There is something to be learned from every failure. Each iteration can yield useful idea that can be used in future iteration of design or inspire future innovations. Failure is an “essential part of exploration and creativity.” [1] By using “fail-fast” as a strategy we can begin to redefine “failure” as an opportunity to learn as opposed to just an endpoint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NxWW4poljU&ab_channel=RaphaelD%27Amico
Example from Design of Everyday Things: IDEO on Failing fast – Ideo Founder David Kelley
” How quickly you get to the first crumby prototype and show it to people is directly related to how successful my product will be”
https://youtu.be/hQCI3zj3aIc?t=201
Example from The Web: Illustrator Kiri Leonard –
in this video from professional Illustrator Kiri Leonard talks about her journey toward becoming a professional artist. She points out how her craft really began to improve as she began to product lots and lots of sketches across many different notebooks.
Example from My life: Whiteboarding my next project
A low cost example of failing fast, I created prototypes of my next project and went through the drawing, erasing, adding and commenting with colleagues and designers.
[1] Norman, Don. The design of everyday things. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
Jeff – very relevant application! This principle is very application in my own life right now. I’m helping to build an ecommerce start up within my current organization, and a part of our strategy is curating a very wide array of products differing in price, aesthetic and utility and then building video assets for each. We ideate, shoot and publish them, then based off of how they perform, will adjust our curation and video strategy. It’s actually a part of the strategy to find out which products and video formats are not winners so that we can refine, iterate, and get better at finding/creating successful products/videos.
Great pick, John. This is definitely one of my favorite principles. A recent example for me personally occurred when I was choosing the right field site for IN4MATX 281 research project. I started out sitting at my desk and trying to observe that way, but 15 mins into the observation, I realized I wasn’t going to get much out of it, and so I immediately switch a spot. I probably switch 5 times until I found a spot that I think I can learn the most. Sure, I wasted 10-15 minutes everytime I switch, but I am glad that I did because having the right type of insights make the rest of the study so much easier!