ARTICLE SUMMARY: There are a lot of influences in UX design that affect the out comes in our designs. Some of those influences include design thinking, user centered design, behavioral psychology, and last but not least, nature. just to name a few.
When talking about nature, in this article Kelly Smith is specifically talking about the common house fly and what the designer can learn from it.
“Fail, Recalibrate, Succeed” by Kelly Smith looks at the fly’s ability to assimilate visual information and combine it with sensory input to make split second decisions, as well as how it recovers when a decision misses the mark—and how this applies to UX design. She examines:
- How does a fly, fly?
- What This Means for Design
- Embracing Failure as Part of the Process
Designers are encouraged to take the time and go out and look how things work, theorizing or guesswork can only take you so far. You need to do the work. It’s also not the end of the world if the project is not perfect on the first try, Thomas Edison is famously quoted as saying “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Kelly concludes her article by telling designers: “Design that demands perfection before being implemented and tested risks failure. Willingness to have a go, even if the outcome is imperfect, is crucial. It’s the attempt to move forward, stumble, and then correct your course that ultimately leads to the win. Fail, recalibrate, succeed. Lesson one in the art of design is: ‘Be more fly.’”
This article is well worth the read by all designers. Let us know what you think in the comments.
