Series Incipit
This series of six conversations emerged from a dialogue between Alessandro Zulberti and a large language model.
The format is inspired by the interview between François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock—not for its content, but for its method: a deep, structured inquiry into the techniques, philosophies, and contradictions behind a practice.
Helen Scott, the translator who carried meaning across language and voice in those original interviews, also becomes a figure in this work—a reminder that what is not seen or said directly still shapes the structure of our understanding.
These conversations were not transcribed.
They were composed.
As in all research: something was listened for, something was learned, and something remains unfinished.
Prologue: The Material of Design
This series began with a resistance.
I didn’t want to write another UX article—not another guide, not another method, not another case study turned into bullet points.
I’ve always been drawn to process—not in the engineered sense, but the artistic one. The unpredictable transformations of raku ceramics. The gestures behind Pollock’s lines. The broken materials in Burri. The refusal to resolve in Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina. The kind of process where the result is not pre-formed—where method emerges from tension.
That’s how I experience research.
But also, how I want to experience it more fully. Some of what I’ve expressed here reflects where I am now. Other parts come from the kind of researcher I’m still trying to become.
Method as Dialogue
Each of these conversations was born from an exchange with a large language model—trained on patterns and predictions. But the result was not predictive. It was reflective. Instead of using the model to simplify, I used it to slow down—to hold questions open longer.
I was inspired by Hitchcock and Truffaut. Not for their subject, but for the way one craftsperson interrogated another. And by the quiet presence of Helen Scott, translating not just words, but tone and intention.
The conversations that follow carry that same attention. They are not sequential. They do not build toward a single insight. They overlap, interrupt, and fold.
This is not a method for others to follow. It is a document of my own thinking—one that traces both where I stand and where I hope to go.
My hope is that it invites others to slow their pace, mistrust clean conclusions, and notice what remains unsaid.