I’m a sucker for a well-executed whodunnit. Not the bloated, exposition-heavy ones—but the clever, modern stories where everyone’s a suspect and nothing is quite what it seems. So when I started watching The Residence on Netflix, I didn't just get hooked—I took notes (yeh, like Cupp on her birding diary)
FBI Agent Edwin Park isn’t your usual Shondaland archetype. He’s not flashy, doesn’t monologue, and for most of the show, he’s visibly uncertain. But that’s the point: he's a slow burn. Park starts out outmatched by the chaos, but ends up being one of the few characters truly aligned with the truth. He doesn’t bring swagger—he brings steady observation. While Cordelia Cupp thrives in narrative overload, Park thrives in structure.
He’s the audience’s translator and emotional compass. Think Watson, but with more tabs open and a growing willingness to trust instinct over protocol.
I know it's cliched but: Isn’t that exactly what great onboarding should do? Help users decode complexity, absorb ambiguity, and navigate with just enough guidance to avoid quitting—but without pretending to know everything upfront.
When users land in your product for the first time, they’re basically walking into the White House post-murder. Confused. Curious. Overwhelmed. And very likely to bounce.
Most onboarding assumes users behave logically. Like they’ll follow the tutorial, read the tooltips, and calmly complete the signup flow.
But let’s be real.
Humans behave emotionally:
Park doesn't assume anything. He observes. He reflects. He takes the emotional temperature of a room and adjusts accordingly. This is onboarding done right: a companion who helps you interpret a complex space without judgment and without pretense.
Tooltips are not guides.Progress bars are not guides.Pop-ups that scream "Try this feature!" are not guides.
Guides are context-sensitive, emotionally aware, and responsive to uncertainty. Like Park, they help users make sense of ambiguity without overwhelming them.
Example: Imagine your product is an analytics dashboard.
Now imagine the same dashboard, but with CarbonCopies AI simulating a user like Agent Park:
Park isn’t leading the user by the nose. He’s making the product feel safe, knowable. Like a GPS that actually recalculates instead of gaslighting you into thinking it didn’t notice you missed the exit.
In The Residence, everyone is hiding something. That’s what makes it fun. But when your users are doing the same, it’s not so fun anymore.
Users will:
Traditional QA might say, "All buttons work. Flow completed. Test passed."
CarbonCopies asks:
We don’t just test for functionality. We test for psychological friction.
CarbonCopies uses AI personas that simulate:
We test how different types of users navigate, stumble, and recover.
If Agent Park were a CarbonCopies persona, he’d flag:
What to learn:
What to avoid:
Just as Park learns to read not just what people say but how they behave, your product needs to be tested through that lens.
CarbonCopies AI helps teams:
Because your product isn’t just a system. It’s a scene. A setting. A story.
And your user? They’re not a test case. They’re your lead character.
Want to test your product with unpredictable, emotionally aware users?
Try a free CarbonCopies UX audit and uncover what your real users are really doing.