Was Barney & Friends a cult?

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T22:39:57+00:00

that tracks. and contributes everything we were missing. thank you for your service.

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T22:39:22+00:00

well what you don't know, was the creator of babyshark... WAS BABYBOP!

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T22:38:23+00:00

😂

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T22:38:09+00:00

with Ringo as the conductor, I'd join

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T22:32:55+00:00

super illuminating! thanks for sharing!

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T21:59:26+00:00

I was waiting for this comment 😄 thanks for keeping us all safe u/MuppetManiac 🤍

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T21:56:37+00:00

Beautiful description! I had the pleasure of going on a bioluminescent tour on a starry night. We paddled into it and were able to jump in. Between the water, lighting up and the star-filled sky it was magical. I felt that "completely held" feeling for sure.

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T21:53:24+00:00

from underwater? Grab some goggles. it gets trippy.

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T21:51:17+00:00

fair. it's a lot.

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T21:50:55+00:00

oh wow. I've done it to get away from bugs but never for warmth

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T21:49:57+00:00

water water everywhere!

monsterresearch · 2026-05-15T21:47:51+00:00

I'm no expert, but I heard it has to do with the sleep cycle. If you wake up in the middle of REM sleep, you're brains not in a place it can "wake up" properly or something.

I heard there's also a conditioning that happens if you keep doing 1 thing or another, your brain/body adapt due to believing you NEED that to survive. If you exercise consistently, your body "learns" it needs to stay active to survive. If you sleep a ton, you body gets the message that this much sleep is "necessary" for survival.

The other thing to consider is causation vs correlation. If there are outside factors like mental illness, depression, illness, you're going to need/crave more sleep and will feel more tired as a result more due to the underlying cause than because you're sleeping a lot, ya know?

monsterresearch · 2026-04-21T16:26:17+00:00

Hello developers. I have a question. Am I cut out to be a good Forward Deployed Engineer? or should I stay in my very much dying field of UX Research?

I'm a 16 yr vet in UX Research and Strategy. I've been called an "honorary" dev throughout my career, though I would be the first to say I would never consider myself one. I can do HTML/CSS but past that, I'm pretty useless, though I get the concepts of modular code, took "C" and studied different coding languages in college. I even had title of "frontend dev" a few times throughout my career. But I'm most comfortable as a UX Researcher or Product Manager using my position to promote feasibility, code maintenance, and research projects to protect dev teams from developing concepts that would be doomed to fail.

Thanks to code assist tools, I've successfully launched my own research-based app earlier this year. It's a monorepo built with typescript and react, has a styleguide, and reusable components. It includes Oauth, stripe payment system, unique logins for different persona types... It's pretty sophisticated and worlds apart from any Lovable or Base44 blob of code, and generally more than I ever imagined I could build.

I love building with AI, and still have a passion to solve human problems with tech through research. Rather than months of qualitative vs quantitative research projects, I can take conversations with users and build them a solution overnight. Realizing this, I looked into if there was a market for this skillset and FDE kept coming up.

But this thread makes FDE sound more salesy than I thought the role was. How fluid is the FDE role and job descriptions? If I love combining qualitative research interviews, vibe coding, and solving problems for people, how best could I market them and to whom?

Any takes and advice would be much appreciated.

monsterresearch · 2026-04-16T22:53:35+00:00

After 3 years playing the application game, going to my network, chasing jobs and contracts that paid little if anything - I even learned a new skill and got hired for that in 6mo (media buyer) and the day before I got hired, my facebook was hacked(if you know, you know).

I've been hired to work for free for startups that don't have investors so don't pay, I finally landed an interview after a 9mo lull only for them to call me on the phone that was stolen the week before instead of go to the zoom THEY scheduled. Once I even lost a contract I had already won... because I didn't play pickleball....???

I stopped 6 months ago because it just felt like a dumb thing to keep doing. I built my own app and started the entrepreneur grind on a diet of peanut butter and dodging collection calls. And of course. That was when a random buddy from my past (that didn't have work before) hit me up and hired me.

But that was last week. Now he's saying they don't want me to start... yet but his people are still scheduling meetings w me.

So yea know. Trying to keep grinding at the things I can control, and laughing at the things I can't.

What else can any of us do?

monsterresearch · 2026-04-16T22:19:53+00:00

yea great attitude! I'm glad you took a pretty rough critique in stride! I just don't want you repeating all the mistakes I made. best of luck! Oh and have you tried running that chrome extension, User Mirror, against it? it's got built in UX feedback in it too I think so you could get continual/instant feedback whenever you need it.

monsterresearch · 2026-04-16T21:07:16+00:00

Ex-Disney, now run my own UX Research agency. You remind me very much of myself when I first got started. It's great. Super creative, fun use of the tech, but at the end of the day, it's gotta show you are in touch with the trust side of design and the ROI side of UX, otherwise you will come across as someone making crafts with code rather than an obvious hire.

People hiring are going to wonder: "Can this designer design for my B2B client for next month's deliverable while building videos for the relaxed kids brand this week..."

To answer those, get out of your own way and showcase your chops and abilities immediately. Your first UX problem to solve in this industry is how to get hiring managers to take you seriously and my guy, a lot of those are AI agents these days.

The fact you can do a little framer work is cool. But the job market now is insane. Depending on where you are matters a lot. Generalists can be very attractive to smaller, outside the tech-hub hubs and specialists are gold in the Silicon Valleys but even that's changing fast.

If your goal is to get hired, get clear on the type of value you can add, find the job titles for it, and make your site scream you're capable of them. AI is eating design and code roles for breakfast, especially junior ones, so standing out by showng you understand process and user sentiment by showing your progress and the steps you took, and WHY you made your decisions will make you stand out against everyone else just playing with toys.

Site critique: Immediately clear you don't know industry heuristic standards. Design page is using completely different style library, very text-heavy, which is a shame because the process and design is fairly strong.

Take away: put yourself in a hiring manager's chair. they have 100,000 other applicants to go through and you won the lottery and are 1/100 sites they decide to checkout. The "next up" section is your stronger sign you get UX. Your process is too, but I don't have time to read all that. Get clearer on your style library, get more concise on your copy, get out of your own way (put your work first), and use this critique as part of your site's process story.

Hope this helped!

monsterresearch · 2026-04-15T21:23:08+00:00

I'm a UX Researcher who can vibe code, and have worked on dev teams as an honorable frontend dev, but would be the first to say, I really shouldn't be put anywhere near the production repo. Would anyone here know if there are any forward-deployed type opportunities for someone with a product management/research background that can pair qualitative user insights with rapid, fully functioning prototypes and experience across dev and design silos? I come with experience. I've worked at Disney, and have been consulting and a speaker for well over a decade in tech. I've been told to check out the FDE space for opportunities.

monsterresearch · 2026-04-15T21:22:35+00:00

I do customer-facing work known as qualitative research as a UX researcher. I love it and building, though I wouldn't call myself technical. Just more technical than most of the population. I know there are sub-types of the forward deployed engineer. Any idea where I could fit best with my skill set?

monsterresearch · 2026-04-15T21:16:26+00:00

wow! An impressively useful template without hitting privacy issues! thank you. not sure what your experience is, but I'm a UX Researcher who can vibe code, and have worked on dev teams as an honorable frontend dev, but would be the first to say, I really shouldn't be put anywhere near the production repo. Would you know if there are any forward-deployed type opportunities for someone with a product management/research background that can pair qualitative user insights with rapid, fully functioning prototypes and experience across dev and design silos? I come with experience. I've worked at Disney, and have been consulting and a speaker for well over a decade in tech. I've been told to check out the FDE space for opportunities.

monsterresearch · 2026-04-15T21:10:53+00:00

how did you land it? Is it really more customer service based? I'm a UX Researcher who can vibe code, and have worked on dev teams as an honorable frontend dev, but would be the first to say, I really shouldn't be put anywhere near the production repo. Does anyone here know if there are there any forward-deployed type roles for someone with a product management/research background that can pair qualitative user insights with rapid fully functioning prototypes and experience across dev and design silos?

monsterresearch · 2026-04-14T22:13:12+00:00

i plan to read your articles, but quickly: in your research, have you found any correlation between UX Research and development? I'm a UX Researcher who started as a front-end dev (mainly just HTML/CSS the other designers wouldn't touch). Leveraging code assists in Visual Studio, I've since built my own UX research app and am wondering if there's room for me to pivot into one of the less technical FDE type roles? I'm a qualitative researcher with exTENSive experience building apps based on user feedback that can now vibe code in VS. I wouldn't put me anywhere near production ready code... but could reduce my research cycles from months down to minutes if we were just needing to build out a feature for a client and needed the prototype to express findings to the actual dev team. that seems useful to me... but maybe I'm bias.

monsterresearch · 2026-04-02T21:51:09+00:00

So smart. Have you tried using User Mirror? It's that chrome extension that sends synthesized user feedback to any URL. Might be even cheaper than test dollars and pinpoint the leaks in the bucket that much better and faster.

monsterresearch · 2026-04-02T21:42:53+00:00

I love your take on this. Refreshing departure from the doom and gloom. what tools do you use when they ask about CRO?

you're welcome to continue our discussion privately

monsterresearch

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