Category: Blog

Humility, a writer’s most important quality, has a great circle to it. What about sincerity, an business manager’s important value? Or a surgeon’s? Or a teacher’s? They all have fantastic sounds. When humility is our guiding light, the course is usually available for fulfillment, development, relation, and commitment. We’re going to discuss why in this book.

That said, this is a guide for developers, and to that conclusion, I’d like to begin with a story—well, a voyage, actually. Along the way, I’m going to render myself a little vulnerable. I call it:

The Absurd Pate of Justin: The Tale of Justin

When I was coming out of arts school, a long-haired, goateed novice, write was a known quantity to me, design on the web, however, was riddled with complexities to understand and learn, a problem to be solved. Although I had formal training in typography, layout, and creative design, what most intrigued me was how these traditional skills could be applied to a young modern landscape. This style would eventually form the rest of my profession.

So I devoured HTML and JavaScript novels into the wee hours of the morning and self-taught myself how to code during my freshman year rather than student and go into print like many of my companions. I wanted—nay, needed—to better understand the underlying relevance of what my design decisions may think when rendered in a website.

The so-called” Wild West” of website design existed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Manufacturers at the time were all figuring out how to use layout and visual connection to the online environment. What regulations were in place? How may we break them and also engage, entertain, and present information? How could my values, which include value, humility, and relation, go along with that on a more general degree? I was eager to find out.

Those are amazing factors between non-career relationships and the world of design, even though I’m referring to a different era. What are your main passions, or ideals, that elevate medium? The main themes are the same, basically the same as what we previously discussed on the immediate parallels between what fulfills you, independent of the physical or digital realms.

First within tables, animated GIFs, Flash, then with Web Standards, divs, and CSS, there was personality, raw unbridled creativity, and unique means of presentment that often defied any semblance of a visible grid. Splash screens and “browser requirement” pages aplenty. Usability and accessibility were typically victims of such a creation, but such paramount facets of any digital design were largely (and, in hindsight, unfairly) disregarded at the expense of experimentation.

For instance, this iteration of my personal portfolio site (” the pseudoroom” ) from that time was experimental if not a little overt in terms of the visual presentation of the idea of a living sketchbook. Quite skeuomorphic. This one involved sketching and then passing a Photoshop file back and forth to experiment with various customer interactions with fellow artist and dear companion Marc Clancy, who is now a co-founder of the creative task organizing app Milanote. Finally, I’d break it down and script it into a modern layout.

Along with pattern book pieces, the site even offered free downloads for Mac OS customizations: pc wallpapers that were successfully design experimentation, custom-designed typefaces, and desktop icons.

GUI Galaxy was a design, pixel art, and Mac-centric news portal that graphic designer friends and I developed from the beginning.

Design news portals were incredibly popular at the time, and they now considered Tweet-sized, small-format snippets of relevant news from the categories I previously covered. If you took Twitter, curated it to a few categories, and wrapped it in a custom-branded experience, you’d have a design news portal from the late 90s / early 2000s.

We had evolved into a bandwidth-sensitive, award-winning, much more accessibility-conscious website using web standards. Still ripe with experimentation, yet more mindful of equitable engagement. There are a few content panes here, with both Mac-focused news and general news (tech, design ) to be seen. We also offered many of the custom downloads I cited before as present on my folio site but branded and themed to GUI Galaxy.

The presentation layer consists of international design, illustration, and news author collaboration, and the backbone of the website was a homegrown CMS. And the collaboration effort here, in addition to experimentation on a’ brand’ and content delivery, was hitting my core. We were creating a global audience by creating something bigger than just one of us.

Collaboration and connection transcend medium in their impact, immensely fulfilling me as a designer.

Now, why am I taking you on this trip through design memory lane? Two reasons.

First of all, there’s a reason for the nostalgia for the” Wild West” era of design that so many personal portfolio and design portals sprang from the past. Ultra-finely detailed pixel art UI, custom illustration, bespoke vector graphics, all underpinned by a strong design community.

The web design industry has experienced stagnation in recent years. I suspect there’s a strong chance you’ve seen a site whose structure looks something like this: a hero image / banner with text overlaid, perhaps with a lovely rotating carousel of images ( laying the snark on heavy there ), a call to action, and three columns of sub-content directly beneath. Perhaps an icon library is used with selections that only vaguely relate to their respective content is used.

Design, as it’s applied to the digital landscape, is in dire need of thoughtful layout, typography, and visual engagement that goes hand-in-hand with all the modern considerations we now know are paramount: usability. accessibility. Load times and bandwidth- sensitive content delivery. A user-friendly presentation that connects with people wherever they are. We must be mindful of, and respectful toward, those concerns—but not at the expense of creativity of visual communication or via replicating cookie-cutter layouts.

Pixel Issues

Websites during this period were often designed and built on Macs whose OS and desktops looked something like this. Although Mac OS 7.5 is available, 8 and 9 are not very different.

How could any single icon, at any point, stand out and grab my attention, fascinated me? In this example, the user’s desktop is tidy, but think of a more realistic example with icon pandemonium. How did it maintain cohesion among the group, for example, if an icon was a part of a larger system grouping ( fonts, extensions, control panels )?

These were 32 x 32 pixel creations, utilizing a 256-color palette, designed pixel-by-pixel as mini mosaics. Under such absurd constraints, this seemed to me to be the embodiment of digital visual communication. And often, ridiculous restrictions can yield the purification of concept and theme.

So I started doing my homework and conducting research. I was a student of this new medium, hungry to dissect, process, discover, and make it my own.

I wanted to see how I could push the boundaries of a 32×32 pixel grid with that 256-color palette, expanding upon the idea of exploration. Those ridiculous constraints forced a clarity of concept and presentation that I found incredibly appealing. I was thrown the digital gauntlet, and that challenge fueled my determination. And so, in my dorm room into the wee hours of the morning, I toiled away, bringing conceptual sketches into mini mosaic fruition.

These are some of my creations that made use of ResEdit, the only program I had at the time, to create icons. ResEdit was a clunky, built-in Mac OS utility not really made for exactly what we were using it for. Research is at the center of all of this endeavor. Challenge. Problem-solving Again, these core connection-based values are agnostic of medium.

There’s one more design portal I want to talk about, which also serves as the second reason for my story to bring this all together.

This is the Kaliber 1000, or K10k, short for. K10k was founded in 1998 by Michael Schmidt and Toke Nygaard, and was the design news portal on the web during this period. It was the ideal setting for me, my friend, with its pixel art-filled presentation, meticulous attention to detail, and many of the site’s more well-known designers who were invited to be news authors. With respect where respect is due, GUI Galaxy’s concept was inspired by what these folks were doing.

For my part, the combination of my web design work and pixel art exploration began to get me some notoriety in the design scene. K10k eventually figured out that I was one of their very limited group of news writers who could contribute content to the website.

Amongst my personal work and side projects —and now with this inclusion—in the design community, this put me on the map. Additionally, my design work has started to appear on other design news portals, as well as be published in various printed collections, in domestic and international magazines, and in various printed collections. With that degree of success while in my early twenties, something else happened:

I really changed into a colossal asshole in just about a year of school, not less. The press and the praise became what fulfilled me, and they went straight to my head. They inflated my ego. I actually felt somewhat superior to my fellow designers.

The casualties? My design stagnated. My evolution has stagnated, as is its evolution.

I felt so supremely confident in my abilities that I effectively stopped researching and discovering. When I used to lead myself to iterate through concepts or sketches, I leaped right into Photoshop. I drew my inspiration from the smallest of sources ( and with blinders on ). My peers frequently vehemently disapproved of any criticism of my work. The most tragic loss: I had lost touch with my values.

My ego almost destroyed some of my friendships and blossoming professional relationships. I was toxic in talking about design and in collaboration. However, thankfully, those same friends gave me a priceless gift: sincerity. They called me out on my unhealthy behavior.

It’s true, I initially didn’t accept it, but after much reflection, I was able to accept it. I was soon able to accept, and process, and course correct. Although the re-awakening was necessary, the realization let me down. I let go of the “reward” of adulation and re-centered upon what stoked the fire for me in art school. Most importantly, I regained my fundamental values.

Always Students

Following that temporary regression, I was able to advance in both my personal and professional design. And I could self-reflect as I got older to facilitate further growth and course correction as needed.

Let’s use the Large Hadron Collider as an example. The LHC was designed” to help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity”. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Around fifteen years ago, in one of my earlier professional roles, I designed the interface for the application that generated the LHC’s particle collision diagrams. These diagrams are often regarded as works of art by themselves because they depict what is actually happening inside the Collider during any given particle collision event.

Designing the interface for this application was a fascinating process for me, in that I worked with Fermilab physicists to understand what the application was trying to achieve, but also how the physicists themselves would be using it. In order to accomplish this, in this role,

I cut my teeth on usability testing, working with the Fermilab team to iterate and improve the interface. To me, their language and the topics they discussed seemed foreign. And by making myself humble and working under the mindset that I was but a student, I made myself available to be a part of their world to generate that vital connection.

I also had my first ethnographic observational experience, which involved visiting the Fermilab location and observing how the physicists used the tool in their own environments, on their own terminals. For example, one takeaway was that due to the level of ambient light-driven contrast within the facility, the data columns ended up using white text on a dark gray background instead of black text-on-white. They could read through a lot of data at once and relieve their strain in the process. And Fermilab and CERN are government entities with rigorous accessibility standards, so my knowledge in that realm also grew. Another crucial form of communication was the barrier-free design.

So to those core drivers of my visual problem-solving soul and ultimate fulfillment: discovery, exposure to new media, observation, human connection, and evolution. I checked my ego before entering those values, which opened the door for those values.

An evergreen willingness to listen, learn, understand, grow, evolve, and connect yields our best work. I want to pay attention to the phrases “grow” and “evolve” in particular. If we are always students of our craft, we are also continually making ourselves available to evolve. Yes, we have years of practical design experience under our belt. Or the focused lab sessions from a UX bootcamp. Or the monogrammed portfolio of our creative work. Or, ultimately, decades of a career behind us.

However, with all that being said, “experience” does not equate to “expert.”

As soon as we close our minds via an inner monologue of’ knowing it all’ or branding ourselves a” #thoughtleader” on social media, the designer we are is our final form. The artist we can be will never be there.

In today’s data-driven environment, it’s becoming more and more possible for you to be asked to create a personal digital expertise, whether it’s a common website, consumer portal, or local application. However while there continues to be no lack of marketing buzz around personalization systems, we also have very few defined approaches for implementing personalized UX.

We enter that place. After completing tens of personalisation projects over the past few years, we gave ourselves a purpose: could you make a systematic personalization platform especially for UX practitioners? A human-centered personalization program can be established using the Personalization Pyramid, which covers information, classification, content delivery, and overall objectives. By using this strategy, you will be able to understand the core components of a modern, UX-driven personalization system ( or at the very least understand enough to get started ).

Getting Started

We’ll assume that you are already comfortable with the fundamentals of modern personalization for the purposes of this article. A nice guide can be found these: Website Personalization Planning. Although Graphic projects in this field can take a variety of forms, they frequently start from the same place.

Common scenarios for starting a customisation task:

• Your business or client made a purchase to support personalization of a content management system ( CMS ), marketing automation platform ( MAP ), or other related technology.
• The CMO, CDO, or CIO has identified personalisation as a target
• Consumer data is unclear or disjointed.
• You are running some secluded targeting strategies or A/B tests
• On the personalisation method, stakeholders disagree.
• Mandate of customer privacy rules ( e. g. GDPR ) requires revisiting existing user targeting practices

Regardless of where you begin, a powerful personalization system will require the same key building stones. These are the “levels” on the tower, which we have identified. Whether you are a UX artist, scholar, or planner, understanding the core components may help make your contribution effective.

From top to bottom, the rates include:

North Star: What larger corporate goal is the personalisation initiative pursuing?
1. Objectives: What are the specific, tangible benefits of the system?
2. Touchpoints: Where will you get customized service?
3. Contexts and Campaigns: What personalization information does the person view?
4. What makes up a distinct, useable market according to user segments?
5. Actionable Data: What dependable and credible information is captured by our professional platform to generate personalization?
6. Natural Data: What wider set of data is conceivable ( now in our environment ) to allow you to optimize?

We’ll go through each of these amounts in change. An associated deck of cards serves as an example of each level’s specific examples to make this more meaningful. We’ve found them helpful in customisation pondering periods, and will include cases for you here.

Starting at the Top

The tower has the following elements:

North Star

With your customisation plan, whether large or small, you aim for a general north star. The North Star defines the (one ) overall mission of the personalization program. What are your goals, exactly? North Stars cast a ghost. The darkness is bigger the sun the bigger the sun. Example of North Starts may include:

Function: Use simple customer inputs to optimize. Examples:” Raw” messages, basic search effects, system user settings and settings options, general flexibility, basic improvements
1. Feature: Self-contained personalisation component. Examples:” Cooked” notifications, advanced optimizations ( geolocation ), basic dynamic messaging, customized modules, automations, recommenders
2. Experience: Individualized customer experiences across a variety of interactions and customer flows. Examples: Email campaigns, landing pages, advanced messaging ( i. e. C2C chat ) or conversational interfaces, larger user flows and content-intensive optimizations ( localization ).
3. Solution: Highly distinctive, personalized solution experiences. Example: Standalone, branded encounters with personalization at their base, like the “algotorial” songs by Spotify quite as Discover Weekly.

Goals

Personalization can help speed up designing with user intentions, as in any great UX design. Goals are the military and quantifiable metrics that may prove the entire program is effective. A good place to begin is with your existing analytics and assessment software and metrics you can standard against. In some cases, new targets may be ideal. The most important thing to keep in mind is that personalisation is not a desired outcome. It is a means to an end. Popular targets include:

• Conversion
• Time spent on work
• Net promoter score ( NPS)
• Client satisfaction

Touchpoints

Touchpoints are where the personalisation happens. This will be one of your biggest areas of responsibility as a UX artist. The connections available to you will depend on how your personalization and associated technology features are instrumented, and should be rooted in improving a person’s experience at a certain point in the trip. Touchpoints can be multi-device ( mobile, in-store, website ), as well as more specific ( web banner, web pop-up, etc. ). Several examples are given below:

Channel-level Points

• Email: Role
• Email opens at what time?
• In-store display ( JSON endpoint )
• Native app
• Search

Wireframe-level Touchpoints

• Web overlay
• Web alert bar
• Web banner
• Web content block
• menu on the web

If you’re designing for web interfaces, for example, you will likely need to include personalized “zones” in your wireframes. Based on our next step, context, and campaigns, the content for these can be presented programmatically in touchpoints.

Contexts and Campaigns

Once you’ve identified some touchpoints, you can decide what kind of personalized content a user will receive. Many personalization tools will refer to these as” campaigns” ( so, for example, a campaign on a web banner for new visitors to the website ). These will be displayed to specific user segments programmatically, as defined by user data. At this stage, we find it helpful to consider two separate models: a context model and a content model. The context helps you consider the level of user engagement at the personalization moment, for instance, if they are just casually browsing information rather than engaging in a deep dive. Think of it in terms of information retrieval behaviors. The content model can then guide you in deciding what kind of personalization to use in the context ( for instance, an” Enrich” campaign that features related articles might be a good substitute for extant content ).

Personalization Context Model:

1. Browse
2. Skim
3. Nudge
4. Feast

Personalization Content Model

1. Alert
2. Make Easier
3. Cross-Sell
4. Enrich

We’ve written a lot about each of these models elsewhere, so if you’d like to read more, check out Colin’s Personalization Content Model and Jeff’s Personalization Context Model.

User Groups

User segments can be created prescriptively or adaptively, based on user research ( e. g. via rules and logic tied to set user behaviors or via A/B testing ). You will need to think about how to treat the unidentified or first-time visitor, the guest or returning visitor for whom you may have a stateful cookie ( or an equivalent post-cookie identifier ), or the logged-in visitor who is authenticated. Here are some examples from the personalization pyramid:

• Unknown
• Guest
• Authenticated
• Default
• Referred
• Role
• Cohort
• Unique Identification Number

Actionable Data

Every organization with any digital presence has data. It’s a matter of examining what user data you can ethically collect, its inherent reliability and value, and how you can use it ( sometimes referred to as “data activation” ). Fortunately, the tide is turning to first-party data: a recent study by Twilio estimates some 80 % of businesses are using at least some type of first-party data to personalize the customer experience.

First-party data has a number of benefits on the user experience front, including being relatively simple to collect, more likely to be accurate, and less susceptible to the” creep factor” of third-party data. So a key part of your UX strategy should be to determine what the best form of data collection is on your audiences. Several examples are given below:

There is a progression of profiling when it comes to recognizing and making decisioning about different audiences and their signals. As user data volume and time and confidence increase, it varies more granularly to more precise constructs about ever-smaller cohorts of users.

While some combination of implicit / explicit data is generally a prerequisite for any implementation ( more commonly referred to as first party and third-party data ) ML efforts are typically not cost-effective directly out of the box. This is because optimization requires a strong data backbone and content repository. But these approaches should be considered as part of the larger roadmap and may indeed help accelerate the organization’s overall progress. You’ll typically work together to create a profiling model with key stakeholders and product owners. The profiling model includes defining approach to configuring profiles, profile keys, profile cards and pattern cards. A multi-faceted method of profiling that is adaptable.

Pulling it Together

The cards serve as a starting point for an inventory of sorts ( we offer blanks for you to customize your own ), a set of potential levers and motivations for the personalization activities you aspire to deliver, but they are more valuable when grouped together.

In assembling a card “hand”, one can begin to trace the entire trajectory from leadership focus down through a strategic and tactical execution. It serves as the foundation for the workshops that both co-authors have conducted to build a program backlog, which would make a good article topic.

In the meantime, what is important to note is that each colored class of card is helpful to survey in understanding the range of choices potentially at your disposal, it is threading through and making concrete decisions about for whom this decisioning will be made: where, when, and how.

Lay Down Your Cards

Any effective personalization plan must take into account near, middle, and long-term objectives. Even with the leading CMS platforms like Sitecore and Adobe or the most exciting composable CMS DXP out there, there is simply no “easy button” wherein a personalization program can be stood up and immediately view meaningful results. Having said that, all personalization activities follow the same grammatical convention, just like every sentence contains both nouns and verbs. These cards attempt to map that territory.

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

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

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

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

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

We call it prepersonalization.

Behind the music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Set your kitchen timer

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

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

1. Kickstart: This sets the terms of engagement as you focus on the opportunity as well as the readiness and drive of your team and your leadership. .
2. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
3. Work your plan: This phase is all about creating a competitive environment for team participants to individually pitch their own pilots that each contain a proof-of-concept project, its business case, and its operating model.

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

Kickstart: Whet your appetite

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

Spark conversation by naming consumer examples and business-to-business examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike. This should cover a representative range of personalization patterns, including automated app-based interactions (such as onboarding sequences or wizards), notifications, and recommenders. We have a catalog of these in the cards. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

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

Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature (or something similar). In our cards, we divide connected experiences into five levels: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to focus the conversation on the merits of ongoing investment as well as the gap between what you deliver today and what you want to deliver in the future.

Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is critical because it emphasizes how personalization can not only help your external customers but also affect your own ways of working. It’s also a reminder (which is why we used the word argument earlier) of the broader effort beyond these tactical interventions.

Each team member should vote on where they see your product or service putting its emphasis. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. The intention here is to flesh out how different departments may view their own upsides to the effort, which can vary from one to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

The third and final kickstart activity is about naming your personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will data and privacy compliance be too big of a challenge? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? (We’re pretty sure that you do: it’s just a matter of recognizing the relative size of that need and its remedy.) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. Our Detractor card, for example, lists six stakeholder behaviors that hinder progress.

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

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

Hit that test kitchen

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

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

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

The dishes will come from recipes, and those recipes have set ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

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

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

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

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

Compose your recipe

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

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

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

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

1. Nurture personalization: When a guest or an unknown visitor interacts with  a product title, a banner or alert bar appears that makes it easier for them to encounter a related title they may want to read, saving them time.
2. Welcome automation: When there’s a newly registered user, an email is generated to call out the breadth of the content catalog and to make them a happier subscriber.
3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

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

You can think of the later stages of the workshop as moving from recipes toward a cookbook in focus—like a more nuanced customer-journey mapping. Individual “cooks” will pitch their recipes to the team, using a common jobs-to-be-done format so that measurability and results are baked in, and from there, the resulting collection will be prioritized for finished design and delivery to production.

Better kitchens require better architecture

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

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

You can definitely stand the heat…

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

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

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

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

How we got below

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

The beginning of website standards

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

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

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

The web as software platform

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

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

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

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

Where we are now

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

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

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

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

Where do we go from here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go forth and make

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

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 instead provide some awareness to projects and possibilities where AI can generate substantial differences for people with disabilities. To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t real challenges or pressing problems with AI that need to be addressed—there are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday—but I want to take a little time to talk about what’s probable in hopes that we’ll find it one day.

Other words

Joe’s part spends a lot of time talking about computer-vision types generating other words. He highlights a ton of true issues with the current state of things. And while computer-vision concepts continue to improve in the quality and complexity of information in their information, their outcomes aren’t wonderful. As he rightly points out, the current state of image analysis is pretty poor—especially for certain image types—in large part because current AI systems examine images in isolation rather than within the contexts that they’re in ( which is a consequence of having separate “foundation ” models for text analysis and image analysis ). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant ( that should probably have descriptions ) and those that are purely decorative ( which might not need a description ) either. Still, I still think there’s potential in this space.

As Joe mentions, human-in-the-loop authoring of alt text should absolutely be a thing. And if AI can pop in to offer a starting point for alt text—even if that starting point might be a prompt saying What is this BS? That’s not right at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that ’s a win.

Taking things a step further, if we can specifically train a model to analyze image usage in context, it could help us more quickly identify which images are likely to be decorative and which ones likely require a description. That will help reinforce which contexts call for image descriptions and it’ll improve authors ’ efficiency toward making their pages more accessible.

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 suppose that you came across a chart whose description was simply the title of the chart and the kind of visualization it was, such as: Pie chart comparing smartphone usage to feature phone usage among US households making under$ 30,000 a year. ( That would be a pretty awful alt text for a chart since that would tend to leave many questions about the data unanswered, but then again, let’s suppose that that was the description that was in place. ) If your browser knew that that image was a pie chart ( because an onboard model concluded this ), imagine a world where users could ask questions like these about the graphic:

• Do more people use smartphones or feature phones?
• How many more?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
• How many is that?

Setting aside the realities of large language model ( LLM) hallucinations—where a model just makes up plausible-sounding “facts ”—for a moment, the opportunity to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for blind and low-vision folks as well as for people with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and so on. 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.

Taking things a step further: What if you could ask your browser to simplify a complex chart? What if you could ask it to isolate a single line on a line graph? 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 swap colors for patterns? Given these tools ’ chat-based interfaces and our existing ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools, that seems like a possibility.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. For example, perhaps it could turn that pie chart ( or better yet, a series of pie charts ) into more accessible ( and useful ) formats, like spreadsheets. That would be amazing!

Matching algorithms

Safiya Umoja Noble absolutely hit the nail on the head when she titled her book Algorithms of Oppression. While her book was focused on the ways that search engines reinforce racism, I think that it ’s equally true 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 lot of this stems from a lack of diversity among the people who shape and build them. When these platforms are built with inclusively baked in, however, there’s real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.

Take Mentra, for example. They are an employment network for neurodivergent people. They use an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on over 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. On the employer side, it considers each work environment, communication factors related to each job, and the like. As a company run by neurodivergent folks, Mentra made the decision to flip the script when it came to typical employment sites. 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 creation of algorithms, that can reduce the chances that these algorithms will inflict harm on their communities. That’s why diverse teams are so important.

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 example, if you were to follow a bunch of nondisabled white male academics who talk about AI, it could suggest that you follow academics who are disabled or aren’t white or aren’t male who also talk about AI. If you took its recommendations, perhaps you’d get a more holistic 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 helps people with disabilities

If I weren’t trying to put this together between other tasks, I’m sure that I could go on and on, providing all kinds of examples of how AI could be used to help 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 have seen the VALL-E paper or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day announcement or you may be familiar with the voice-preservation offerings from Microsoft, Acapela, or others. 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 is, of course, the same tech that can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so it ’s something that we need to approach responsibly, but the tech 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 actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they have plans to expand this to other conditions as the project progresses. This research will result in more inclusive data sets that will let more people with disabilities use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as well as control their computers and other devices more easily, using only their voice.
• Text transformation. The current generation of LLMs is quite capable of adjusting existing text content without injecting hallucinations. This is hugely empowering for people with cognitive disabilities who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions of text or even text that ’s prepped for Bionic Reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

We need to recognize that our differences matter. Our lived experiences are influenced by the intersections of the identities that we exist in. 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 need to be represented in the data that we use to train new models, and the folks who contribute that valuable information need to be compensated for sharing it with us. Inclusive data sets yield more robust models that foster more equitable outcomes.

Want a model that does n’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you have content about disabilities that ’s authored by people with a range of disabilities, and make sure that that ’s well represented in the training data.

Want a model that does n’t use ableist language? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. That being said, when it comes to sensitivity reading, AI models won’t be replacing human copy editors anytime soon.

Want a coding copilot that gives you accessible recommendations from the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

I have no doubt that AI can and will harm people … today, tomorrow, and well into the future. But I also believe that we can acknowledge that and, with an eye towards accessibility ( and, more broadly, inclusion ), make thoughtful, considerate, and intentional changes in 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 helping me with the development of this piece, Ashley Bischoff for her invaluable editorial assistance, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

I am imaginative. What I do involves science. It is a secret. Instead of letting it get done by me, I do it.

I have a creative side. This brand is never appropriate for all creatives. No everyone sees themselves in this way. Some innovative people practice technology in their work. That is the way they are, and I take that into account. Perhaps I even have a small envy for them. However, my being and approach are unique.

Apologizing and qualifying in advance is a diversion. My head uses that to destroy me. I’ll leave it alone for today. I may regret and then define. after I’ve said what I should have. which is sufficient.

Except when it is simple and flows like a wine valley.

Sometimes it does go that method. Maybe what I need to make arrives in a flash. I’ve learned to avoid saying it right away because people think you don’t work hard enough when you know it’s the best idea when you’re on the go and you know it’s the best idea.

Sometimes I just keep working until the thought strikes me. Maybe it arrives right away, but I don’t remind people for three days. Maybe I get so excited about an idea that just came along that I blurt it out and didn’t stop myself. like a child who discovered a prize in one of his Cracker Jacks. I occasionally manage to get away with this. Yes, that is the best plan, but often others disagree. They don’t usually, and I regret losing my joy.

Joy should be saved for the meeting, where it will matter. not the informal gathering that two different gatherings precede that meeting. Nothing understands why we hold these gatherings. We keep saying we’re going to get rid of them, but we end up really trying to. They occasionally yet excel. Sometimes they detract from the real work, though. Depending on what you do and where you do it, the ratio between when conferences are valuable and when they are a sad distraction vary. And who you are and how you go about doing it. Suddenly, I digress. I am imaginative. That is the topic.

Often, a lot of hours of diligent and diligent work ends up with something that is barely useful. Often I have to accept that and move on to the next task.

Don’t inquire about the procedure. I am imaginative.

I have a creative side. I have no control over my desires. And I have no control over my best tips.

I can chisel aside, surround myself with information or photos, and occasionally that works. I can go for a move, which occasionally works. There is no connection between sizzling fuel and bubbling pots, and I may be making dinner. I frequently have a sense of direction when I awaken. The idea that may have saved me disappears almost as frequently as I become aware and part of the world once more in a mindless breeze of oblivion. For imagination, in my opinion, comes from that other planet. the one that we enter in ambitions and, possibly, before and after dying. But writers should be asking this, and I am not one of them. I am imaginative. Theologians are encouraged to build massive armies in their artistic world, which they insist is true. That is yet another diversion, though. And it’s miserable. Possibly on a much bigger issue than whether or not I am creative. But this is still a departure from what I said when I came around.

Often the result is avoidance. And suffering. Do you know the actor who is tortured by the cliché? Even when the artist is trying to write a soft drink song, a call in a worn-out comedy, or a budget ask, that word is correct.

Some individuals who detest being called artistic perhaps been closeted artists, but that’s between them and their gods. No act here. Yours is also real. My needs are own, though.

Designers are recognized as artists.

Disadvantages know cons, just like real rappers recognize true rappers, just like queers recognize queers. People have a lot of regard for artists. We respect, follow, and almost deify the excellent ones. Of course, it is dreadful to revere any person. We’ve been given a warning. Better is what we are. We are aware of this. They argue, they are depressed, they regret their most critical decisions, they are weak and hungry, they can be violent, and they can be as ridiculous as we can if, like us, they are clay. But. But. However, they produce this incredible point. They give birth to something that was unable to arise before them or otherwise. They are the inspirations of thought. And since it’s only lying there, I suppose I should add that they are the inventor’s parents. Ba ree backside! That’s done, I suppose. Continue.

Because we compare our personal small accomplishments to those of the great ones, artists denigrate our own. Wonderful video! I‘m not Miyazaki, though. That is glory right now. That is brilliance straight out of the mouth of God. I created this drained small thing. It essentially fell off the turnip trailer. The carrots weren’t actually new, either.

Designers is aware that they are at best Salieri. That is what Mozart’s artists do, actually.

I have a creative side. In my hallucinations, my former artistic managers are the ones who judge me because I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 times. They are correct to do that. My mind goes blank when it really counts because I’m too stupid and complacent. No medication is available to treat artistic difficulties.

I have a creative side. Every project I create has a goal that makes Indiana Jones appear older and snoring in a balcony head. The more I pursue creativity, the faster I can complete my work, and the longer I obsess over my ideas and whizz around in circles before I can complete that task.

I can move ten times more quickly than those who aren’t creative, those who have only had a short-cut of creativity, and those who have just had a short-cut of creativity for work. Only that I spend twice as long as they do putting the job of before I work ten times as quickly as they do. When I put my mind to it, I am so confident in my ability to do a great career. I have an addiction to the delay jump. I also have a fear of the climb.

I don’t create art.

I have a creative side. Never a performer. Though as a child, I had a dream that I would one day become that. Some of us like and criticize our talents because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. At least we aren’t in elections, which is narcissism.

I have a creative side. Despite my belief in reason and science, I make decisions based on my own senses and instincts. and accept both the successes and the disasters that come with them.

I have a creative side. Another artists, who see things differently, will find every syllable I’ve said irritate me. Ask two artists a problem and find three opinions. Our dispute, our interest in it, and our responsibility to our own wisdom, at least in my opinion, are the proof that we are creative, no matter how we does think about it.

I have a creative side. I lament my lack of taste in almost all of the areas of human understanding, which I know very little about. And I put my flavor before everything else in the things that are most important to me, or perhaps more precisely, to my passions. Without my passions, I had probably have to spend time staring living in the eye, which almost none of us can do for very long. No seriously. Actually, not. Because a lot of career is intolerable if you really look at it.

I have a creative side. I think that when I leave, a small portion of me will stay in someone else’s head, just like a parent does.

Working frees me from worrying about my job.

I have a creative side. I worry that my little present will disappear unexpectedly.

I have a creative side. I’m too busy making the next thing to devote too much time to it, especially since practically everything I create did achieve the level of success I conceive of.

I have a creative side. I think that method is the greatest mystery. I think I have to think it so strongly that I actually made the foolish decision to publish an essay I wrote without having to go through or edit. I swear I didn’t accomplish this frequently. But I did it right away because I was even more frightened of forgetting what I was saying because I was afraid of you seeing through my sad movements toward the beautiful.

There. I believe I said it correctly.

I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the figures and the excitement—but most of all the reports. I aspired to be an artist. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on interesting activities. Perhaps my friends and I had movie ideas to make and sun in. But they never went any farther. However, I did end up working in user experience ( UI). Today, I realize that there’s an element of drama to UX— I hadn’t actually considered it before, but consumer analysis is story. And to get the most out of customer studies, you must tell a compelling story that involves stakeholders, including the product team and decision-makers, and piques their interest in learning more.

Think of your favorite film. It probably follows a three-act narrative architecture: the installation, the conflict, and the resolution, which is prevalent in literature. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to understand the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two sets the scene for the fight and the action begins. Here, issues grow or get worse. The solution is the third and final work. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This structure, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about customer research, and it might be particularly useful for explaining user research to others.

Use story as a framework when conducting study.

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

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

Act one: installation

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

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

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

Maybe Spool talks about the importance of basic research and how it may type the bulk of your research. If you can supplement what you’ve heard in the fundamental studies by using any more user data that you can obtain, such as surveys or analytics, to make recommendations that may need to be investigated further, you might as well use those that can be drawn from those that you can obtain. Together, all this information creates a clearer picture of the state of things and all its deficiencies. And that’s the start of a gripping tale. It’s the place in the story where you realize that the principal characters—or the people in this case—are facing issues that they need to conquer. This is where you begin to develop compassion for the characters and support their success, much like in films. And finally partners are now doing the same. Their business may lose money because users can’t finish specific tasks, which may be their love. Or probably they do connect with customers ‘ problems. In either case, work one serves as your main strategy to pique the interest and interest of the participants.

When partners begin to understand the value of basic research, that is open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making approach. And that can influence product team ‘ focus on improving. This gains everyone—users, the goods, and partners. It’s similar to winning an Oscar for a film because it frequently results in a favorable and productive outcome for your item. And this can be an opportunity for participants to repeat this process with different products. Knowing how to show a good story is the only way to convince partners to worry about doing more research, and story is the key to this method.

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

Act two: issue

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

According to Jakob Nielsen, five users should be normally in usability tests, which means that this number of users can generally identify the majority of the issues:” You learn less and less as you add more and more users because you will keep seeing the same things over and over again… After the second user, you are wasting your time by constantly observing the similar findings but no learning much new.”

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

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

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

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

The advantage of usability testing, whether conducted remotely or in person, is that you can ask real users questions to understand their reasoning and understanding of the problem. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Additionally, you can test your own hypotheses and determine whether your reasoning is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. The excitement is in the second act, but there are also potential surprises in the third. This is equally true of usability tests. Unexpected things that are said by participants frequently alter how you view things, and these unexpected developments in the story can lead to unexpected turns in your perception.

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

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

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

Act three: resolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Anti-Agency Model: A Bold New Future for Marketing Services with Sara Nay, by John Jantsch, is available online.

Summary of the Episode Host John Jantsch and Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, chat about what they call the Anti-Agency Model in this game-changing season of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Sara and John’s more than 15 years of working together uncover the causes of the failing traditional advertising company models.

The Anti-Agency Model: A Bold New Future for Marketing Services with Sara Nay, by John Jantsch, is available online.

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

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

The perils of feature-first creation

It’s easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm of developing innovative features when you start developing a financial product from scratch or are migrating existing client journeys from papers or telephony channels to online bank or mobile applications. They may think,” If I may only add one more thing that solves this particular person problem, they’ll enjoy me”! What happens, however, when you eventually encounter a roadblock caused by your security team? not like it? When a difficult-fought film fails to win over viewers or fails owing to unanticipated difficulty?

The concept of Minimum Viable Product ( MVP ) comes into play in this context. Even though Jason Fried doesn’t usually refer to it that way, his podcast Rework and his book Getting Real frequently address this concept. An MVP is a product that offers only enough significance to your users to keep them interested, but not so much that it becomes difficult to keep up. Although it seems like an easy idea, it requires a razor-sharp eye, a ruthless edge, and the courage to stand up for your position because it is easy to fall for” the Columbo Effect” when there is always” just one more thing …” to add.

The issue with most funding apps is that they frequently turn out to be reflections of the company’s internal politics rather than an experience created exclusively for the customer. This implies that the priority should be given to delivering as many features and functionalities as possible in order to satisfy the requirements and wishes of competing internal departments as opposed to crafting a compelling value statement that is focused on what people in the real world actually want. As a result, these products can very quickly became a mixed bag of misleading, related, and finally unhappy customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The significance of the foundation

What is a better strategy, then? How may we create products that are user-friendly, firm, and, most importantly, stick?

The concept of “bedrock” comes into play in this context. Rock is the main feature of your item that really matters to customers. It’s the fundamental building block that creates price and maintains relevance over time.

The rock has got to be in and around the standard servicing journeys in the world of retail bank, which is where I work. People only look at their existing account once every blue moon, but they do so every day. They purchase a credit card every year or every other year, but they at least once a month assess their stability and pay their bills.

The key is in identifying the main tasks that individuals want to complete and therefore persistently striving to make them simple, reliable, and trustworthy.

But how do you reach the foundation? By focusing on the” MVP” strategy, giving clarity the top priority, and working toward a distinct value proposition. This entails removing unwanted functions and putting the emphasis on providing genuine value to your users.

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

Functional methods for creating stick-like economic items

What are the main learnings I’ve made from my own research and practice, then?

1. What issue are you attempting to resolve first, and why? Whom? Before beginning any construction, make sure your goal is completely clear. Make certain it also complies with the goals of your business.
2. Avoid the temptation to put too many characteristics at once by focusing on one, key feature and focusing on getting that right before moving on to something else. Choose one that actually adds price, and work from that.
3. When it comes to financial items, clarity is often more important than complexity. Eliminate unwanted details and concentrate solely on what matters most.
4. Accept ongoing iteration as Bedrock is a powerful process rather than a fixed destination. Continuously collect customer feedback, improve your product, and work toward that foundational position.
5. Halt, look, and listen: You don’t just have to test your product during the delivery process; you must also test it consistently in the field. Use it for yourself. Work A/B testing. User comments on Gear. Speak to users and make adjustments accordingly.

The foundational conundrum

This is an intriguing conundrum: sacrificing some of the potential for short-term growth in favor of long-term stability. But the reward is worthwhile because products created with a concentrate on core will outlive and outperform their competitors and provide people with ongoing value over time.

How do you begin your quest for core, then? Take it slowly. Start by identifying the essential components that your customers actually care about. Focus on developing and improving a second, potent function that delivers real value. And most importantly, check constantly because, whatever you think, Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker are all in the same boat! The best way to foretell the future is to build it, he said.

Doom not merely established first-person shooters when the company first launched in 1993, but also had a significant impact on the gaming industry thanks to its unwaveringly violent gameplay and hellfire aesthetics. And despite its success, once you consider the seemingly ]…] [ …] there are surprisingly few games in the core series.

The first article on Den of Geek was Doom: Ranking Every Glorious Game in the Hellbound Series.

“Won’t you do better than that?” This is one of the many famous snares that Victory TV in 1991’s Street Fighter II produced, this time by E. Honda, a samurai fighter who proves to be a remarkably fine boxer, but it definitely speaks to the thoughts of a lot of players about the two live-action Street Fighter films that have so far been released. Hollywood has struggled to make a great movie out of the company despite the classic fighting video game series being one of the pinnacles of &#8217, 90s game traditions, and one that also produces genre-shaping hits as indicated by 2023’s Street Fighter 6.

If Legendary Pictures has anything to do with it, that may change. The studio behind the” MonsterVerse” movies starring American Godzilla and Kong Kong” MonsterVerse” clearly has a new direction in Street Fighter, and Deadline first reported that they have the expanding cast to back it up.

According to the business site, Jason Momoa, Noah Centineo, and Andre Koji have been cast in unknown roles in the movie. Additionally, the movie is slated to become helmed by Bad Trip director Kitao Sakurai. Although the original and still most popular Street Fighter II sport only has 12 characters in its most basic version, this will undoubtedly mark the start of a group that has plenty of room to grow, but already from these four male leads we can determine who might serve as the line ‘ main characters and what path the series might be heading.

Andrew Koji

Let’s get right to the most visible cast point: Ryu, the most recognizable character in the Street Fighter franchise, is almost undoubtedly going to be Andrew Koji’s main character. Koji is most well-known to video gamers for playing the wicked Storm Shadow opposite Henry Golding in the Snake Eyes film in 2021, but after starring in Cinemax’s Warrior, Koji portrayed Ah Sahm, a figure that Bruce Lee when envisioned playing as his dream role, is a European Koji has some actual martial arts prowess. In Bullet Train, he likewise appeared as an assassin opposite Brad Pitt.

After Hollywood had previously strangely sidelined the fan-favorable character in past adaptations, Koji’s casting as Ryu makes sense. Some also complain that Capcom made the primary character all-American soldier Col. William Guile, a film that has a whimsical tent classic in some circles ( which is likely to have influenced the film’s appeal at the time ). Ryu was portrayed by Byron Mann in the Steven E. de Souza film, as well as as a sidekick for Guile and the other American character, Ken Masters ( Damian Chapa ).

And none of the characters from the previous Hollywood Street Fighter film, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li ( 2009 ), even made an appearance. This is a chance to put the Hollywood camera where it’s always been…

Noah Centineo

However, you can’t have one without the other. Speaking of Ryu and Ken, These particular Japanese and American accessible characters act as doppelgängers with many of the same movements and abilities, including the adored hadouken, as are typically depicted in fighting activities as BFFs ( though not always ). So the youthful American Centineo makes perfect sense as Ken, who is perhaps best known for his roles as Austin & Ally on the Disney Channel and as the hero Atom Smasher in Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam.

Ken offers a true yankeee foil to the philosophical warrior of the story and a chance for a writer to actually play up some bromance dynamics, unlike Ryu and who is more impetuous and haughty than Ryu.

Jason Momoa

Then comes the biggest brand cast in the movie, and this is where rumors start to get a little bit more stale. Who will Jason Momoa, the once and upcoming DC artist with Aquaman and Lobo on his profile, perform?

Jimmy Blanka appears to be an obvious think, though we’re not sure for sure. Blanka was a supposedly human character in the games until a plane crashed in the Brazilian rainforest in some strange way (! )! resulted in a gene that made Blanka’s teeth turn into fangs, his hair peach, and his skin lime natural. The impact of thunder has now reloaded his heart!

Look…. in the early 1990s, people took video game stories and mythology a lot less significantly. And Blanka’s incredibly cruel aesthetics were a favorite back in the days of vibrant colors and extreme sports. Momoa who enjoys leaning occasionally in savage pictures, whether it be in Game of Thrones or, more recently, Lobo, seems like a normal fit for the wild man. We believe that because of his recent promotion to the family-friendly face of another video game franchise for all ages via Minecraft, he will have a chance to make a more familiar face for a younger generation of budding action aficionados.

Roman Reigns

Finally, we have the most difficult casting decision: Roman Reigns, a former football player and wrestler from WWE. The Georgia Tech graduate has been cast in an undisclosed role that has a lot of potential, and it’s worth noting that the initial casting process did not include any obvious choice for M. Bison and Viktor Sagat, two of the biggest villains in the Street Fighter franchise.

Reigns could easily turn into a Bison with no residue. However, we assume that the American entertainer will instead be cast as the all-American Col. Guile. Guile is still a fan favorite despite the speculation that the new Street Fighter will try to avoid the mistakes of the reputation of the 1994 film, including by replacing the Japanese Ryu with the American Guile ( and then strangely insisting on casting a Belgian in the role ). Reigns could undoubtedly pass for a square-jawed hero once he shaves the beard and trades in long locks for a platinum mane. And who knows, maybe Guile might take a beating from Ken and Ryu if the new Street Fighter follows the setup of the original games’ fighting tournament? This would make this action film not more Jean-Claude Van Damme’s…

Reigns is reportedly cast as Akuma, a hidden final boss from a later iteration of Street Fighter II, despite the fact that casting is not confirmed after press time. Reigns would make sense as a villain, but it is important to point out that Akuma is Japanese in the video game.

The newest Street Fighter film has no release date right now.

Who Is Playing Who in the New Street Fighter Movie? first appeared on Den of Geek.