the fail lecture

The F-Bombdiscussions on failure

the faces of failurea game to get us started

"I was out — and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I was a very public failure."

"I was out — and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I was a very public failure."

on getting fired from Apple

“A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.”

“A CEO should take responsibility. I screwed up.”

on not responding quickly enough to social media

“We thought we were geniuses. We worked on it for about a year, but we realized something that was a bad sign. We didn’t like podcasting.”

“We thought we were geniuses. We worked on it for about a year, but we realized something that was a bad sign. We didn’t like podcasting.”

on the podcasting startup Odeo

“The way I got here is through failure. For a lot of my projects I should have quit a lot sooner.”

“The way I got here is through failure. For a lot of my projects I should have quit a lot sooner.”

on a restaurant startup (circa 1996), a search engine startup called 3Apes (hacked), Nupedia (paid editor model)

“In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.”

“In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.”

in response to pricing changes at Netflix in a letter announcing the short-lived Qwikster (double fail)

"It is time now for Californians to unite behind the common cause of turning around this state that we love."

"It is time now for Californians to unite behind the common cause of turning around this state that we love."

after losing a 2010 bid for governor at a personal cost of $163 million

failure and the valleyyou hear a lot of this . . .

You hear a lot of this

failcon, Oct 22, 2012thefailcon.com/agenda.html

Despair = Suffering - Meaning

How Team Structure and DynamicsDestroyed Our Product

5 People I Should Have Fired Sooner

My Five Biggest Failures as a Startup CEO

cultural advantage?“. . . in the US, in the San Francisco Bay area, there is a much higher tolerance of failure. Failure isn't seen as a fatal event but rather as a stepping stone or a learning moment for going on to whatever you do next.”

Mårten Mickosformer CEO of MySQLsold to Sun Microsystems for $1 Billion

considerations• Who is giving this advice?

• Don't fail where others have failed.

• What are the stakes?

• Know when to move on.

• How is failure measured?

reflections on failureFrom Bergh's Exhibition '11.

Rei Inamoto, chief creative officer at AKQA

Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard professor

and more . . .

designers on failure

milton glaser

glaser on failure“The way to professional accomplishment is you have to demonstrate that you know something unique that you can repeat over and over and over, until ultimately you lose interest in it. The consequence of specialization and success is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it doesn't aid in your development. The truth of the matter is that understanding development comes from failure.”

paula scher

scher on failure“People need to understand the difference between failure and bad luck. Bad luck is something else—sometimes you lose your job, sometimes you're in the middle of a project and it gets canceled, sometimes you have a client who's impossible. That's just bad luck. Failure is when you have the ability to fix it. It's important to know the difference.”

scher on tedGreat design is serious (not solemn)

failures of designname that failure

tragic failures

air france flight 447June 1, 2009

216 passengers and 12 aircrew

a malfunction caused the auto-pilotto disengage

that’s when the problems started

flight path

First Officer BoninFirst Officer Robert

Captain Dubois

transcript02:12:14 (Robert) What do you think? What do you think? What should we do?

02:12:15 (Captain) Well, I don't know!

02:13:40 (Robert) Climb... climb... climb...

02:13:40 (Bonin) But I've had the stick back the whole time!

02:15:67 [ end recording ]

if your airplane stalls

Boeing airplanes: the control column shakes to warn the pilot.

On most Airbus: side sticks don’t shake. Instead, there is a very loud verbal warning repeated multiple times. Those protections weren’t in effect because of the inaccurate airspeed readings.

The pilots may have been so distracted that they forgot to do the one thing they needed to do to survive: fly the airplane.

yerkes-dodson lawResearch on stress shows that a little bit of stress can help you perform a task because it heightens awareness.

Too much stress, however, degrades performance.

yerkes-dodson lawResearch on stress shows that a little bit of stress can help you perform a task because it heightens awareness.

Too much stress, however, degrades performance.

cost of failureA 2000 Institute of Medicine report estimated that medical errors are estimated to result in about between 44,000 and 98,000 preventable deaths per year.

Assertion: the problem in medical errors is not bad people in health care—it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer.

182 plane crashes/year

conservative estimate

reason’s swiss cheese model of human error

systems failureA system can create the conditions for failure.

vimeo.com/44807536

At the 36th St. subway station in Brooklyn, one of the subway stairs is a little bit higher than the others.

a bad system

errors are predictableperformance errors

commission: taking unnecessary additional steps to complete a task.ommission: not requiring all the steps in a task to be completedwrong-action: taking appropriate action at the wrong point.

fixing failures

AIGA top 10 election design guidelines

Brief dated August 6, 2001

Airbag Industries redesign

20 years of mice

iCatch: the retrofit

avoiding failure

"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."

notable sports failureMichael Jordan Failure ad

meta-failureTechniques for handling failure as suggested by disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer.

wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/

Check Your Assumptions: Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.

Seek Out the Ignorant: Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it clearly.

Encourage Diversity: If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.

Beware of Failure-Blindness: It’s normal to filter info that contradicts our preconceptions.

giving in to failureknowing when (not) to quit

The greatest documentary ever made on not admitting to failure.

Engineer, Designer, Inventor, Futurist, etc.

kicked out of Harvard on two occasions

bankrupt and jobless at age 32

two years of self-imposed silence

“There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

final considerationsFailure is really about getting information.

Failure is the signal that tells us what is working and what isn’t.

Understanding failure may be more important than seeking success.

the end