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—Published 24 May, 2010
When I was a freelance designer, I’d do all sorts of things to make life hard for myself. One of the worst was the ‘design magician’ routine.
I’d land a client, have a few meetings, build up my own brief, and once I felt I had enough information, I’d disappear for a few weeks to go in search of rabbits from my hat. “Leave it with me”, I’d say heroically. “I’ll return soon with your solution”.
Now this type of situation worked pretty well — most of the time. I’d pride myself on listening very carefully to what people wanted. Iterations were seldom and small, and clients were generally very impressed with the concepts and how they’d somehow miraculously come into being.
Being a good designer isn’t having all the answers — especially not right away. Unless you’re really good, that’s called being a hack.
But looking back on it, this was no way to work. And when you mix this style of work with high-profile clients, trying to hit homeruns on a first swing is a recipe for disaster. It was also a sure way to develop a creative block. The pressure I’d unnecessarily place on myself to produce a perfect solution inside my own little bubble was often crippling. Worst of all, it was probably avoidable, if only I’d established a different type of working relationship.
As designers, what we need more than anything is an environment where it’s safe to try things out. This happens when everyone accepts that things often need to be wrong before they can be right — failure (and I use this term in the broad sense) is a necessary and valuable stage in the journey to a solution. After all, there is a hidden success built into every failure. When you’re not emotionally attached to your work, ideas that aren’t quite right shouldn’t upset you — they’re simply feedback on the path to imminent success. So when we fail early and often, we learn faster, we understand the ‘game’ of what we’re doing quicker and we adapt.
I watched a great video the other day that touches on this point. ‘The Marshmallow Challenge’ shows how kindergarten children are able to outperform adults in problem-solving through the power of trial and error prototyping.
Tom Wujec and ‘The Marshmallow Challenge’.
In a design setting, it’s sometimes difficult to foster an environment that is open to early failure. Firstly, you need to make sure your client understands you’re not simply there to impress them all the time. Sometimes giving up the magician routine is tough. But being a good designer isn’t having all the answers — especially not right away. Unless you’re really good, that’s called being a hack. Being a good designer is having a spirit of exploration and being ok with the reality that things may not always end up how you planned.
“People always ask, ‘What is your greatest failure?’ I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!”
Jim Coudal
Coudal Partners
To give yourself more space to fail, try breaking down your process into smaller steps that happen more often. This takes the risk out of design exploration. Instead of having a meeting then delivering three rounds of polished concepts, try a few stages of prototyping before fully planning things out. The key is you get your hands dirty fast and iterate often.
Of course, your client may not have the time to be responding to your new iterations every five minutes. My disclaimer here is that you use your own judgment. Every client is a little different with unique expectations for how things should happen. Still, in my experience, clients rarely complain about receiving too much attention.
At the very least, when it’s time to deliver some concepts, send through some first takes as soon as you can. Preface them with an explanation that they’re ‘directional’ (because they are). While the client may be surprised they’re seeing anything at this stage, feedback on this early work is often twice as valuable as the original brief ever was. And if you’re like me, you’ll find these early concepts come easier because they don’t carry the weight of expectation that ‘final solution’ or even ‘round 1’ concepts do. Hang up the top hat and cape. After all, you’re a simple designer.
Happy fails.