Learning Objective

To help students recognize how cultural, social, and organizational contexts shape user behavior — and learn how to reveal those hidden forces through contextual inquiry.

Headline

Understanding the frame is as important as observing the action.

Narrative and UX Interpretation

In Parasite, Bong Joon-ho uses architecture and class boundaries not just as setting, but as storytelling devices — where stairs, doors, and windows become symbols of visibility and power. Similarly, in UX research, what users do is inseparable from where, with whom, and under what constraints they act. Students are encouraged to examine their own framing: What questions are being asked? What’s left unasked? What social and organizational dynamics are considered “background” but in fact shape every outcome?

We explore how to conduct contextual inquiry that doesn’t just observe behaviors, but questions the conditions that make those behaviours possible.

Developing Critical Thinking

Bong’s work teaches researchers to see beyond the user and into the environment that structures choice:

• Observe thresholds — the transitions users cross (physical, emotional, social) and what they leave behind.
• Question the obvious — what roles are fixed by default (e.g., “admin,” “customer”), and who benefits?
• Map invisible systems — pay attention to power, hierarchy, and unspoken rules that influence behaviour.
• Notice spatial metaphors — how users describe their environment may reveal more than direct answers.
• Frame the inquiry — students learn to be aware of what their own perspective excludes or obscures.

Anchor and Process Grounding

This lesson builds on NNG’s principles of context-aware design and ethnographic field study techniques, particularly the importance of observing users in their natural environment.

It moves beyond usability testing to explore how researchers can investigate systemic influences — making research more attuned to social, cultural, and organizational realities.

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Learning Objectives

• Practice invisible leadership: holding alignment without dominating.
• Sense and name tension in teams (time pressure, ego, fear).
• Design conditions for insight, not just activities.

Headline

“You’re not the soloist. You hold the tempo.”

Narrative & UX Interpretation

In Orchestra Rehearsal, chaos erupts when no one trusts the conductor—or the score. UX research often sits in the same tension: product wants speed, design wants validation, leadership wants certainty. The researcher’s task is to conduct presence, timing, and alignment—often quietly, often unseen.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Notice when you’re patching conflict vs. naming it.
• Build rituals of pause in fast teams: a silent read, a second look.
• Practice orchestration: Who needs to speak? Who hasn’t? What tempo is needed now?
• Reflect: When did I lead by holding space, not by speaking?

Anchor & Process Grounding

• Anchor: Stakeholder Management / Research Ops (NN/g).
• Grounding Move: For every project, draft a short Alignment Plan: roles, tensions, decision points, and a cadence for reflection. Revisit it mid-flight.

The post Lesson 6: Conducting Without a Score appeared first on Alessandro Zulberti.

Learning Objectives

• Examine how language frames insight and shapes power relations.
• Practice distilling tension without flattening meaning.
• Learn to use form (typography, hierarchy) as part of research argument.

Headline

“If you must compress, compress the system—don’t compress the user.”

Narrative & UX Interpretation

Kruger’s bold text slaps meaning into view. She exposes how statements position the reader. In research, our words do the same: “Users want…” vs. “She said…” are not neutral choices. The deck’s grammar becomes ideology. Choose your language with precision, or it will choose for you.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Rewrite an “insight” three ways: stakeholder voice, user voice, your voice. Compare.
• Identify verbs that erase agency (“Users struggle” vs. “We confused them”).
• Design a one-line poster that holds the tension, not the resolution.
• Ask: Who gains power from this phrasing? Who loses nuance?

Anchor & Process Grounding

• Anchor: Writing Effective UX Insights / UX Communication (NN/g).
• Grounding Move: Create a language checklist: Avoid “users say,” cite directly, label inference vs. quote, and state who decided each wording change.

The post Lesson 5: Words, Power, Edge appeared first on Alessandro Zulberti.

Learning Objectives

• Balance qualitative and quantitative inputs without collapsing one into the other.
• Hear “correspondence” instead of forcing fusion.
• Recognize silence and absence as analytical signals.

Headline

“Let the data sing in two voices—don’t force a single melody.”

Narrative & UX Interpretation

Pärt writes with two voices: the melodic and the triadic. They move together, but never merge. In research, metrics and stories can do the same—each holds a different kind of truth. The aim isn’t synthesis for its own sake, but resonance.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Don’t privilege scale over voice: big numbers shape; single quotes give soul.
• Sequence, don’t stack: decide which voice should lead for this question.
• Treat gaps (missing data, silent segments) as purposeful rests.
• Refuse false synthesis: sometimes a number stays a number, a quote stays a quote.

Anchor & Process Grounding

• Anchor: Mixed-Methods Research (NN/g).
• Grounding Move: Explicitly label each finding as “Voice A (quant)” or “Voice B (qual)” and document how each reframes the other—no forced merge column.

The post Lesson 4: Two Voices, One Piece appeared first on Alessandro Zulberti.

Learning Objective

To explore how temporality and spatial design influence user perception, memory, and understanding — and how slowing down can deepen insight in both research and experience design.

Headline

What if the user’s attention is a stage — and our job is to light it, not fill it?

Narrative and UX Interpretation

Robert Wilson’s productions move slowly — deliberately. Characters freeze in gestures, light shifts inch by inch, and silence fills the air with tension. His work asks the audience not just to watch, but to see — to stay with discomfort, to notice minute changes, to become aware of time as material.

In UX research, we often rush. We compress interviews, rush synthesis, and look for answers before all the questions have unfolded. But what happens when we allow silence? When we let the participant lead the tempo? Or when we sit longer with ambiguity in our findings?

Wilson’s practice invites a different orientation: presence over pace. Research becomes a slow choreography — not just of information, but of awareness.

Developing Critical Thinking

Wilson’s work helps students challenge their assumptions about time and clarity in research:

• Slowness is not inefficiency. It’s an intentional tool that reveals layers.
• Gesture matters — not just what participants say, but how they move, pause, or look away.
• Duration changes meaning. A long silence may signal trust or discomfort; your role is to feel the difference.
• Staging is part of the message. Where you sit, when you ask, and how the space is lit affects the conversation.
• Reflection needs room. Don’t rush analysis. Return to the same insight from multiple angles — let it unfold.

Anchor & Process Grounding

This lesson aligns with NN/g’s principle of context matters in usability and user research. Wilson’s influence pushes this further: context isn’t static. It evolves in time. Research needs to be sensitive to the tempo and rhythm of each user’s experience — not just its structure.

The post Lesson 3: Two Ways of Knowing appeared first on Alessandro Zulberti.

Learning Objectives

• Understand how order shapes meaning in research narratives.
• Practice reassembling fragmented data without forcing coherence.
• Distinguish between what happened and how it’s remembered or reported.

Headline

“Sequence is not neutral—every order is an argument.”

Narrative & UX Interpretation

Memento tells its story backwards, forcing viewers to question cause and effect. Research often does the same unconsciously: we tidy messy sessions into linear decks. By reordering (or deliberately breaking) sequences, we expose assumptions. Sometimes the “end” (the roadmap need) predetermines the “beginning” (the research question).

Developing Critical Thinking

• Reconstruct a study timeline out of order and ask what changes.
• Identify where confirmation bias slipped in (“We knew this already”).
• Practice multiple cuts of the same findings: chronological, emotional, risk-based.
• Ask: What story does the stakeholder need—and what story did the user actually tell?

Anchor & Process Grounding

• Anchor: Triangulation & Avoiding Confirmation Bias (NN/g research credibility principles).
• Grounding Move: Build a “finding matrix” that logs when each finding appeared, who saw it, and what was assumed at that moment.

The post Lesson 2: Memory, Fragment, Sequence appeared first on Alessandro Zulberti.

Learning Objectives

• Train sustained observation: notice rhythm, pause, hesitation.
• Separate “what was said” from “how it was said.”
• Build a personal practice of attending before interpreting.

Headline

“Pattern appears when you stay long enough to see it.”

Narrative & UX Interpretation

De Keersmaeker’s choreography is built from repetition, variation, and the precise use of time and space. Watching her work teaches you to track micro-shifts: a held breath, a delayed entrance, a repeated phrase that suddenly fractures.
In UX research, the same discipline applies: insight often hides in timing and cadence, not in statements. The user’s pause may matter more than the answer. Attention is the first method.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Don’t jump to “why” too soon—first map “when” and “where” something shifted.
• Treat pauses and repetitions as data, not noise.
• Ask: What pattern emerges only when I stop steering?
• Compare your notes with another researcher’s—what did each of you miss?

Anchor & Process Grounding

• Anchor: Contextual Inquiry / Observational Research (NN/g).
• Grounding Move: Before every session, define which behavioural signals you will log (pauses, eye movement, return clicks). After the session, review them before reading the transcript.

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