Real Stories and Practical Lessons from Experience Design Failures
Blog Archive
- May 23, 2012: Lean Startup is Brilliant Because it's User-Centered *Business*
- Like Jared, I didn't think there was much that was new to Lean UX or it's mom, Lean Startup. The user-centered design we've been practicing for decades has helped us avoid failure by iteratively going to customers, testing prototypes, and...
- May 1, 2012: Test Your Reaction to Experience Design Failure: Air France 447
- In the book I sometimes illustrate an experience design failure and then ask, "If you were in charge, what would you do next?" Then I tell you what the company did next. It's a great way to appreciate not...
- April 18, 2012: Transparency at Work: Aviary
- Last night I went to hear Avi Muchnick, founder of Aviary, talk about success, failure, and how he created a transparent workplace, enticed after finding other evidence that transparency helps avoid failure. Aviary started as web-based media editing tools (think:...
- April 16, 2012: Some Failures You Won't Find In My Book
- People love to tell me about their favorite customer experience failures, which has come in handy when finding the case studies for this book. Inevitably I've had to go down the path of researching some of these products only to...
- April 1, 2012: How Did the Ford Motor Company Avoid Failure?
- In 2008, the Ford Motor Company seemed caught in a death spiral. The company was hemorrhaging cash -- more than $83 million a day -- as the bottom fell out of the car market. In late autumn, Ford's stock price...
- March 27, 2012: Is Google+ a Failure?
- Google+ has existed for less than a year and it's already being judged a failure. If we judge it by traffic in the stream on the Google+ website, traffic seems low compared to direct competitor Facebook, but Vic Gundotra, Google's...
- March 11, 2012: Why Sneezing is Bad For My Book
- This winter I suffered through both an upper respiratory infection and bronchitis, stealing precious healthy time from writing. One theory for the prevalence of these afflictions was that our warm winter made it easier for bacteria etc. to spread. But...
- February 10, 2012: Cabin in the Woods, Days 4 & 5
- Over the past two days I had a very productive day and a half. Then I think I reached my burn out point of being alone in a house and writing. Besides, that's just enough time to revert to bachelor pad...
- February 9, 2012: Cabin in the Woods, Day 3
- Journalism can feel like hunting for treasure. Some days you do your research and find a few trinkets and you're satisfied, and sometimes you find big booty. Yesterday was one of those big booty days, when I pump my fist...
- February 7, 2012: Cabin in the Woods, Day 2
- This morning when I woke up I listened to my body and my body said, "I'm kinda sluggish and my back is stiff, though the brain is ready to go." So rather than exercise I had a coffee and a...
- February 6, 2012: Cabin in The Woods, Day 1
- I've scoured the Internet for evidence, interviewed characters in my story, and compiled hundreds of notes. Now I am at the hard work of writing, and that requires serious focus. Just seven days ago I playfully put out a call...
- January 27, 2012: My Writing Process
- At the moment I'm deep into writing the book, most of the research having been done. I've had a background process running in my head about how to organize and write so that I'm more productive, and when the topic...
- January 5, 2012: The greatest disease at Microsoft
- Scott Berkun illustrates one case of why it's vital to learn from customer experience failure: The greatest disease at Microsoft is lack of sharing lessons from failure, especially where innovation is concerned. Microsoft has made many big, visible bets. Many...
- December 8, 2011: Say Something. Out Loud. (Part II)
- I recently wrote about times when we strongly suspect something will fail but we say nothing. And then the thing fails. Here's another big, timely example: The entire Greek economy. It's not a customer experience example, unless you consider that...
- November 30, 2011: Spoiler: The Way to Avoid Failure is...
- ...something I'm seeing in research on how children learn and how adults learn and in people whose work we celebrate. It is this: Say something. Out loud. I was reminded of this today when a friend told me a story....
- November 28, 2011: Keep Baby / Discard Water
- I have a new article at Fast Company's Design site about babies and bathwater, about keeping the parts of a design that work and getting rid of the parts that don't. It may sound like common sense, but more often...
- November 9, 2011: Speaking at Webvisions Atlanta Nov 18, 2011
- I'll be giving the very first talk about my work on the Why We Fail book at Webvisions Atlanta on November 18. I don't believe in teasers; I'll try to fit as much as I've learned about customer experience failure...
- November 9, 2011: Expectations
- One of my favorite definitions of failure is this concise statement from the Technical Council on Forensic Engineering of the American Society of Civil Engineers:"Failure is an unacceptable difference between expected and observed performance."In other words, "we expected the thing...
- October 8, 2011: Steve Jobs Knew a Failure When He Saw It
- Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, gave Steve Jobs one of the first XO laptops (from the One Laptop per Child project). Three weeks later Steve wrote... Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 20:00:08 -0700 From: Steve Jobs To:...
- September 22, 2011: Failure is a by-product of pushing the envelope
- September 19, 2011: Avoiding Failure at a "Tech-Design Shift"
- Fast Company magazine is publishing excerpts from my book, starting with When Is The Right Time For A Product Redesign? wherein I discuss shifts in technology, a failure that's actually a success, and really pissed off video editor people.Here's the...
- August 8, 2011: "...cause failure really, really sucks."
- Diane Loviglio, FailCon's Associate Producer, interviewed me for the FailCon blog. We chatted about why it's a good time to learn from customer experience failures, how one company recovered from failure, and my advice for startup founders....
- July 22, 2011: Ray Dalio: Avoiding Failure Through "Radical Transparency"
- John Cassidy penned a powerful piece for the current issue of the New Yorker titled, Mastering the Machine: How Ray Dalio built the world's richest and strangest hedge fund. Part of Dalio's success in creating massive financial returns while controlling...
- July 13, 2011: What is UX Failure?
- Every book I read about failure makes a point of defining what they mean by failure, sometimes over the course of several pages. My book is no exception, though I hope to be more brief.In my case I'm looking at...
- July 4, 2011: Oh Noes! Books About Failure
- I started a book list on UX Zeitgeist that's all fail all the time, and I'm currently up to 12 books. There are plenty more books about failure out there, but not all are worth reading or say anything different...
- June 24, 2011: Welcome!
- Hello Dear Readers!After researching this topic for a long time I'm excited to start writing and working with the Rosenfeld Media team. There's a growing conversation, maybe even a meme, in the tech community about embracing failures as a learning...
