Steven Heller - Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failure, and Lessons Learned

2008 Steven Heller

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

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Published by Allworth Press
An imprint of Allworth Communications, Inc.
10 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010

Cover design by James Victore, Inc.
Interior design by Shawn Hasto

ISBN-13: 978-1-58115-508-2
ISBN-10: 1-58115-652-9
eISBN: 978-1-58115-970-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Design disasters : great designers, fabulous failures, and lessons learned / edited by Steven Heller.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58115-652-2

ISBN-10: 1-58115-652-9

1. Designers--Psychology. 2. Failure (Psychology) I. Heller, Steven.

NK1520.D46 2008

745.4-dc22

2008015367

Thanks to Tad Crawford, publisher of Allworth Press for being such a consistent champion of design writing and publishing. Also at Allworth gratitude goes to Bob Porter, Associate Publisher; Kate Ellison and Melanie Tortoroli, Assistant Editors; and Michael Madole, Publicist. James Victore has never failed to produce provocative covers for my Allworth Books, and I thank you for so many of them.

Of course, I appreciate the support of the contributors to this volume, but mostly Ralph Caplan, because without fail he rises to the call whenever a project beckons.

Finally, thanks to the School of Visual Arts for all their encouragement, particularly President David Rhodes, who has underwritten many of these Allworth projects, and to Lita Talarico, co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program, who has always been a valued collaborator.

SH

By Steven Heller

Wikipedia has a very terse entry for failure that from my perspective as a connoisseur of failure is a total failure (which is both good and bad). The problem, however, is that the core definition used in this Wiki is pretty unsatisfying: In general, failure refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. It may be viewed as the opposite of success. For me, failure is such a deep mine of experience that one should expect considerably more depth than merely a few subsections devoted to commercial failures and military disasters. Although there are links to such phenomena as Murphys Law, which states, things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance, and fiasco, a complete or humiliating failure, nothing whatsoever is mentioned about failure as a design construct (or, for that matter, a design strategy). Youd think that design and failure would be a mother lode of a theme. Just look at how the world has been impacted by failed designboth positively and negatively. But thats not all: It is surprising that a subsection entitled learning from mistakes or profiting from failure is nowhere to be found, unless, of course, the Wiki interface design is so inadequate that I couldnt find it, which in either case is a failureright?

This book is devoted to design and failure (and failure by design and failure with design and design failures (made) by designers). If I were the joking sort, I would just make the type from here on unreadable as an example of failed design. Frankly, I am certain the joke would fail because defining design failure is much more complicated than any such visual pun or technical glitch. Whats more, I still want readers to read, so screwing around with the type provides no long-term functionality. Instead, I will try (although I may fail miserably) to discuss the reasons why a book on failure is valuable and essential, and in so doing touch on why failure is an essential part of any creative endeavor, particularly designall kinds of design.

First, I mustnt fail to mention that it goes without saying that an awful lot of design success is actually rooted in or built on failure. In the best situations, failure is a trigger. But this is different from (difference) trial and error, whereby a designer plays with forms until the perfect (or near perfect) one is achieved and actually results in something that will, as our Wiki states, meet a desirable or intended objective. But many times what a designer thinks is perfect, and so releases to the world, is a flop. With luck, even this will provide a lesson for what not to do the next time or the time after that.

Failures come in many shapes and sizes. They are major and minor, although mostly they fall somewhere in between. Sometimes they are costly; other times not. Usually they go unnoticed, but occasionally they are highly publicized. One of the classic cases of design failure is the Ford Edsel automobile. Heres what Wikipedia has to say about it: The Edsel was a make of automobile manufactured by the Ford Motor Company during the 1958, 59, and 60 model years. The Edsel [or E- (for experimental) car] was a make of automobile manufactured by the United States automobile industry. Almost immediately there was an adverse public reaction to the cars styling and conventional build, in part because Ford had earlier circulated rumors that led consumers to expect an entirely new kind of car when in fact this new one shared its bodywork with other Ford models. But it wasnt simply the false publicity that disappointed the public; Edsels distinctive grillwork seemed grafted onto a more conventional form. Some felt that rather than being original, the car was the product of melding parts together. Although the styling (i.e. the design) was blamed, most experts were never certain why the car failed. So what lesson was learned? Never produce an Edsel againalthough today its a collectors itemor at least test test test until no doubts remain.

Design failures are often the result of misreading the publics needs and tastes (which is why so many businesses invest in testing in an effort to avoid failure). However, sometimes they occur when, for some curious reason or another, these issues are ignored entirely. Often its called hubris, but sometimes its called thinking ahead of the curve. Some failures are simply good ideas that come before their time. Other times failure is part of the evolutionary nature of things. One might argue that prehistoric man, like Homo Habilis and Homo Georgicus, was imperfect (and possibly a failure) in the design sense, so he evolved into Homo Erectus, which led to homo us (although its possible we may not be the final stage in evolutionary design, either). The intelligent designers responsible for these beings had other lessons to learn, so prehistoric failure was a test. Indeed, failures are good when they lead to better outcomes.

As a wishful perfectionist, I am unnerved by the notion of failure. A failing grade, for instance, whether in school or on a Cosmopolitan magazine compatibility-with-your-mate test, is a black mark, not a hopeful sign. Learning to learn from failure is not instinctive. It takes intestinal fortitude not to be devastated by failure and then real soul-searching to find the proverbial silver lining. Still, I always tell students it is better to fail and succeed later because the former will result in a much more detailed critique. For students, failing should be a stepping stone. Yet, often the most valuable lesson derived from failure is the simple revelation that its time to alter behaviorit is more useful to stop digging the bottomless pit and move on to something else. Failure can be a behavioral traffic lightstop or go.