving to make them easy to do, dependable, and trustworthy is where the gravy’s at.

But how do you get to bedrock? By focusing on the “MVP” approach, prioritizing simplicity, and iterating towards a clear value proposition. This means cutting out unnecessary features and focusing on delivering real value to your users.

It also means having some guts, because your colleagues might not always instantly share your vision to start with. And controversially, sometimes it can even mean making it clear to customers that you’re not going to come to their house and make their dinner. The occasional “opinionated user interface design” (i.e. clunky workaround for edge cases) might sometimes be what you need to use to test a concept or buy you space to work on something more important.

Practical strategies for building financial products that stick

So what are the key strategies I’ve learned from my own experience and research?

1. Start with a clear “why”: What problem are you trying to solve? For whom? Make sure your mission is crystal clear before building anything. Make sure it aligns with your company’s objectives, too.
2. Focus on a single, core feature and obsess on getting that right before moving on to something else: Resist the temptation to add too many features at once. Instead, choose one that delivers real value and iterate from there.
3. Prioritize simplicity over complexity: Less is often more when it comes to financial products. Cut out unnecessary bells and whistles and keep the focus on what matters most.
4. Embrace continuous iteration: Bedrock isn’t a fixed destination—it’s a dynamic process. Continuously gather user feedback, refine your product, and iterate towards that bedrock state.
5. Stop, look and listen: Don’t just test your product as part of your delivery process—test it repeatedly in the field. Use it yourself. Run A/B tests. Gather user feedback. Talk to people who use it, and refine accordingly.

The bedrock paradox

There’s an interesting paradox at play here: building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it—products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time.

So, how do you start your journey towards bedrock? Take it one step at a time. Start by identifying those core elements that truly matter to your users. Focus on building and refining a single, powerful feature that delivers real value. And above all, test obsessively—for, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker (whomever you believe!!), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

In a way that other genres doesn’t, science fiction poses questions about mankind and the nature of existence while dealing with intellectual and social issues. However, some people have felt the need to make joy of science fiction, even writing complex parody, despite the seriousness of it. We just experienced a]…

The first article on Den of Geek was The Doctor Who Parodies That Were Truly Interviews.

Science fiction is very critical company, dealing with intellectual and cultural themes in ways that other genres just doesn’t, asking questions about society and the nature of living. However, some people have felt the need to make joy of science fiction, even writing complex parodies, despite the seriousness of it. Recently, we lately examined the complex connection Star Trek has had with the different functions that have parodied it.

But perhaps even more than Star Trek, the biggest destination for people looking for something the parody has been Doctor Who. We don’t know why, but all those pieces looked actually convincing to us, and the specific results are quite impressive when you consider the financial constraints they’re operating under.

There is one explanation though. Everyone who has ever chosen to “put on a awkwardly long scarf and shake the hammer” at some boxes” for a laugh” has a dark secret hidden in their hearts.

Every pastiche is a quietly honest audition in disguise.

And an even darker solution? They occasionally function.

The Lenny Henry Show

Lenny Henry’s Doctor Who picture in 1985 capabilities a Physician that wears a leather suit and has a friend who fancies him, and sees him battling Cybermen led by an evil Cyber Thatcher in the far off season of 2010. The Thatcher-parody Cybermen may be right out of Andrew Cartmel’s time on the show, but the leather coat, Black Time Lord, and implied TARDIS prior panky are all very The Who.

Henry hits all the correct information in the world of parodies-that-are-secretly-auditions. He delivers technobabble, does unusual things to the TARDIS unit, and of course, runs up and down loads of passageways.

And ultimately, the effort pays out.

Henry first appeared in the present as the criminal Daniel Barton in the film” Spyfall” just 35 years after his Doctor Who picture.

Every Episode of Popular Time Travel Show

The artist Alasdair Beckett-King is best known for his online pictures, which include Every Single Scandinavian Crime Drama, Every Mind-Bending Television Show, and ultimately, Every Episode of the bestselling Time Travel Show.

” Doctor Who made me feel a little hesitant because I don’t have an extensive knowledge of the lore,” Beckett-King says. ” Generally I write pictures on my own, but for that single I recruited my humor kids Declan Kennedy and Angus Dunican, who gave me lots of jokes. I think I was most enthusiastic about doing a sketchy effect of Dan Starkey’s Strax and spoofing the new-Who period visual effects.

The funny thing is that playing a cartoonish version of the Doctor is not all that unique from an artist taking the lead role in the present. In an interview with the Radio Times, Tom Baker said of playing the Doctor,” It&#8217, s really me trying to become interesting, or trying to be courageous in an interesting method”.

In the meantime, Beckett-King states in his picture that” I suppose I did end up playing the Physician as very like myself, more as a result of a deliberate attempt to put my mark on the personality.”

He continues,” I had no choice about doing a basic Doctor, because I didn’t really accomplish Tom Baker, except sometimes when aiming for Patrick Stewart and lost.” But I think veering between the basic and the unique is part of the fun of a parody: trying to do a supermarket own-brand version of the thing you’re spoofing and still reach all the common notes: a scarf, a jaunty hat, a faintly academic insouciance”.

Not long after Every Popular Time Travel Show episode was released, Beckett-King was cast in the BBC-produced audio series Doctor Who: Redacted.

Who asserts that manufacturing is ineffective? Me, I say that”, Beckett-King laughs. ” I don’t know why I was cast, but I wonder if the sketch played a role in the plot. Despite being an interdimensional turd in a jar, I played an alien foetus known as” The Floater” who was attempting to kill the Doctor. I respect the hustle. Although it was a comic character, I tried to approach it the way I usually do spoof plays, playing it as best I could.

Inspector Spacetime

Inspector Spacetime started off as a one-note gag in the sitcom Community ( created by Dan Harmon of Rick and Morty, if you want to talk” stuff that really wishes it were Doctor Who” ). Abed discovers” Inspector Spacetime,” a series about a detective who travels through space and time in a phone box fighting robotic bins called” Blorgons,” after learning that one of his new favorite shows dies after six episodes ( it’s British ).

No one from the show-within-a-show has ever appeared on Doctor Who (yet ), but Abed does run into a Matt Lucas superfan who later becomes the Doctor’s companion Nardole.

Doctor Who Night

Let’s talk about Doctor Who’s” Wilderness Years,” the 16 years between Christopher Eccleston’s grabbing Billie Piper’s hand at the start of” Rose,” and Paul McGann’s film.

Why should we discuss a protracted Doctor Who hiatus? No reason. No explanation at all. Because Doctor Who is undoubtedly alive and well, and there will be a UNIT miniseries in 2026, producer Jane Tranter has stated that “it will continue to grow, one way or the other,” even though Russell T. Davies is no longer writing for Channel 4 and Google’s News tab for” Doctor Who” frequently brings up articles about medical malpractice, we’re fine! We are fine.

Anyway, on November 13, 1999, BBC 2’s” Doctor Who Night” was a brief flash of light in the darkness during the final ( sorry, I mean, only ) Wilderness Years. There were documentaries, introductions, and a host of fan theories that Tom Baker is the” Curator” from” The Day of the Doctor” ( they only managed the final episode of” The Daleks” and a rerun of Paul McGann’s move ), as well as a few short sketches starring Mark Gatiss and David Walliams.

Those sketches included” The Pitch of Fear”, which imagined Sydney Newman pitching Doctor Who as a show that would run for 26 years,” The Kidnappers”, the weakest of the three that saw Gatiss and Walliams playing obsessive fans who’ve kidnapped Peter Davison, and finally,” The Web of Caves”. The three are obviously having the fun the most with this outright Who parody, which is the only one of their own. Walliams plays an ineffective Doctor Who baddie, and it was shot in black and white in a quarry. Gatiss plays the Doctor, again, not as an outright impression of any one incarnation, but as an audition for his own spin. When he exits the TARDIS and asks,” Where have you bought me to this time, old girl,” he is not performing a sketch, but he is actually living out a fantasy.

And sure enough, Mark Gatiss was a part of Doctor Who when he returned, writing several episodes of the show as Professor Richard Lazarus from” The Lazarus Experiment,” and Walliams would later appear as the oppressive, cowardly alien Gibbis in” The God Complex.”

Curse of the Fatal Death

In many ways, the Wilderness Years were at their peak in 1999. Fans were also given a Comic Relief sketch titled” The Curse of the Fatal Death” along with” Doctor Who Night.” Once again, the Doctor here is not an impression of an existing Doctor, but a new” Ninth” Doctor, played by Rowan Atkinson with just a tiny whiff of Blackadder. There are plenty of jokes in there, but those jokes come with production values at the more refined end of the classic series and a sense that everyone involved was just really hoping to create some Doctor Who.

According to Beckett-King,” I’m pretty certain the first Who I ever saw was the Comic Relief parody with Rowan Atkinson, and based on that, I wanted to grow up wearing tank tops and be Doctor Who.” ” I still think of the Doctor as ‘ Doctor Who’, to the irritation of Whovians everywhere. So I came to Who through parody, just like I did Citizen Kane through The Simpsons.

Curse of the Fatal Death may be the most successful Doctor Who parody ever in terms of future CV performance. The Doctor dies and regenerates multiple times over the course of the episode, and among others he turns into Hugh Grant, who got offered the role for real when Russell T Davies revived the show.

Grant has stated that I was offered the role of the Doctor a few years ago and was extremely pleased. The issue with those things is that only when you see them on screen that you think,” Damn, that was good, why did I say no?” &#8217, But then, knowing me, I&#8217, d probably make a mess of it. &#8221,

Richard E. Grant would later reprise his role as the Ninth Doctor in the animated film” Scream of the Shalka,” but some people preferred that role over others. Russell T Davies has told Doctor Who Magazine,” I thought he was terrible. I believed, to be honest, that he took the money and ran. It was a sluggish performance. He was never on our list to play the Doctor. &#8221,

However, when the episode” Rogue,” which was produced during Davies ‘ second tenure as showrunner, revealed all the Doctor’s previous incarnations, Richard E. Grant’s face was in there when he made a comeback as the Great Intelligence in season seven.

But the big success story from” Curse of the Fatal Death “was the writer, one Steven Moffat, and here’s where things get weird. Since it is obvious that Moffat eventually left to write some of the most beloved Doctor Who episodes in the 2005 revival before taking on the role of showrunner.

And if you watch Curse of the Fatal Death after watching Moffat’s Doctor Who series, you start to notice some things. Like that the Doctor faces the Master and the Daleks at the same time, which the Doctor wouldn’t actually do at the same time until” The Magician’s Apprentice /The Witch’s Familiar, “written by Moffat. Even a joke about the Daleks ‘ need for chairs is included in both of them.

Fans have come to know as” Timey Wimey,” a phrase coined by and used to describe many of Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who plots, and which features a lot of characters going back in time to set events up that they can exploit in the present.

In” The Curse of the Fatal Death,” The Doctor uses up their final regenerations, and then the universe, unable to do without him, allows the Doctor to regenerate into a Thirteenth, female incarnation ( Joanna Lumley ). The Doctor would use up their final regenerations under Steven Moffat, and when the universe could not do without him, Gallifrey grants the Doctor a Thirteenth, female incarnation ( Jodie Whittaker ). The Curse of the Fatal Death is “practically a speed run of everything Moffat wanted to do with it,” according to the author. It isn’t just an audition for writing Doctor Who.

The first article on Den of Geek was The Doctor Who Parodies That Were Truly Interviews.

For anyone looking to see classic mythological icons duke it out for divine supremacy, the fast-paced and fun to play trading card game Rush of Ikorr presents an epic opportunity to see myths and monsters throw down. Players pick from a variety of starter decks based on different global pantheons, drawn from mythological figures Ancient […]

The post Rush of Ikorr Brings Classic Mythology to Trading Card Games appeared first on Den of Geek.

Science fiction is very serious business, dealing with philosophical and social themes in ways that other genres simply can’t, asking questions about humanity and the nature of existence. Unfortunately, while science fiction is very, very serious, sometimes people have felt the need to make fun of it, even creating elaborate parodies. Recently we had a look at the complicated relationship Star Trek has had with the various works that have parodied it.

But perhaps even more than Star Trek, the biggest target for folks looking for something the spoof has been Doctor Who. We don’t know why, all those sets looked really convincing to us, and the special effects are pretty impressive if you think about the budget constraints they’re working under.

There is one reason though. One dark secret nestled in the heart of everyone who has ever decided to put on a comically long scarf and shake the screwdriver at some bins “for a laugh.”

Every parody is secretly a completely sincere audition.

And an even darker secret? Sometimes they work.

The Lenny Henry Show

Lenny Henry’s Doctor Who sketch in 1985 features a Doctor that wears a leather jacket and has a companion who fancies him, and sees him battling Cybermen led by an evil Cyber Thatcher in the far off year of 2010. While the leather jacket, Black Time Lord and implied TARDIS hanky panky are all extremely Nu Who, the Thatcher-parody Cybermen could be straight out of Andrew Cartmel’s era on the show.

As parodies-that-are-secretly-auditions go, Henry hits all the right notes. He delivers technobabble, does weird stuff to the TARDIS console, and of course, runs up and down lots of corridors.

And the work pays off, eventually.

A mere 35 years after his Doctor Who sketch, Henry appeared in the show itself as the villain Daniel Barton in the story “Spyfall.”

Every Episode of Popular Time Travel Show

The comedian Alasdair Beckett-King is best known for his online sketches, including Every Single Scandinavian Crime Drama, Every Mind-Bending TV Show, and eventually, inevitably, Every Episode of Popular Time Travel Show.

“I was quite nervous about doing Doctor Who because I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the lore,” Beckett-King says. “Usually I write sketches on my own, but for that one I recruited my comedy pals Declan Kennedy and Angus Dunican, who gave me lots of gags. I think I was most excited about spoofing the new-Who era visual effects, and doing a dodgy impression of Dan Starkey’s Strax.”

The thing is, the way a comedian approaches playing a parodic version of the Doctor is not all that different from an actor taking on the lead role in the show. In an interview with the Radio Times, Tom Baker said of playing the Doctor, “It’s just me trying to be amusing, or trying to be heroic in an amusing way.”

Meanwhile, when Beckett-King performed his sketch he says, “I suppose I did end up playing the Doctor as quite like myself, more due to a lack of acting range than a deliberate attempt to place my stamp on the character.”

He adds, “I had no choice about doing a generic Doctor, because I can’t really do Tom Baker, except occasionally when aiming for Patrick Stewart and missing. But I think veering between the generic and the specific is part of the fun of a parody: trying to do a supermarket own-brand version of the thing you’re spoofing and still hit all the familiar notes: a scarf, a jaunty hat, a vaguely professorial insouciance.”

Not long after Every Episode of Popular Time Travel Show went out, Beckett-King found himself in the BBC produced audio series Doctor Who: Redacted.

“Who says MANIFESTING doesn’t work? Me, I say that,” Beckett-King laughs. “I don’t know why I was cast, but I do wonder if the sketch was part of the reason. I played an alien foetus nicknamed ‘The Floater’ who was trying to kill the Doctor, in spite of being an interdimensional turd in a jar. I respect the hustle. It was a comic character, but I tried to approach it the way I generally approach spoofs – by playing it straight as I could.”

Inspector Spacetime

Inspector Spacetime started off as a one-note gag in the sitcom Community (created by Dan Harmon of Rick and Morty, if you want to talk “stuff that really wishes it were Doctor Who”). The character Abed becomes bereft at learning that one of his new favourite shows dies after six episodes (it’s British), only to then discover “Inspector Spacetime,” a series about a detective who travels through space and time in a phone box fighting robotic bins called “Blorgons.”

Nobody from the show-within-a-show has appeared on Doctor Who (yet), but Abed does meet an Inspector Spacetime superfan played by Matt Lucas … who goes on to become the Doctor’s companion Nardole.

Doctor Who Night

Let’s talk about Doctor Who’s “Wilderness Years,” the 16 years between Sylvester McCoy’s final story, “Survival” and Christopher Eccleston grabbing Billie Piper’s hand at the start of “Rose,” with only Paul McGann’s movie in between.

Why should we talk about lengthy Doctor Who hiatuses? No reason. No reason at all. Because obviously Doctor Who is alive and well and we’ve got a UNIT miniseries coming out in 2026 and producer Jane Tranter has said “it will keep going, one way or another” even if Russell T Davies is off writing for Channel 4 and searching Google’s News tab for “Doctor Who” mostly brings up articles about medical malpractice… we’re fine! We are fine.

Anyway, during the last (sorry, I mean, only) Wilderness Years, a brief crack of light in the darkness was BBC 2’s “Doctor Who Night” on November 13, 1999. It featured documentaries, introductory segments filmed by an ambiguously-in-character Tom Baker (cue a slew of fan theories that he’s the “Curator” from “The Day of the Doctor”), a disappointing paucity of actual Doctor Who episodes (they only managed the final episode of “The Daleks” and a rerun of Paul McGann’s move), and a selection of short sketches starring Mark Gatiss and David Walliams.

Those sketches included “The Pitch of Fear,” which imagined Sydney Newman pitching Doctor Who as a show that would run for 26 years, “The Kidnappers,” the weakest of the three that saw Gatiss and Walliams playing obsessive fans who’ve kidnapped Peter Davison, and finally, “The Web of Caves.” This is the only outright Who parody of the three, and is obviously the one where they’re having the most fun. It’s shot in black and white, in a Quarry, with Walliams as an ineffectual Doctor Who baddie. Gatiss plays the Doctor, again, not as an outright impression of any one incarnation, but as an audition for his own spin. When he steps out of the TARDIS and says, “Where have you bought me to this time old girl,” he’s not performing a sketch, he’s living out a fantasy.

And sure enough, when Doctor Who came back, Mark Gatiss was involved, writing several episodes of the show and appearing in it as Professor Richard Lazarus of “The Lazarus Experiment,” while Walliams would later turn up as the cowardly, oppressor appeasing alien Gibbis in “The God Complex.”

Curse of the Fatal Death

1999 was in many ways a highpoint of the Wilderness Years. In addition to getting “Doctor Who Night,” fans were also treated to a Comic Relief sketch “The Curse of the Fatal Death.” Once again, the Doctor here is not an impression of an existing Doctor, but a new “Ninth” Doctor, played by Rowan Atkinson with just a tiny whiff of Blackadder. It has plenty of gags, but those gags come with production values at the more polished end of the classic series, and real sense that everyone involved just really wanted to make some Doctor Who.

“I’m pretty certain the first Who I ever saw was the Comic Relief parody with Rowan Atkinson, and based on that I wanted to grow up to wear tank tops and be Doctor Who,” Beckett-King recalls. “I still think of the Doctor as ‘Doctor Who’, to the irritation of Whovians everywhere. So, I came to Who through parody, like I came to Citizen Kane via The Simpsons.”

As far as future CV performance goes, Curse of the Fatal Death may be the most successful Doctor Who parody ever. The Doctor dies and regenerates multiple times over the course of the episode, and among others he turns into Hugh Grant, who got offered the role for real when Russell T Davies revived the show.

Grant has said, “I was offered the role of the Doctor a few years back and was highly flattered. The danger with those things is that it’s only when you see it on screen that you think, ‘Damn, that was good, why did I say no?’ But then, knowing me, I’d probably make a mess of it.”

Another incarnation, Richard E. Grant would later go on to play the Ninth Doctor in the animated revival “Scream of the Shalka,” although some enjoyed that more than others. Russell T Davies has told Doctor Who Magazine, “I thought he was terrible. I thought he took the money and ran, to be honest. It was a lazy performance. He was never on our list to play the Doctor.”

Yet Richard E. Grant returned to play the Great Intelligence in season seven, and when the episode “Rogue,” under Davies’ second tenure as showrunner, revealed all the Doctor’s past incarnations, Richard E. Grant’s face was in there.

But the big success story from “Curse of the Fatal Death” was the writer, one Steven Moffat, and here’s where things get weird. Because obviously Moffat eventually went on to write some of the best beloved episodes of the Doctor Who 2005 revival, and then became the showrunner himself.

And if you watch Curse of the Fatal Death having seen Moffat’s series of Doctor Who, you start to notice certain things. Like that the Doctor faces the Master and the Daleks at the same time, which the Doctor wouldn’t actually do at the same time until “The Magician’s Apprentice /The Witch’s Familiar,” written by Moffat. Both even feature a joke about why the Daleks would have chairs.

And the plotline features a lot of characters going backwards in time to set events up that they can take advantage of in the present, something fans have come to know as “Timey Wimey,” a phrase coined by, and used to describe, a lot of Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who plots.

In “The Curse of the Fatal Death,” The Doctor uses up their final regenerations, and then the universe, unable to do without him, allows the Doctor to regenerate into a Thirteenth, female incarnation (Joanna Lumley). Under Steven Moffat, the Doctor would use up their final regenerations, then realising the universe is unable to do without him, Gallifrey allows the Doctor to regenerate into a Thirteenth, female incarnation (Jodie Whittaker). “The Curse of the Fatal Death” isn’t just an audition for writing Doctor Who, it’s practically a speed run of everything Moffat wanted to do with it.

The post The Doctor Who Parodies That Were Actually Auditions appeared first on Den of Geek.

As you probably already know, Warner Bros. Pictures is having a very good drop that follows a fantastic flower and a fantastic summer. That’s because the studio’s fourth and supposedly final mainline Conjuring picture, The Conjuring: Last Rites, proved that there is still life in the demonic thing, even as trades ]… ]

The Conjuring Box Office, Warner Bros, and the Diverse Slate initially appeared on Den of Geek.

Science fiction is a very serious business that addresses intellectual and social issues in ways that different genres just doesn’t, while also posing questions about society and the nature of existence. However, while science fiction is very, very severe, often citizens have felt the need to make fun of it, yet creating elaborate caricatures. Recently, we just examined the complex connection Star Trek has had with the different functions that have parodied it.

The main goal for people looking for something the pastiche has, perhaps even more than Star Trek, been Doctor Who. We don’t understand why, all those pieces looked actually convincing to us, and the special effects are quite amazing if you think about the budget considerations they’re working under.

However, there is one explanation. One dark underground nestled in the heart of everyone who has actually decided to put on a awkwardly long robe and shake the hammer at some boxes” for a laugh”.

Every parody is a secretly sincere audition in disguise.

And what’s the secret behind it all? Sometimes they work.

The Lenny Henry Show

A Doctor in a leather jacket and with a companion who fancies him, as depicted in a 1985 Lenny Henry Doctor Who sketch, battles Cybermen led by an evil Cyber Thatcher in the distant year of 2010 and in the far future. While the leather jacket, Black Time Lord and implied TARDIS hanky panky are all extremely Nu Who, the Thatcher-parody Cybermen could be straight out of Andrew Cartmel’s era on the show.

Henry hits all the right notes in the world of parodies-that-are-secretly-auditions. He writes technobabble, sends strange things to the TARDIS console, and runs up and down numerous corridors.

And the work pays off, eventually.

Henry first appeared in the show as the villain Daniel Barton in the story” Spyfall” just 35 years after his Doctor Who sketch.

Every episode of the well-known time travel television program

The comedian Alasdair Beckett-King is best known for his online sketches, including Every Single Scandinavian Crime Drama, Every Mind-Bending TV Show, and eventually, inevitably, Every episode of the well-known time travel television program.

” Doctor Who made me feel a little hesitant because I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the lore,” Beckett-King says. ” Usually I write sketches on my own, but for that one I teamed up with my comedy pals, Declan Kennedy and Angus Dunican, who gave me a lot of jokes. I think I was most excited about spoofing the new-Who era visual effects, and doing a dodgy impression of Dan Starkey’s Strax”.

The funny thing is that playing a parodic version of the Doctor is not all that different from an actor taking the lead role in the show. Tom Baker said in an interview with the Radio Times,” It&#8217, s just me trying to be amusing, or trying to be heroic in an amusing way,” when he spoke of playing the Doctor.

Meanwhile, when Beckett-King performed his sketch he says,” I suppose I did end up playing the Doctor as quite like myself, more due to a lack of acting range than a deliberate attempt to place my stamp on the character”.

He continues,” I had no choice about doing a generic Doctor, because I can’t really do Tom Baker, except occasionally when aiming for Patrick Stewart and missing.” However, I believe that trying to do a supermarket own-brand version of the thing you’re spoofing with all the familiar elements like a scarf, a jaunty hat, and a vaguely professorial insouciance is a part of the fun of a parody.

Not long after Every episode of the well-known time travel television program went out, Beckett-King found himself in the BBC produced audio series Doctor Who: Redacted.

” Who says manipulating isn’t effective? Beckett-King laughs,” Me, I say that.” ” I don’t know why I was cast, but I do wonder if the sketch was part of the reason. Despite being an interdimensional turd in a jar, I played an alien foetus known as” The Floater” who was attempting to kill the Doctor. I appreciate the hustle. It was a comic character, but I tried to approach it the way I generally approach spoofs – by playing it straight as I could”.

Inspector Spacetime

If you want to talk” stuff that really wishes it was Doctor Who,” watch Inspector Spacetime on the sitcom Community ( created by Dan Harmon of Rick and Morty ). The character Abed becomes bereft at learning that one of his new favourite shows dies after six episodes ( it’s British ), only to then discover” Inspector Spacetime”, a series about a detective who travels through space and time in a phone box fighting robotic bins called” Blorgons”.

No one from the show-within-a-show has ever appeared on Doctor Who (yet ), but Abed does run into an Inspector Spacetime superfan Matt Lucas, who later becomes the Doctor’s companion Nardole.

Doctor Who Night

Let’s talk about Doctor Who’s” Wilderness Years”, the 16 years between Sylvester McCoy’s final story,” Survival” and Christopher Eccleston grabbing Billie Piper’s hand at the start of” Rose”, with only Paul McGann’s movie in between.

Why should we discuss protracted Doctor Who hiatuses? No justification. No reason at all. Because Doctor Who is undoubtedly alive and well, and there will be a UNIT miniseries in 2026, and producer Jane Tranter has stated that “it will continue to grow, one way or the other,” even though Russell T. Davies is no longer writing for Channel 4 and searching Google’s News tab for” Doctor Who” frequently brings up articles about medical malpractice, we’re fine. We are all fine.

Anyway, during the last ( sorry, I mean, only ) Wilderness Years, a brief crack of light in the darkness was BBC 2’s” Doctor Who Night” on November 13, 1999. There were documentaries, introductions, and a host of fan theories that Tom Baker is the” Curator” from” The Day of the Doctor” ( cue a slew of fan theories that he’s the” Curator” from” The Day of the Doctor” ), as well as a few sketchy short sketches starring Mark Gatiss and David Walliams.

The Pitch of Fear, which depicted Sydney Newman pitching Doctor Who as a 26-year-old show,” The Kidnappers,” which saw Gatiss and Walliams playing obsessive fans who’ve kidnapped Peter Davison, and” The Web of Caves,” were just a few sketches from those sketches. This is the only outright Who parody of the three, and is obviously the one where they’re having the most fun. Walliams plays an ineffective Doctor Who baddie, and it was shot in black and white in a quarry. Gatiss portrays the Doctor once more as an audition for his own style, not as an outright representation of any one person. When he steps out of the TARDIS and says,” Where have you bought me to this time old girl”, he’s not performing a sketch, he’s living out a fantasy.

And sure enough, Mark Gatiss was involved when Doctor Who returned, writing several episodes of the show and appearing as Professor Richard Lazarus of” The Lazarus Experiment,” Walliams would later appear as the cowardly, oppressor appeasing alien Gibbis in” The God Complex.”

Curse of the Fatal Death

1999 was in many ways a highpoint of the Wilderness Years. Fans were also given a Comic Relief sketch titled” The Curse of the Fatal Death” along with” Doctor Who Night.” Once again, Rowan Atkinson’s portrayal of the Doctor in this case is a new” Ninth” Doctor, with just a small hint of Blackadder. It has plenty of gags, but those gags come with production values at the more polished end of the classic series, and real sense that everyone involved just really wanted to make some Doctor Who.

According to Beckett-King,” I’m pretty certain the first Who I ever saw was the Comic Relief parody with Rowan Atkinson, and based on that, I wanted to grow up wearing tank tops and be Doctor Who.” ” To the annoyance of Whovians everywhere, I still think of the Doctor as” Doctor Who”. So, I came to Who through parody, like I came to Citizen Kane via The Simpsons“.

Curse of the Fatal Death may be the most successful Doctor Who parody ever in terms of future CV performances. The Doctor repeatedly regenerates throughout the episode, including turning into Hugh Grant, who was given the role when Russell T. Davies revived the show.

Grant has said, &#8220, I was offered the role of the Doctor a few years back and was highly flattered. The issue with those things is that only when you see them on screen do you realize,” Damn, that was good, why did I say no?” But knowing me, I’d probably make a mess of it. &#8221,

Richard E. Grant would later reprise his role as the Ninth Doctor in the animated film” Scream of the Shalka,” but some people preferred that role more than others. Russell T Davies once stated to Doctor Who Magazine,” I thought he was terrible. I thought he took the money and ran, to be honest. It was a sluggish performance. He was never put on our wish list to play the Doctor. &#8221,

However, Richard E. Grant made a comeback as the Great Intelligence in season seven, and Richard E. Grant’s face was revealed when the episode” Rogue,” which was produced by Davies in his second year as showrunner, was revealed.

However, Steven Moffat, the author of” Curse of the Fatal Death,” was the big success story, and this is where things start to get strange. Because obviously Moffat eventually went on to write some of the best beloved episodes of the Doctor Who 2005 revival, and then became the showrunner himself.

And if you watch Curse of the Fatal Death after watching Moffat’s Doctor Who series, you start to notice some things. Like that the Doctor and the Daleks are confronted at the same time, which the Doctor wouldn’t actually do until” The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar,” written by Moffat. Both even feature a joke about why the Daleks would have chairs.

And the plotline includes a lot of characters going back in time to create situations that they can exploit in the future, which fans have come to know as” Timey Wimey,” a term used to describe many of Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who plots.

The Doctor uses up their final regenerations in” The Curse of the Fatal Death,” and the universe, unable to do without him, grants the Doctor a Thirteenth, female incarnation ( Joanna Lumley ). Under Steven Moffat, the Doctor would use up their final regenerations, then realising the universe is unable to do without him, Gallifrey allows the Doctor to regenerate into a Thirteenth, female incarnation ( Jodie Whittaker )”. The Fatal Death’s Curse is “practically a speed run of everything Moffat wanted to do with it.” It isn’t just an audition for writing Doctor Who.

The first post on Den of Geek was The Doctor Who Parodies That Were Actually Auditions.

One of the most powerful gentle abilities we have at our disposal is the ability to work together to improve our designs while developing our own abilities and perspectives, regardless of how it is used or what it might be called.

Feedback is also one of the most underestimated equipment, and generally by assuming that we’re now great at it, we settle, forgetting that it’s a skill that can be trained, grown, and improved. Bad feedback can cause conflict in jobs, lower motivation, and negatively impact faith and teamwork over the long term. Quality comments can be a revolutionary force.

Practicing our knowledge is absolutely a good way to enhance, but the learning gets yet faster when it’s paired with a good base that programs and focuses the exercise. What are some fundamental components of providing effective opinions? And how can comments be adjusted for rural and distributed job settings?

On the web, we may find a long history of sequential comments: code was written and discussed on mailing lists since the beginning of open source. Currently, engineers engage on pull calls, developers post in their favourite design tools, project managers and sprint masters exchange ideas on tickets, and so on.

Design analysis is often the label used for a type of input that’s provided to make our job better, jointly. So it generally adheres to many of the concepts with suggestions, but it also has some differences.

The material

The content of the feedback serves as the foundation for every effective criticism, so we need to start there. There are many versions that you can use to design your information. The one that I personally like best—because it’s obvious and actionable—is this one from Lara Hogan.

This formula is typically used to provide feedback to people, but it also fits really well in a design criticism because it finally addresses one of the main inquiries that we work on: What? Where? Why? How? Imagine that you’re giving some comments about some pattern function that spans several screens, like an onboard movement: there are some pages shown, a stream blueprint, and an outline of the decisions made. You notice a flaw in the situation. If you keep the three components of the equation in mind, you’ll have a mental unit that can help you become more precise and effective.

A comment that appears to be acceptable at first glance could be included in some feedback, as it only appears to partially fulfill the requirements. But does it?

Not confident about the keys ‘ patterns and hierarchy—it feels off. May you alter them?

Observation for style feedback doesn’t only mean pointing out which part of the software your input refers to, but it also refers to offering a viewpoint that’s as specific as possible. Do you offer the user’s viewpoint? Your expert perspective? A business perspective? From the perspective of the project manager? A first-time user’s perspective?

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back.

Impact is about the why. Just pointing out a UI element might sometimes be enough if the issue may be obvious, but more often than not, you should add an explanation of what you’re pointing out.

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow.

The question approach is meant to provide open guidance by eliciting the critical thinking in the designer receiving the feedback. Notably, in Lara’s equation she provides a second approach: request, which instead provides guidance toward a specific solution. While that’s a viable option for general feedback, in my experience, going back to the question approach typically leads to the best solutions because designers are generally more at ease with having an open space to experiment with.

The difference between the two can be exemplified with, for the question approach:

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Would it make sense to unify them?

Or, for the request approach:

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same pair of forward and back buttons.

At this point in some situations, it might be useful to integrate with an extra why: why you consider the given suggestion to be better.

When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.

Choosing the question approach or the request approach can also at times be a matter of personal preference. I spent a while working on improving my feedback, conducting anonymous feedback reviews and sharing feedback with others. After a few rounds of this work and a year later, I got a positive response: my feedback came across as effective and grounded. Until I changed teams. Quite unexpected, my next round of criticism from one particular person wasn’t very positive. The reason is that I had previously tried not to be prescriptive in my advice—because the people who I was previously working with preferred the open-ended question format over the request style of suggestions. However, there was one person in this other team who now preferred specific guidance. So I adapted my feedback for them to include requests.

One comment that I heard come up a few times is that this kind of feedback is quite long, and it doesn’t seem very efficient. No, but also yes. Let’s explore both sides.

No, this kind of feedback is effective because the length is a byproduct of clarity, and giving this kind of feedback can provide precisely enough information for a sound fix. Also if we zoom out, it can reduce future back-and-forth conversations and misunderstandings, improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of collaboration beyond the single comment. Imagine that in the example above the feedback were instead just,” Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons”. Since the designer receiving this feedback wouldn’t have much to go by, they might just implement the change. In later iterations, the interface might change or they might introduce new features—and maybe that change might not make sense anymore. The designer might assume that the change is about consistency without the explanation, but what if it wasn’t? So there could now be an underlying concern that changing the buttons would be perceived as a regression.

Yes, this style of feedback is not always efficient because the points in some comments don’t always need to be exhaustive, sometimes because certain changes may be obvious (” The font used doesn’t follow our guidelines” ) and sometimes because the team may have a lot of internal knowledge such that some of the whys may be implied.

Therefore, the above equation serves as a mnemonic to reflect and enhance the practice rather than a strict template for feedback. Even after years of active work on my critiques, I still from time to time go back to this formula and reflect on whether what I just wrote is effective.

The atmosphere

Well-grounded content is the foundation of feedback, but that’s not really enough. The soft skills of the person who’s providing the critique can multiply the likelihood that the feedback will be well received and understood. It has been demonstrated that only positive feedback can lead to sustained change in people, and tone alone can determine whether content is rejected or welcomed.

Since our goal is to be understood and to have a positive working environment, tone is essential to work on. I’ve tried to summarize the necessary soft skills over the years using a formula that resembles that of the content receptivity equation.

Respectful feedback comes across as grounded, solid, and constructive. It’s the kind of feedback that, whether it’s positive or negative, is perceived as useful and fair.

Timing refers to the moment when the feedback occurs. To-the-point feedback doesn’t have much hope of being well received if it’s given at the wrong time. When a new feature’s entire high-level information architecture is about to go live, it might still be relevant if the questioning raises a significant blocker that no one saw, but those concerns are much more likely to have to wait for a later revision. So in general, attune your feedback to the stage of the project. Early iteration? Iteration later? Polishing work in progress? Each of these needs varies. The right timing will make it more likely that your feedback will be well received.

Attitude is the equivalent of intent, and in the context of person-to-person feedback, it can be referred to as radical candor. Before writing, it’s important to make sure the person we’re writing will actually benefit them and improve the overall project. This might be a hard reflection at times because maybe we don’t want to admit that we don’t really appreciate that person. Hopefully that’s not the case, but it can happen, and that’s okay. Acknowledging and owning that can help you make up for that: how would I write if I really cared about them? How can I avoid being passive aggressive? How can I encourage constructive behavior?

Form is relevant especially in a diverse and cross-cultural work environments because having great content, perfect timing, and the right attitude might not come across if the way that we write creates misunderstandings. There could be many reasons for this: some words might cause particular reactions, some non-native speakers might not understand all the nuances of some sentences, and other times our brains might be different and we might perceive the world differently. Neurodiversity must be taken into account. Whatever the reason, it’s important to review not just what we write but how.

A few years back, I was asking for some feedback on how I give feedback. I was given some helpful advice, but I also found a surprise in my comment. They pointed out that when I wrote” Oh, ]… ]”, I made them feel stupid. That wasn’t my intention at all! I felt really bad, and I just realized that I provided feedback to them for months, and every time I might have made them feel stupid. I was horrified … but also thankful. I quickly changed my situation by adding “oh” to my list of replaced words (your choice between aText, TextExpander, or others ) so that when I typed “oh,” it was immediately deleted.

Something to highlight because it’s quite frequent—especially in teams that have a strong group spirit—is that people tend to beat around the bush. It’s important to keep in mind that having a positive attitude doesn’t necessarily mean passing judgment on the feedback; rather, it simply means that you give it constructive and respectful feedback, whether it be difficult or positive. The nicest thing that you can do for someone is to help them grow.

We have a great advantage in giving feedback in written form: it can be reviewed by another person who isn’t directly involved, which can help to reduce or remove any bias that might be there. The best, most insightful moments for me came when I shared a comment and asked a trusted person how it sounds, how can I do it better, or even” How would you have written it”? I discovered that by seeing the two versions side by side, I’ve learned a lot.

The format

Asynchronous feedback also has a significant inherent benefit: we can devote more time to making sure that the suggestions ‘ clarity of communication and actionability fulfill two main objectives.

Let’s imagine that someone shared a design iteration for a project. You are reviewing it and leaving a comment. There are many ways to accomplish this, and context is of course important, but let’s try to think about some things that might be worthwhile to take into account.

In terms of clarity, start by grounding the critique that you’re about to give by providing context. This includes specifically describing where you’re coming from: do you have a thorough understanding of the project, or is this your first time seeing it? Are you coming from a high-level perspective, or are you figuring out the details? Are there regressions? Which user’s point of view are you addressing when offering your feedback? Is the design iteration at a point where it would be okay to ship this, or are there major things that need to be addressed first?

Even if you’re giving feedback to a team that already has some project information, providing context is helpful. And context is absolutely essential when giving cross-team feedback. If I were to review a design that might be indirectly related to my work, and if I had no knowledge about how the project arrived at that point, I would say so, highlighting my take as external.

We frequently concentrate on the negatives and attempt to list every improvement that could be made. That’s of course important, but it’s just as important—if not more—to focus on the positives, especially if you saw progress from the previous iteration. Although this may seem superfluous, it’s important to remember that design has a number of possible solutions to each problem. So pointing out that the design solution that was chosen is good and explaining why it’s good has two major benefits: it confirms that the approach taken was solid, and it helps to ground your negative feedback. In the longer term, sharing positive feedback can help prevent regressions on things that are going well because those things will have been highlighted as important. Positive feedback can also help, as an added bonus, prevent impostor syndrome.

There’s one powerful approach that combines both context and a focus on the positives: frame how the design is better than the status quo ( compared to a previous iteration, competitors, or benchmarks ) and why, and then on that foundation, you can add what could be improved. There is a significant difference between a critique of a design that is already in good shape and one that isn’t quite there yet.

Another way that you can improve your feedback is to depersonalize the feedback: the comments should always be about the work, never about the person who made it. It’s” This button isn’t well aligned” versus” You haven’t aligned this button well”. Just before sending, review your writing to make changes to this.

In terms of actionability, one of the best approaches to help the designer who’s reading through your feedback is to split it into bullet points or paragraphs, which are easier to review and analyze one by one. You might also think about breaking up the feedback into sections or even across multiple comments if it is longer. Of course, adding screenshots or signifying markers of the specific part of the interface you’re referring to can also be especially useful.

One approach that I’ve personally used effectively in some contexts is to enhance the bullet points with four markers using emojis. A red square indicates that it is something I consider blocking, a yellow diamond indicates that it should be changed, and a green circle indicates that it is fully confirmed. I also use a blue spiral � � for either something that I’m not sure about, an exploration, an open alternative, or just a note. However, I’d only use this strategy on teams where I’ve already established a high level of trust because the impact could be quite demoralizing if I had to deliver a lot of red squares, and I’d change how I’d communicate that a little.

Let’s see how this would work by reusing the example that we used earlier as the first bullet point in this list:

• 🔶 Navigation—When I see these two buttons, I anticipate one to go forward and the other to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.
• � � Overall— I think the page is solid, and this is good enough to be our release candidate for a version 1.0.
• � � Metrics—Good improvement in the buttons on the metrics area, the improved contrast and new focus style make them more accessible.
• Button Style: Using the green accent in this context gives the impression that it’s a positive action because green is typically seen as a confirmation color. Do we need to explore a different color?
• Considering the number of items on the page and the overall page hierarchy, it seems to me that the tiles should use Subtitle 2 instead of Subtitle 1. This will keep the visual hierarchy more consistent.
• � � Background—Using a light texture works well, but I wonder whether it adds too much noise in this kind of page. What is the purpose behind using that?

What about giving feedback directly in Figma or another design tool that allows in-place feedback? These are generally difficult to use because they conceal discussions and are harder to follow, but they can be very useful in the right context. Just make sure that each of the comments is separate so that it’s easier to match each discussion to a single task, similar to the idea of splitting mentioned above.

One final note: say the obvious. Sometimes we might feel good or bad about something, so we don’t say it. Or sometimes we might have a doubt that we don’t express because the question might sound stupid. Say it, that’s fine. You might have to reword it a little bit to make the reader feel more comfortable, but don’t hold it back. Good feedback is transparent, even when it may be obvious.

Another benefit of asynchronous feedback is that written feedback automatically monitors decisions. Especially in large projects,” Why did we do this”? There’s nothing better than open, transparent discussions that can be reviewed at any time, and this could be a question that arises from time to time. For this reason, I recommend using software that saves these discussions, without hiding them once they are resolved.

Content, tone, and format. Although each of these subjects offers a useful model, focusing on improving eight of the subjects ‘ focus points, including observation, impact, question, timing, attitude, form, clarity, and actionability, is a lot of work to complete at once. One effective approach is to take them one by one: first identify the area that you lack the most (either from your perspective or from feedback from others ) and start there. Then the third, the third, and so on. At first you’ll have to put in extra time for every piece of feedback that you give, but after a while, it’ll become second nature, and your impact on the work will multiply.

Thanks to Brie Anne Demkiw and Mike Shelton for reviewing the first draft of this article.

” Any feedback?” is perhaps one of the worst ways to ask for opinions. It’s obscure and unreliable, and it doesn’t give a clear picture of what we’re looking for. Getting good opinions starts sooner than we might hope: it starts with the demand.

When we realize that receiving input can be seen as a form of design study, it might seem counterintuitive to begin the process with a question. In the same way that we wouldn’t perform any studies without the correct questions to get the insight that we need, the best way to ask for feedback is also to build strong issues.

Design criticism is not a one-time procedure. Sure, any great comments process continues until the project is finished, but this is especially true for layout because architecture work continues iteration after iteration, from a high level to the finest details. Each stage requires its unique set of questions.

And suddenly, as with any great research, we need to examine what we got up, get to the base of its perspectives, and take action. Problem, generation, and analysis. This look at each of those.

The query

Being available to input is important, but we need to be specific about what we’re looking for. Any comments,” What do you think,” or” I’d love to hear your mind” at the end of a presentation are likely to garner a lot of different ideas, or worse, to make people follow the lead of the first speaker. And next… we get frustrated because vague issues like those you turn a high-level moves review into folks rather commenting on the borders of buttons. Which theme may be significant, so it might be difficult to get the team to choose the one you wanted to concentrate on.

But how do we get into this scenario? It’s a combination of various aspects. One is that we don’t often consider asking as a part of the input approach. Another is how healthy it is to keep the issue open and assume that everyone else will agree. Another is that in nonprofessional debate, there’s usually no need to be that exact. In summary, we tend to undervalue the value of the concerns, so we don’t work to make them better.

The work of asking good questions guidelines and focuses the criticism. It also serves as a form of acceptance, outlining your willingness to make comments and the types of comments you want to receive. It puts people in the right emotional position, especially in situations when they weren’t expecting to provide feedback.

There isn’t a second best method to request comments. It simply needs to be certain, and precision may take several shapes. The period than depth model for design critique has been a particularly helpful tool for my coaching.

” Stage” refers to each of the steps of the process—in our event, the design process. The type of input changes as the customer research moves on to the final design. But within a single stage, one might also examine whether some assumptions are correct and whether there’s been a suitable language of the amassed input into updated designs as the job has evolved. The layers of user experience could serve as a starting point for potential questions. What do you want to know: Project objectives? user requirements? Functionality? Content? Interaction design? Information architecture UI design? navigation planning Visual design? Branding?

Here’re a few example questions that are precise and to the point that refer to different layers:

• Functionality: Is it desirable to automate account creation?
• Interaction design: Take a look through the updated flow and let me know whether you see any steps or error states that I might’ve missed.
• Information architecture: This page contains two competing pieces of information. Is the structure effective in communicating them both?
• User interface design: What do you think about the top-most error counter, which ensures that you can see the next error even when the error is outside the viewport?
• Navigation design: From research, we identified these second-level navigation items, but once you’re on the page, the list feels too long and hard to navigate. Are there any ways to deal with this?
• Visual design: Are the sticky notifications in the bottom-right corner visible enough?

How much of a presentation’s depth would be on the other axis of specificity. For example, we might have introduced a new end-to-end flow, but there was a specific view that you found particularly challenging and you’d like a detailed review of that. This can be especially helpful when switching between iterations because it’s crucial to highlight the changes made.

There are other things that we can consider when we want to achieve more specific—and more effective—questions.

A quick fix is to get rid of the generic qualifiers from questions like “good”, “well,” “nice,” “bad,” “okay,” and” cool.” For example, asking,” When the block opens and the buttons appear, is this interaction good”? is it possible to look specific, but you can spot the “good” qualifier and make the question” When the block opens and the buttons appear, is it clear what the next action is” look like?

Sometimes we actually do want broad feedback. Although that’s uncommon, it can occur. In that sense, you might still make it explicit that you’re looking for a wide range of opinions, whether at a high level or with details. Or perhaps you should just say,” At first glance, what do you think”? so that it’s clear that what you’re asking is open ended but focused on someone’s impression after their first five seconds of looking at it.

Sometimes the project is particularly broad, and some areas may have already been thoroughly explored. In these situations, it might be useful to explicitly say that some parts are already locked in and aren’t open to feedback. Although it’s not something I’d recommend in general, I’ve found it helpful in avoiding falling into rabbit holes like those that could lead to further refinement but aren’t what’s important right now.

Asking specific questions can completely change the quality of the feedback that you receive. People with less refined criticism will now be able to provide more actionable feedback, and even expert designers will appreciate the clarity and effectiveness gained from concentrating solely on what’s needed. It can save a lot of time and frustration.

The iteration

Design iterations are probably the most visible part of the design work, and they provide a natural checkpoint for feedback. Many design tools have inline commenting, but many of those methods typically display changes as a single fluid stream in the same file. These methods cause conversations to vanish once they’re resolved, update shared UI components automatically, and require designs to always display the most recent version unless these would-be useful features were manually turned off. The implied goal that these design tools seem to have is to arrive at just one final copy with all discussions closed, probably because they inherited patterns from how written documents are collaboratively edited. That approach to design critiques is probably not the best approach, but some teams might benefit from it even if I don’t want to be too prescriptive.

The asynchronous design-critique approach that I find most effective is to create explicit checkpoints for discussion. For this, I’ll use the term iteration post. It refers to a write-up or presentation of the design iteration followed by a discussion thread of some kind. Any platform that can accommodate this type of structure can use this. By the way, when I refer to a “write-up or presentation“, I’m including video recordings or other media too: as long as it’s asynchronous, it works.

There are many benefits to using iteration posts:

• It creates a rhythm in the design work so that the designer can review feedback from each iteration and prepare for the next.
• It makes decisions accessible for upcoming review, and conversed conversations are also always available.
• It creates a record of how the design changed over time.
• It might also make it simpler to collect and act on feedback depending on the tool.

These posts of course don’t mean that no other feedback approach should be used, just that iteration posts could be the primary rhythm for a remote design team to use. And from there, there can develop additional feedback techniques ( such as live critique, pair designing, or inline comments ).

I don’t think there’s a standard format for iteration posts. However, there are a few high-level elements that make sense to include as a baseline:

1. The goal
2. The layout
3. The list of changes
4. The querys

Each project is likely to have a goal, and hopefully it’s something that’s already been summarized in a single sentence somewhere else, such as the client brief, the product manager’s outline, or the project owner’s request. In every iteration post, I would copy and paste this, so I could do it again. The idea is to provide context and to repeat what’s essential to make each iteration post complete so that there’s no need to find information spread across multiple posts. The most recent iteration post will have everything I need if I want to know about the most recent design.

This copy-and-paste part introduces another relevant concept: alignment comes from repetition. Therefore, repeating information in posts is actually very effective at ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

The design is then the actual series of information-architecture outlines, diagrams, flows, maps, wireframes, screens, visuals, and any other kind of design work that’s been done. It’s any design object, to put it briefly. For the final stages of work, I prefer the term blueprint to emphasize that I’ll be showing full flows instead of individual screens to make it easier to understand the bigger picture.

Because it makes it easier to refer to the objects, it might also be helpful to have clear names on them. Write the post in a way that helps people understand the work. It’s not much different from creating a strong live presentation.

For an efficient discussion, you should also include a bullet list of the changes from the previous iteration to let people focus on what’s new, which can be especially useful for larger pieces of work where keeping track, iteration after iteration, could become a challenge.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, it’s crucial that you include a list of the questions to help you guide the design critique in the desired direction. Doing this as a numbered list can also help make it easier to refer to each question by its number.

Not every iteration is the same. Earlier iterations don’t need to be as tightly focused—they can be more exploratory and experimental, maybe even breaking some of the design-language guidelines to see what’s possible. Then, later, the iterations begin coming to a decision and improving it until the feature development is complete.

I want to highlight that even if these iteration posts are written and conceived as checkpoints, by no means do they need to be exhaustive. A post might be a draft, just a concept to start a discussion, or it might be a cumulative list of all the features that have been added over the course of each iteration until the full picture is achieved.

Over time, I also started using specific labels for incremental iterations: i1, i2, i3, and so on. Although this may seem like a minor labeling tip, it can be useful in many ways:

• Unique—It’s a clear unique marker. Everyone knows where to go to review things, and it’s simple to say” This was discussed in i4″ with each project.
• Unassuming—It works like versions ( such as v1, v2, and v3 ) but in contrast, versions create the impression of something that’s big, exhaustive, and complete. Exploratory, incomplete, or partial should be the definition of an argument.
• Future proof—It resolves the “final” naming problem that you can run into with versions. No more files with the title “final final complete no-really-its-done” Within each project, the largest number always represents the latest iteration.

The wording release candidate (RC ) could be used to indicate when a design is finished enough to be worked on, even if there are some areas that still need improvement and, in turn, require more iterations, such as” with i8 we reached RC” or “i12 is an RC” to indicate when it is finished.

The review

What typically occurs during a design critique is an open discussion, with a back and forth between parties that can be very productive. This approach is particularly effective during live, synchronous feedback. However, when we work asynchronously, using a different approach is more effective: we can adopt a user-research mindset. Written feedback from teammates, stakeholders, or others can be treated as if it were the result of user interviews and surveys, and we can analyze it accordingly.

Asynchronous feedback is particularly effective around these friction points because of this shift’s significant benefits:

1. It removes the pressure to reply to everyone.
2. It lessens the annoyance of snoop-by comments.
3. It lessens our personal stake.

The first friction is being forced to respond to every comment. Sometimes we write the iteration post, and we get replies from our team. It’s simple, straightforward, and doesn’t cause any issues. But other times, some solutions might require more in-depth discussions, and the amount of replies can quickly increase, which can create a tension between trying to be a good team player by replying to everyone and doing the next design iteration. If the respondent is a stakeholder or a person directly involved in the project, this might be especially true. We need to accept that this pressure is absolutely normal, and it’s human nature to try to accommodate people who we care about. Responding to all comments at times can be effective, but when we consider a design critique more like user research, we realize that we don’t need to respond to every comment, and there are alternatives in asynchronous spaces:

One is to let the next iteration speak for itself. The response is received when the design changes and a follow-up iteration is made. You might tag all the people who were involved in the previous discussion, but even that’s a choice, not a requirement.
• Another option is to respond politely to acknowledge each comment, such as” Understood. Thank you”,” Good points— I’ll review”, or” Thanks. These will be included in the upcoming iteration. In some cases, this could also be just a single top-level comment along the lines of” Thanks for all the feedback everyone—the next iteration is coming soon”!
• Another option is to quickly summarize the comments before moving on. Depending on your workflow, this can be particularly useful as it can provide a simplified checklist that you can then use for the next iteration.

The swoop-by comment, which is the kind of feedback that comes from a member of the project or team who might not be aware of the context, restrictions, decisions, or requirements —or of the discussions from earlier iterations. On their side, there’s something that one can hope that they might learn: they could start to acknowledge that they’re doing this and they could be more conscious in outlining where they’re coming from. Swoop-by comments frequently prompt the simple thought,” We’ve already discussed this,” and it can be frustrating to have to keep saying the same thing over and over.

Let’s begin by acknowledging again that there’s no need to reply to every comment. However, if responding to a previously litigated point might be helpful, a brief response with a link to the previous discussion for additional information is typically sufficient. Remember, alignment comes from repetition, so it’s okay to repeat things sometimes!

Swoop-by commenting can still be useful for two reasons: first, they might point out something that isn’t clear, and second, they might have the power to fit in with a user’s perspective when they are seeing the design for the first time. Sure, you’ll still be frustrated, but that might at least help in dealing with it.

The personal stake we might have in relation to the design could be the third friction point, which might cause us to feel defensive if the review turned out to be more of a discussion. Treating feedback as user research helps us create a healthy distance between the people giving us feedback and our ego ( because yes, even if we don’t want to admit it, it’s there ). In the end, putting everything in aggregate form helps us to prioritize our work more.

Always remember that while you need to listen to stakeholders, project owners, and specific advice, you don’t have to accept every piece of feedback. You must examine it and come up with a rationale for your choice, but sometimes “no” is the best choice.

As the designer leading the project, you’re in charge of that decision. In the end, everyone has their area of expertise, and as a designer, you are the one with the most background and knowledge to make the right choice. And by listening to the feedback that you’ve received, you’re making sure that it’s also the best and most balanced decision.

Thanks to Mike Shelton and Brie Anne Demkiw for their initial review of this article.