“To everything turn, turn, turn, there is a season turn, turn, turn.” The famous song by The Byrds (based off of a Scripture verse) expresses the inevitability of the whole gamut of human experience: there’s a time to laugh, a time to cry; a time to break and a time to heal. Everything has its season.
Everything has its season. That’s the part I like hearing the most, as someone who’s seen and experienced the full gamut of product research and development. Put another way, everything happens in its proper time, whether we experience it that way in the moment or not.
Now, product research and development aren’t exactly a cosmic analogue for life itself, of course. Unlike life itself, we’ve got a bit more say in the timing of certain inevitable parts of the process. And one of the inevitable parts of the process that’s all about timing? Failing.
Why failing is part of the product research and design process
I haven’t met anyone who relishes failure. Even the most thoughtful constructive feedback can be hard to take, at times. But as the old saying goes, “pride goeth before a fall”: the more you assume you know without properly validating your hunches, the greater your chances are of making a mistake that has significant repercussions. The only way to gracefully integrate the inevitability of failure in the product development process is to make intelligent investments in UX research and design. You need the right kind of framework that will incorporate quality assurance at the stages where it's most essential, before actual product launch.
It’s also important to keep in mind that failure isn’t something to fear. When it happens during a “safe” phase of development, it often presents the opportunity to refine an idea. It can be a space where new perspectives are gained, to the betterment of the final product.
Why when you fail impacts how you fail
The timing of a failure has an enormous impact on how the product development journey unfolds. I want to look at three different scenarios to explore this more closely: failure during the research phase, failure during testing, and failure post-launch.
- Failure during research: Imagine a research team is working on a new virtual reality (VR) headset. During the early research phase, they find out that the prototype’s digital display causes terrible motion sickness in a percentage of users. This is a failure, but it’s also a necessary step in perfecting the product. And because it happens early, the team is able to pivot quickly and can explore alternative display options before significant money has been invested. It’s a “quiet” failure that’s manageable, helpful, and confined to the research team.
- Failure during testing: Let’s say a tech company is developing a new mobile app. During the beta phase, users report frequent crashes and significant usability issues. Although this failure is happening later in the process than in the example above, it still remains relatively quiet. The feedback from beta testers is invaluable in identifying and fixing flaws before official launch, and the company’s reputation remains intact.
- Failure post-launch: Imagine a tech giant that launches a highly anticipated new smartphone model, only to find that the battery has a tendency to overheat (and even catch fire in a not negligible percentage of cases). This post-launch failure is public and it is deafening. The company faces recalls, negative publicity, and significant financial losses. Unlike the previous examples, the fallout in this case is extensive and impacts not just the product but also the brand’s credibility and consumer trust.
Failing early during research and testing allows for quiet, constructive breakdowns that can lead to breakthroughs. These controlled environments give teams the space to iterate, improve, and innovate without the pressure and scrutiny of the market (and the burden of burned investments). The best way to leverage the valuable parts of failure is to make sure it happens during the research and development phases.
Frameworks that address the inevitability of failure and troubleshooting
Since you’re going to fail, you might as well fail quietly and in a way that helps you better the end result. To do that, you need to have the right systems and processes in place. Frameworks like Agile, Design Thinking, Double Diamond, and Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats provide structured approaches to manage and learn from failure. These frameworks support the integration of research and testing phases with the development cycle itself.
Agile methodologies in particular emphasize iterative development and continuous feedback. Practices like sprint planning and retrospectives are designed to help teams adapt quickly and address failures as they arise. (SAFe certification, often pursued by Agile teams, emphasizes the importance of understanding and implementing these processes. It enables teams to explain and integrate research seamlessly into the design and development cycle.)
Design Thinking and Double Diamond frameworks emphasize the role of collaboration and creative thought in problem-solving. These approaches start by identifying and defining the problem, generating a wide range of possible solutions and ideas, and then narrowing down to the most feasible solutions. All relevant stakeholders are involved within this framework to ensure that everyone is aligned and invested in a common goal: solving user problems.
One of the greatest aspects of these methodologies, other than the fact that they incorporate quality assurance as part of the development process, is the fact that developers are involved from the earliest stages in the design process. This means that technical feasibility is considered from the get go, preventing the disconnect that occurs when design and development teams work in silos. Developers keep things grounded and help teams avoid the common pitfalls that come with unrealistic designs.
Applying the right frameworks at the right time is the best system for handling the inevitability of failure throughout the product research and design process (something Usability Science’s COO Adrienne Guillory explores in The Usability Sciences podcast). When you integrate research and testing phases early in the development cycle and involve all relevant stakeholders from the start, teams can manage failures quietly and constructively.
There’s a time and place for everything under the sun: when you’ve got the right frameworks in place, you’ll create the time to fail quietly so that you can launch loudly and proudly when the time comes.