Failures in Creating Solutions: We Need Them!
In the tech industry, failing is part of our daily lives. We’re problem solvers, but with that comes the risk of great failure. It’s nothing new to us.
Simone Giertz is a famous inventor of useless robots. Her main goal when inventing is to fail, and she’s an expert at it. In fact, she managed to create a job for herself that allows her to experiment and create over-the-top robots that are meant for failure. Simone, on her 2018 TED Talk, says “I see a problem and I invent some sort of solution for it.”
Take the Google Glass for example. Back in 2012, Google presented the Google Glass product to the public as a way of enhancing reality, wearable technology and hands-off capabilities. The Glass encountered hurdles, despite its appeal, potential advances to the future of mixed reality and the easy integration into our r everyday lives.
There were a lot of questions on what problems the Glass was actually trying to solve. In addition, the question of privacy arose around whether it was acceptable for the user to wear a camera in their daily interactions and what that might entail to everybody around them. Aside from being a wearable technology, the Glass didn’t provide much of a step up from other smartphone software during the time of its release.
Nonetheless, this failure inspired a number of wearable technologies to be released to the public. It also presented us with more questions to consider when creating a product or solving a problem for our users. We ask ourselves during the process:
- Can it ethically serve its purpose?
- Are we breaking any social barriers that the public is not ready for?
- What are the risks we’re going to face when putting this solution out to the public or for our clients?
As part of our process in building custom solutions at VizworX, we provide a service called the Discovery Process. This provides a starting point for our clients to identify what risks we might encounter and plan for possible scenarios.
While we want our clients to be provided with the best innovation alignment to their problems, we also want to make sure that we predict the failures our tools or technologies can make further into the development process.
Therefore, drawing inspiration from the questions the Glass gave us, we use the Discovery Process to be more equipped in tackling assumptions and liabilities the problem or solution might face.
Just like Simone, we’re not afraid of failure here at VizworX. We just try to catch these failures early in the process and aim to not have another Google Glass situation on your hands.
