Fail sooner

Earn a reputation for taking an idiosyncratic approach to client needs.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett wins.

We revel in the challenge of fundamentally reassessing painful user experiences whose design, in the words of our design director, “had been bad so long your clients don’t even really think about them *until* the customer’s are leaving in droves “. It’s about prototyping methods that are equally unorthodox. “Fail early and often to succeed sooner”. Think of it as a fertilizer for future success.

2 Replies to “Fail sooner”

  1. Sochiro Honda – founder of Honda Motor Company said – Success is 99% Failure.

    What did he mean? When I first read this quote I thought okay, classic double talk. But as I grew, I understood consciously and intuitively what Mr. Honda meant.

    # Steve Olsen in his blog talked about this issue with great PASSION!

    To understand Mr. Honda, I turned my attention to my own life. I’ve spent my entire life failing at important stuff…

    * When I first walked, I fell
    * When I spoke I stuttered
    * When I wrote a d it looked like b
    * When I wrote a b it looked like a d
    * When I sprinted I puked
    * When I rode a bike I crashed
    * When I played football I fumbled
    * When I was a student I failed more classes than I passed
    * My first three girlfriends either dumped me or were nuts
    * When I ran for political office I lost – Thank God!
    * When I started a dot com in 1997, I worked 90 hours a week for two years and never made a dollar
    * When I drove a truck, I dumped 2,000 gallons of paint (by accident) in a parking lot and created an environmental hazard (we cleaned it up)
    * When I first drove, I totaled 4 cars
    * When I first used Windows 95, I trashed the entire file system
    * When I first administered data I deleted an entire customer database without a backup – and I lived to talk about it

    That’s just a few of my failures. Believe me, I have a lot more. My failures used to haunt me. They used to inhibit me from trying again. But today I believe the day you quit trying and concede to your demons is the day your soul dies.

  2. What executives can learn from Radio Flyer

    It’s never too late to pull the plug. It’s always better to kill a project than to ship a faulty product to retailers or customers. Even a good brand can be devastated by one bad product.

    Construct prototypes to find problems early, and deal with them early, too. Start with quick-and-dirty models; as a project evolves, make prototypes that are accurate in terms of size and weight. Once design or engineering problems are uncovered, address them immediately. They will only grow bigger.

    A failed project shouldn’t be a career ender. Managers and teams alike can learn an extraordinary amount from failed projects. Smart companies will capitalize on that knowledge rather than punishing those involved.

    Teach failure. Make managers and new employees alike know that failure is acceptable—and perhaps even expected. Otherwise, too many will play it safe, and the company might stagnate.

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