Fail early and fail often. I use that phrase over and over again in teaching the design process. Borrowed from the world of computer programming, it expresses the urgency of getting iterations out into the world early in the process so that they can be tested, debugged, redesigned, and refined. The sooner in the process one does it, the more likely one can bake meaningful adjustments into the final product. To me, this is a golden rule of design.
But I’m puzzled of late by how effortlessly the word “failure” has slipped into the design lexicon, and I’ve been wondering what the unintended effects of this warm, welcoming embrace of failure might portend. Over and over, I hear designers and design educators gleefully bandy the word around. Failfaires are even popping up in cities across the country to provide a forum for failures. Recently, at a United Nations gathering to announce a report titled “Disaster Relief 2.0,” a political activist championed the importance of failure - -- and the admission of failure -- in reckoning with the development of new global systems of information sharing. Here again, failure seems to play a positive role akin to its conceptual cousin, “transparency.” In other words, the more honest and candid we can be about what works and what doesn’t work, the sooner we’ll be able to fix what doesn’t and make it better.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Among Six Types Of Failure, Only A Few Help You Innovate | Co.Design
Author:
Jamer Hunt
