designers should talk about failure

There are thousands of case studies where design leads to success. But what about the cases where design leads to failure? These cases get swept under the rug and never talked about. So we never learn.

I was inspired by this when reading Jonathan Baldwin’s post about designers needing to take responsibility for the fault of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. Imagine what might be learned if the design discipline treated this case like engineers treat a bridge collapse. By revealing failures and causes, a discipline can actually gain public trust.

For my part, I enjoy talking about failure. It’s a part of what I teach during theDesign Strategy day for UX Intensive. I used a case of failure in my talk aboutStrategic Experience Design. And one of my favorite case studies of design gone wrong is Pallotta Teamworks (full case study, 1.5Mb PDF).