Fail Fast Better in UX

The Fail Fast approach in UX design can work, but only if you learn. Failing by itself is no guarantee of that. By definition, it’s just the guarantee of not succeeding. Essentially failing fast amounts to a hypothesis test of your product’s market or design viability. Apply sound hypothesis-testing principles if you use the Failing Fast mantra to learn. In particular:

What do you measure (besides the obvious one of sufficient sales/adoption)? And why?
What do you suspect are some of its potential strengths and weaknesses? And why?
What are the appropriate ways of gathering information? What are the causes of product design success/failure? Quantitative, qualitative, a combination?
What will you do with the information you gather? Just gathering everything you can imagine is not a strategy.
Might it be possible that failing a little slower by answering some of these things ahead of time will shorten the overall time to success?

Scott Plewes

Chief Strategy Officer

Over the past twenty-five years, Scott has worked in the areas of business strategy, product design and development in the high tech sector with a specialization in experience design. He has extensive cross-sector expertise and experience working with clients in complex regulated industries such as aviation, telecom, health, and finance. His primary area of focus over the last several years has been in product and service strategy and the integration of multi-disciplinary teams and methods. Scott has a master's degree in Theoretical Physics from Queen's University.