Failure in Fivepresented at the

Atlanta Chapter of the Industrial Design Society of America

2.27.14

Meaghan Kennedymbk@orangesparkleball.com

Illustrations by Lori Bailey

I had a hard time sorting what I wanted to

say about failure. I don't think much about

it...

It occurred to me that maybe the key to my

talk was to examine why I don't think much

about failure.

This is where a high school anecdote comes

in...

I won my high school's science award. I was

quite a high school science student. (!)

Regardless of my science prowess, I wasn't

always successful. One day I walked

into biology class and there was a

surprise pop quiz. I didn't know

anything on the quiz! The teacher,

a friend of my mom's, handed back my

graded paper with a pained look on his face.

The notebook paper had a giant F written in

red across my incorrect answers.

Even as a 14 year old, I was unconcerned.

I had failed miserably. I took the quiz home

to show my mom. She chuckled but didn't

say much.

The next day I came downstairs and my

Failure of a quiz had been framed and put

on our TV in the living room.

It stayed there throughout my years in high

school and into college.

My framed Failure was always a point of

confusion for my friends, especially when I

explained that my mom had framed it.

As I reflect now on my mom's behavior, I

wonder if this was a purposeful lesson or

just one of many examples of her irreverent

sense of humor? Or maybe both?

Regardless of whether it was deliberate or

not, that mentality has served me well in life.

Because I don't dwell on my failures, I don't

take on failure as part of my identity.

If something I do doesn't turn out as I had

hoped, I try something different.

There are many of examples in history of

people who tried a bunch of things before

being successful. Were these people failures

until they were successes?

If these people had been stifled by failure,

we wouldn't have …

the theory of relativity…

Einstein was a dismal failure in school.

the light bulb,

Thomas Edison tried hundreds of bulbs

before getting one to light.

or a bucket of KFC chicken!

Colonel Sanders bounced from career to

career before finding success franchising

his chicken concept.

Since my pop quiz Failure, I have failed

many times. As I was thinking about

this presentation, I wanted to focus on

design failures.

When do we, as a design company, fail?

I thought about projects where we failed

so that tonight we could dissect them and

learn our lessons of failure.

However, I kept stumbling over which

projects I would define as failures...

When I started to think about our project

failures, I sometimes got to ones where we

were pleased with our solution but the client

wasn't. Or worse yet, the client was

pleased, and we hated the solution.

Which of those are failures?

Maybe it's the consumer who defines

failure?

7Eleven is currently doing a stuffed

Dorrito test in its stores.

If consumers love stuffed Dorritos, they

could be successful for both Dorritos and

7Eleven. However, in terms of food I’d like

to eat, they are a horrifying failure!

My point here is that failure isn't really

so black and white.

This idea of a consumer test is big right now

in business innovation. Innovation thinking

is all about a "fail fast" mentality.

In other words, get products into consumer

tests quickly to see if consumers like them...

if they will fail or succeed.

In this scenario, failure is just a data point in

the overall innovation process. If the

process is successful, things will fail.

So maybe this innovation paradigm is

actually just a metaphor for life. Failure is

a part of the process.

It doesn't define you.

So...

How were you taught to think about failure?

Does failure mean that you lost?

Is success a win?

If you didn't have my irreverent mom, you

might have been taught to avoid failure at

all costs. That's stifling. People, and

companies, spend so much time trying to

avoid failure, that they become immobilized

and forget to try new things.

My feeling about failure is that it is just part

of a vast range of life experiences.

I have great respect for people who are brave

enough to try things, even if it means they

might fail.

So, I think the reason I had trouble sorting

what to say about failure is that I think

bravery is the important concept here, not

failure.

thank you