By now we have all seen dozen of bloopers on YouTube of failed attempts at a physical challenge. They follow the same equation: person smiling with challenge ahead, the action with a foreboding indicator, the inevitable crash and the subsequent dazed stumble where the person questions what went wrong. As designers we’re familiar with that dumbfounded stumble. It often manifests as a horrible sinking feeling in our stomachs when we know (or find out too late) that: our designs don’t hit the mark, our research went in the wrong direction, or client relationship turned from productive to aggressive. In this talk I will share failures from three categories: relationships, results and process. Each story has it’s own foreboding indicator that provides opportunity for reflection but also an opportunity to reframe the failure as something to be celebrated.
