Fail Forward

Jide Pinheiro at UXDX Community: Failing Forward for Better Products. Video: https://youtu.be/NVldbuKe0N4

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Failing forward, and what goes into a great product

[00:00:00] Hi, hi everybody. My name is Jide Pinheiro and I will just take you through everything, the slides that I prepared for my concept of failing forward. A little note: it might not be as product heavy as the last speaker, but it's still in this same line of thinking and logic. So in a world where we aspire for the best experiences and build out the best products, we're a lot of times distracted by mistakes, by judgments, unexpected setbacks and everything in between. There's a lot of stuff that comes in the way.

[00:00:37] I'm Jide, I'm a product designer, creative director and architect. Over the next few minutes I'll be talking to you about how to use those mistakes and those errors, those losses, in your favor, and move forward with them, as it helps build you and build character and make your brand come out strongly. I'll be walking through quite a few steps, a few strategies that you could go through, and my general thoughts about the whole process.

[00:01:07] So, how to build better. Nike is a benchmark for great sports products. It's worn by celebrities, athletes and just everyday people. With its craftsmanship and its design and user experience, it ranks as one of the top brands out there in the world, alongside brands like Apple, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Tesla, ChatGPT, and probably even the likes of Twitter, until the recent debacle that they're facing right now.

[00:01:51] With this, it's a fantastic product out there in the market, but then what a lot of people don't realize is that it had a lot of testing, it had a lot of iterations, it had a lot of things that had to go through it for it to become the brand that it is. Behind every success story there's always a ton of hard work, trials, tests, failures. It's just the way things go. There are a lot of failures, there are a lot of losses that happen along the way. But then what are the commonalities, and how can we use those commonalities to make great products, a great individual or a great company?

Defining failure, and failing better

[00:02:36] First of all, we want to make a few definitions. Let's just do a basic definition of failure. A philosopher says: ever tried, ever failed, no matter, try again, fail again, fail better. Now one might be asking, what does failing better actually mean?

[00:02:59] In the case of Nike, for example, failing better likely means embracing a culture of experimentation and learning through failure. By investing heavily in research and development, Nike is able to try out new ideas and technologies and iterate on them until they get it right. However, this process involves a lot of setbacks along the way. Failing better in this case encourages the company to view these failings not as defeats but as opportunities to grow and improve. By learning from these mistakes and continually innovating through their research and through trials, Nike is able to stay at the forefront of the athletic wear industry.

[00:03:43] And the same can be said about other areas of your life. The more trials you go through, if for example you think through some of the experiences that you've gone through in your personal life, or your relationships, or your careers, you find that they follow the same process. They have a lot of setbacks, they have a lot of things happening at the same time. So what is very important is to try and find a way of moving through those things, and we're going to discuss that. It's very important that we know how to react when those issues come around.

How we react: avoidance, denial and blame

[00:04:19] So this is the typical scenario. You will have avoidance, you have denial and then you have blame. A lot of times many successful individuals and companies react in certain ways which hinder otherwise beneficial components of learning from mistakes and learning from your losses or your failures. There's always a conversation about, well, nobody actually likes this. A lot of people are usually scared of how the product might fail, or how it might look, or what's this, you're trying to see my sound. And so there's a lot of avoidance.

[00:04:57] The second thing a lot of people do is to try and rationalize. They try and rationalize the failure to protect their self-esteem, because as humans, some people claim not to be emotionally attached to things, but deep down inside we are. Blame, that's the third component, and a lot of times, because you don't want to be associated with a certain loss or failure, you eventually try and find a way of pinning this off onto the world or onto the universe, trying to say this is a factor beyond my control. So I think it's very important to know how to react in these situations.

My reality: rejection, creative blocks and self-doubt

[00:05:41] A bit about me, for example. I think many of the things that I'm talking about, and my idea of failing forward, comes from my background. I'm a very introverted person. I like to keep to myself, I have my special interests, I have things that I'm actually concerned about. I delve a lot into some geek lore, and I think that shaped some of the things that I found very interesting in life.

[00:06:12] A lot of times, as I was younger, a lot of times I thought that for a product to be successful it needed to be perfect. And thankfully, over years of me doing work, I've learned that it doesn't work that way. There's nothing like the most perfect, most beautiful product in the world. And so, in trying to achieve that perfection, I was always scared of if it was not perfect, so it turned into a huge fear, and I never left anything as it was at any point. I just always tried to strive for perfection, up to when it was a little detrimental. So I can say this document, to give you guys an example, it just outlines my motivations, challenges and then goals and then skill levels.

[00:07:01] So here was my reality. A lot of times I had a lot of rejections. For the last few years, for example, I have been doing a lot of freelance stuff, that was before I entered my nine to five, and there were a lot of rejections. You would open the email and it would just say, thank you for applying, we have decided to go with someone else. A lot of times that affects my perception of success and failure.

[00:07:35] Another thing that impacted me along my journey over the last five to ten years was creative blocks. Now this happened in two ways. There's an overabundance, for lack of better words, of information, or an underabundance, because you're trying to stand out, you're trying to break out from the crowd. And so a lot of times what you find out is that you don't know what to do, and not knowing what to do eventually makes you question the idea of whether what it is you're doing is successful, or whether it's failing you.

[00:08:15] The third thing, which I think happens for example a lot in the creative industry, but even outside the creative industry, is self-doubt. Thinking that what you're doing is never good enough, everything is going to eventually amount to nothing. And this was my reality at some point. And over a while I think, with continually making mistakes, with finding out how people fail, finding out that I wasn't the only person that felt this way, it actually inspired me to break my mindset out of that thinking. I must admit that I'm still learning, I think everybody is still learning eventually, and in some areas I still lack my ability to break out of some of these things. But then for the most part, I think one of the most important things is that I'm aware of these things in the first place.

[00:09:16] And this is how I judge the world, and it really affected my work. Now, I'm going to dedicate maybe one or two slides to actually talking about the work that I do, but I felt that this was a lot more close to the heart, because it expressed a lot of what it is that I was trying to convey. Because I think we're individuals that work with companies, that have careers, they have relationships, we're humans first. And as a human being, if you're not able to sit down and say this is who I am, these are my flaws, these are my weaknesses and these are my strengths, and then use that to build a structure of my life, then every other thing that you're working on will be impacted. So there are three areas, also as I said in the previous slide: there's avoidance, there's denial and then blame. Avoidance, avoiding acknowledging mistakes.

[00:10:07] Host: Sorry to jump in, and yeah, I wasn't sure whether you were saying a story or sharing slides, but the slides aren't moving. They're not moving at all.

[00:10:20] Jide: No.

[00:10:20] Host: I thought that you were giving a kind of a more story style. Apologies for not jumping in earlier.

[00:10:26] Jide: Oh, that is weird.

[00:10:30] Host: Ah, there we go, I think it's moving now. Apologies for disrupting your flow.

Back through the slides

[00:10:36] Jide: Oh, let me just take you to the visuals again, just really quickly. And so we start off, and I initially spoke about Nike for example, and how you might see something outside and then you find out that there's a lot that goes into building a great product. That's the first slide. And then we went into definitions. Definitions is trying to find out how to fail better.

[00:11:09] And then we look at a few case studies. We find out how we define failure or success in your personal life, in your business life, in careers, in your relationships, with religion, with your health, with your gender, with your ethnicity and all that. We all follow the same process or line of thought around, this is what it takes to be successful and this is what it takes to be a failure in this thing. But then those failures do not necessarily define you, those failures actually help build you up.

[00:11:49] And then I moved into how we react, because it's very important to know how to react. Not everything can go all perfect at the same time, there are some times when things are not going to go as we initially planned them, and so we need to reset our minds to understand that we need to have a different reaction, a different feeling, once we see those failures. In this scenario, for example, there's avoidance, there's denial and there's blame. Avoidance is like, it's painful and humiliating and you do not want to be associated with it at all. Denial is always trying to rationalize when things are failing, to protect your self-esteem. And then blaming others is just a way of deflecting your behavior as somebody else's problem. And there's a way to react.

[00:12:46] So there's a small deep dive, and I think this deep dive is, you also try to find a way of placing your persona, creating your persona, and say this is who I am, this is what motivates me, these are my challenges, these are my goals and these are my skill sets. Using that, it forms a sort of framework. By the time you're able to analyze that properly, I think it helps you in building yourself as a better individual, and that also automatically helps you in your relationship with others because of your newfound perspective. And it helps you build better teams, it helps you build better bonds, and then obviously it helps you build better products.

Rejection, creative block and self-doubt, addressed differently

[00:13:31] And then I mentioned my reality. My reality had a lot to do with rejection, my creative blocks and self-doubt. Now, addressing those things differently. Rejection: everyone knows what rejection feels like, or a lot of people know what rejection feels like. There are a few that are privileged, but a lot of people know what it is to be rejected. If you're trying to apply for a job, for a new role in a company, if you're trying to apply for anything basically, there's a feeling that you get, and there's a feeling that you get after, because you are scared that if you continue doing this thing you might fail again.

[00:14:12] And then this creative block, which means that you are in a certain place and you cannot move, almost quite literally, some people even physically, because they are scared of the outcome of that motion, because they don't have enough information or there's an information overdrive. And then the self-doubt itself, that is pretty much trying to be perfect. A lot of people that try to be perfect are scared of failure. And if you understand that this is your reality, then it's easier for you to find a way of fixing those problems.

[00:14:56] And then I said, okay, this is how I judge the world: there's avoidance, there's denial and there's blame. Avoidance is trying to say, well, I didn't make any mistake, and so there's probably no need for improvement on that mistake. And denial is trying to minimize your failures and failing to acknowledge or learn from those mistakes. And then blame, as I said in the earlier slides, it's always trying to move everything in a direction that is outside yours.

Case studies: counting failures, resilience and innovation

[00:15:31] Now there's quite a bunch of stuff that I learned, a few of them about counting failures, about resilience and about innovation. Now I don't know if you guys can see the thumbnails there. An inspirational mindset from a somewhat controversial person is SpaceX, for example. Elon Musk talked about the failure of his spaceship and he said that it was actually a good thing. And a lot of people from the outside will reject that notion. It's reasonable to reject it, because why are you failing? But it is also reasonable to accept it, because why not fail, and then learn from those mistakes? As you know, creating something that is a little novel, a little different from the obvious, there are going to be errors, there are going to be mistakes, and so how do we find a way of learning from them?

[00:16:34] Counting failures: build on what you have. Build on the products that you have, build on the app, build on the shoe, build on the business idea that you have, build on the concepts that you're working on, build on a relationship in your personal life, build from your relationship with your family, with your loved ones. And it's best to understand that nobody's perfect. In all these scenarios there are always going to be failures, but you build on and you try again. You embrace the fact that, for example, somebody doesn't like your work. Embrace the fact that there's a feature, for example, that you had planned out, a team's contribution, that you didn't make a certain amount of money in a particular year, that you have creative blocks. You accept the fact that you've not been able to balance your personal life and your work life. It's very important that you accept those things, because it helps build a stronger character.

[00:17:41] And then innovation. Failure can, and a lot of times, if you're open-minded enough, can lead to new ideas and breakthrough innovations. From Post-it notes to penicillin, there's a bunch of examples out there. The first flights, for example, where a lot of people just experimented with stuff, kept on failing, like with the Wright Brothers, kept on falling and falling. Or the Edison and the light bulb, they kept on trying. Right now I think a lot of people at that point had seen them as mad scientists, because they were just astounding the world, just being resilient and then just keeping on trying new ways to fix things. But it's very important that you open your mind out to the failing, because that is part of what brings innovation.

A three-pronged strategy: change, focus and feedback

[00:18:43] Okay, so my strategy is a three-pronged strategy. So it's change, focus and feedback. Very important is to try and find a way of changing your mindset. You see failure as a natural part of a learning process and an opportunity for growth. A lot of people don't see it that way, but it's very, very important that you try and change that mindset. And then focus: you focus on the process, you emphasize the effort and the progress rather than the outcome. A lot of people are so stuck on the outcome that they forget how they got there. And then you share feedback. You don't work in isolation, work with people around you, you can always learn from people around you.

[00:19:25] So, finding success: build on the knowledge while you're learning, build on the knowledge from your mistakes, have a more open mind and be more confident. As regards products, for example, which I won't call it saved, but I just put it as a back burner in this presentation, is to keep on testing, you keep on prototyping and you keep on collaborating. So if you can see, it's pretty much like a mirror of your personal life and then your professional life or your business life. If you follow this type of attributes, I think you'll find success, which will make you fail forward.

My own project, and joining Umba

[00:20:03] I would like to give more detailed explanations to some of the stuff that I've done, but this is what I would like to present first. So this was one of my clients. For these clients I had to crop out a bit of the screen because there are a ton of screens. It was a lot of stress initially. I wanted to give up so many times, because I thought I had failed in trying to execute this. We had done an elaborate thing of trying to merge different things together, different concepts. I was brought in at the later end of the project to try and fix a bunch of screens. I had no idea of anything that was happening, I got stuck so many times.

[00:20:53] But then I just said, you know something, if this small experience of having to design all these pages, or designing a bunch of pages to try and find out all the information that I can about this small part that I have in this big project — a lot of times I just felt stuck, but then I thought about, this could be beneficial. And a project, my small contribution to a big project like that, enabled me to iterate a lot faster. I understood a lot of processes a lot better.

[00:21:32] And then it was easy. Initially it was very difficult for me to execute some of them, but then over time, understanding that these things are going to be beneficial eventually, it's beneficial to me, was what enabled me, for example, when I started my work at the fintech company that I work with, which is Umba. It made me a lot faster and more responsive. For example, with Umba there's a lot of data sets, there's a lot of dashboards, there's a lot of workflows that we need to consider. It made me iterate a lot faster. It was initially difficult, but then I tried to break myself out from that mentality of, this is eventually going to be a failure, and then I started trying to apply some of these techniques, and those are the things that have helped me in any of my processes these days.

Conclusion

[00:22:26] Conclusion. Embracing failure can lead to learning, resilience and innovation. Building on lessons to create successful products, run better products and be a more wholesome person, because this is even bigger than just your products, it's you as an individual. It enables you to grow, learn, communicate. That confidence inspires self-love and self-care.

[00:22:54] Main takeaway: change your mindset, focus on the process, seek feedback, and apply the fail forward strategy in UX design, in design, in engineering, in project management. Being a founder, apply the same principles of thinking of the benefits of failing, and you have a successful product. Embrace failures as opportunities and try and connect with people around you. So that's pretty much my presentation. There are a few references for you to go through afterwards, and then we could obviously share, and then if you have any questions we could discuss that.

Q&A

[00:23:46] Host: Brilliant, thank you very much. That was a really open and honest running through failings and failing forward.

[00:23:56] Jide: Yes.

[00:23:58] Host: Excellent. So if anybody has any questions, please do post them on whichever platform or whichever channel that you're watching on, and I'll put those questions through to Jide. But one thing that I wanted to start with, because I'm a big advocate that you learn from your failures, like watching how kids learn, it's kind of try, try, try again. But in business there can often be a stigma about that, and people are trying to put their best image forward, that I'm a professional and I know what I'm doing. So do you have any advice for people on how they can try to do what you've just advocated, of being raw and honest and failing, but maybe be careful of the backlash, or what companies can do to encourage it?

[00:24:49] Jide: Yeah. Become a child. Okay, so as you get older, you think more, there's a lot more at stake. So I think it's very important that you find a way of finding your inner child. As cheesy as that sounds, I think it works very effectively.

[00:25:17] This is a stigma, and I think it's a self-induced stigma, because you've gotten to a point in your life where you've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. So you're thinking unconsciously. It's not as if you actually wanted to restrict yourself, or accept it. It's an external factor, for example, like I said, like in your workplace. A lot of times we have shrunk our abilities to expand our thinking and expand the way we view the world, based on the fact that the world has happened to us. It has reduced the amount of innovation, it has reduced the amount of creativity, it has reduced the amount of, let me try something this way, let me iterate in another way, let me try and code in another way, let me try another methodology instead of probably agile and scrum. It has reduced that thing, because there are so many other things in play. There's the economy, there's your life experiences, there's your fear of the unexpected, so you'd rather keep to what it is that you know.

[00:26:28] So a lot of times, even as a corporation, which is obviously difficult because it's a loop, because the companies actually need to make money, for example, which is paramount to many of these businesses, that's the whole idea. But then your ability to think as a child, to say that there are no hindrances right now in my life, is really important to how you express your ideas. And I think it's something that should be encouraged with business owners, with startups, with venture capitalists, with the government agencies. I think we are now at a crucial point in society where we need to unlearn some of those restrictions so that we can innovate further. Actually, I think this sounds like a long explanation for a short question.

[00:27:21] Host: No, it's a great one. It's just, I guess it might be challenging for some people to try to do it, because you have that built in, that you kind of try to protect yourself.

[00:27:32] Jide: Yes, you do, yes, you do.

[00:27:35] Host: But I think that brings us to time, so I really enjoyed that talk and I hope everybody out there did as well. So thank you once again.

[00:27:44] Jide: Yes, yes.