Embracing the ‘F’ word: How valuing failure makes us succeed better
Six members of Zalando’s product design community share how failure led to breakthrough moments in their design careers.
Failure goes hand-in-hand with innovation. Take Thomas Edison: if he hadn’t experienced failure, he would not have learnt the crucial lessons that enabled him to become one of the most famous inventors of all time. The learnings that made him so successful are principles that are second nature to today’s Product Designers: to validate your assumptions about the customer and to iterate and prototype towards a viable solution. Considering Edison’s successes were a product of his failures, we must ask the question: were his failures even failures at all?
As Edison said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
The ‘f’ word carries some pretty negative connotations. For many, ‘failure’ is connected to the feeling of not being good enough or letting others down. It is often seen as the enemy of hopes and dreams, standing in the way of achievement. However, in reality, the vast majority of perceived failures, in personal and professional life, can be productive, moving us and our work towards positive outcomes. If something does not quite work out the way we had hoped, it often means there is a better opportunity around the corner. Removing the taboo from the ‘f’ word enables us to detach from the shame response, be kind to ourselves, and put on our scientific hat to analyse, reflect with curiosity, and dig deeper into a broader understanding.
At Zalando, we view failure not only as productive but synonymous with learning, growth, and innovation. “Failing forward” through iteration is integral to our product development approach. Our community understands that when we cultivate the mindset that failure has value, for ourselves and others, we can use it to move faster towards our goals — and even succeed more than we initially thought possible.
Let’s carry on cultivating that mindset together. Six members of our product design community share their perspectives on failure, including failures that led to valuable learnings and breakthrough moments in their design careers.
From a failure-hater to a failure-embracer
Product Design Manager, Personalization, Recommendations, Search and Browse Design team
Honestly, I used to hate failing. As an individual and a professional, I do not believe in luck so much as proactive scenario thinking, planning, and action that surfaces possibilities and opportunities for success. It took me some time and growing up to truly see failures as the HUGE learning opportunities they are. Here are some pointers from my path that turned me from a failure-hater into a failure-embracer.
As a younger design leader and a startup co-founder, I led product design for an innovative novel content-discovery experience. The multidisciplinary team needed to move fast and drive state-of-the-art innovation by combining design, AI, and diverse content. Our team eagerly doubled down on driving new CX ideas that would disrupt the existing user-experience paradigm for content discovery. By focusing purely on devising increasingly novel ideas and ensuring success through innovation, we forgot to learn from our mistakes and failures. Instead, we saw our failures as an unnecessary ballast, slowing down our creative momentum and progress. In retrospect, we were too hungry to succeed and thus failed (a double fail here) to see and use our failures as critical learning opportunities that would boost our progress.
“Failures do not necessarily slow you down. On the contrary, they can speed up your progress towards the RIGHT direction. Failures can lift you up, sometimes higher than ever, to see the possibilities and opportunities around you.”
This experience made me concretely (and also a little painfully) realise the true value and opportunity dimension of failure. Failures do not necessarily slow you down. On the contrary, they can speed up your progress towards the RIGHT direction. Failures can lift you up, sometimes higher than ever, to see the possibilities and opportunities around you.
Failures also strengthened my interest in scenario-based strategic thinking, which allows individuals, teams, and organisations (even countries) to map out possible, probable, and desirable future outcomes. This approach considers multiple paths, including a path that might fail. Therefore, failure is not viewed as an endpoint but a fork in the road, a crossroads that can lead to multiple future paths for success.
Nowadays, I see failure as (rocket) fuel for learning and success. At the same time, I have learned that solution-oriented learning requires deep, pragmatic, and structured self-reflection, allowing us and our team to turn failures into concrete insights and actions. Reserving time for shared reflection and learning, and creating a safe and inclusive space for candid and intellectually honest conversations and interactions, is crucial. This happens through practice, repetition, and empowering all voices to be heard and considered.
For this reason, I encourage people, leaders, and teams to have regular retrospectives, which allow us to learn from failures big and small by making our reflections visible, accessible, and thus actionable. As a result, the failure of an individual can empower collective learning and action. And the failure of a team or organisation can empower learning and action for individuals.
So today, after any challenge or failure in my team, I tend to respond with the simple phrase, “It’s not about how you win or succeed, but how you bounce back.”
Welcoming failure as a learning experience
Cigdem Demir
Senior Product Designer, Size & Fit team
During my first months at Zalando, I encountered a significant setback that ultimately catalysed growth. Invaluably, this failure taught me resilience and deepened my appreciation for the incredible support of my team. Our size advice and body measurement feature has a video tutorial to onboard customers. Since we planned to release this feature in five different markets, we needed to create voiceovers in five languages with our selected voice artists.
The original text was made in English and translated. We realised during the recording of the voiceovers that we needed to make some adjustments to the copy to create the friendly atmosphere we envisioned for our customers. One way we decided to do this was to change the formal ‘you’ used in German and French to the informal ‘you’.
After recording all the voiceovers, we shared them with native speakers in our team. They told us that using the informal ‘you’ is okay in German but unacceptable in French. I was responsible for this mistake because my lead was away when I made the final decision as the design prime of the project. I had made an assumption based on my basic knowledge of German that the same rules would apply in French. As a result, we had to re-record the French voiceover.
My team welcomed this failure as a great learning experience. It showed me that Zalando’s culture is different, and I felt proud to be a part of it. As a result of this experience, we decided to involve Zalando’s localisation experts in future sessions, which helped a lot. Now, we’re planning more localisation for other markets, and we are quick to recognise what isn’t working.
Failure as a ‘wow’ experience
Principal Product Designer, Assortment & Inbound team
I had an impactful failure earlier in my career that made me a better designer. I was the Art Director for an agency project. We had a client with a very early stage MVP that relied on our expertise and trusted us. We provided all the research, identified the business opportunity, and helped them execute the project. I made the decision that we would do very fine-tuned designs, despite it being a minimum viable product. We were not entirely convinced that the users existed for the type of problem. However, I took it upon myself, and we created a great UI design and experience. Our client also really loved it because it looked good. However, it turned out to be a failure. None of our hypotheses were right, we were not able to acquire or retain users, and we did not get a proof of concept.
We started digging deeper into what led to this failure. Of course, as it was a startup, the chances of failing were high. However, one of the things that went wrong was my insistence on finalising the designs when we were only testing hypotheses. The level of detail was inappropriate for the project; we should always validate product hypotheses before beautifying pixels. It was by far my biggest failure in business terms because it cost real money to our clients. We spent longer on the release and then had to take all the steps backwards to find other approaches and ideas.
“It took me many years between that failure and where I am today to achieve a high level of business understanding. I believe I am now a good Principal Product Designer because of it.”
Only after this point did I truly understand that designers are solving real business problems. It might sound obvious now, especially to my colleagues at Zalando, where the culture is such that we all use business language and act like business people with our stakeholders. However, back then, I was not convinced about my business impact. Before that role, I worked on websites where the product and scope were not so far-reaching. I saw my work predominantly as beautifying pixels.
This failure was a ‘wow’ experience. It motivated me to attend courses and educate myself as much as possible about business. It took me many years between that failure and where I am today to achieve a high level of business understanding. I believe I am now a good Principal Product Designer because of it.
One step backwards, two steps forwards
Senior Product Designer, Zalando Lounge
In one of my first projects at Zalando, my team got the opportunity to help another team reimagine the dashboard of a tool. To our enquiry about the limitations, we received a very enthusiastic “go crazy” that lit up the wildest dreams we could envision.
Fast forward to the presentation of our vision through a prototype, and we quickly discovered that there were more constraints than we understood from our initial exchange. Every decision raised the stakes of what needed to be re-engineered. From then on, the team gave us great feedback on what was up for negotiation and which ideas needed to stay on the ground, even in the longer term.
In retrospect, it was clear that if there had been more thorough discussions and clarity regarding project objectives and expectations, we could have avoided the blind pursuit of a prototype. Despite the setback, this failure was a catalyst for valuable insights. It accelerated our recognition of pivotal project nuances and highlighted the gaps caused by insufficiently detailed planning. By embracing this failure, we uncovered key learnings that might have otherwise remained concealed, ultimately improving our approach for future projects.
When failure reveals a great success
Andrea Di Salvo
Senior Product Designer, Loyalty Experiences team
I have been working at Zalando for over ten years in various teams. Three years ago, I worked at Zalon, a Zalando startup venture that matched customers to freelance personal shoppers. Customers would share their wishes, preferences, sizes, and the occasion they were shopping for. The stylist would create one or two looks, which were sent to the customer with a style card and beautiful packaging. The customer could stick to the same stylist and even message them, allowing them to build a relationship.
Eventually, Zalando decided to wind down the service for economic reasons. The challenge for the product design team was to close the project smoothly and sweetly, carefully managing customer expectations. It was a very complex task which took several months. Zalon operated in multiple markets, and many customers had regular subscriptions that they truly valued. From the product design angle, closing the project was like creating a whole customer experience in itself.
“Counterintuitively, the very project set to wind down the entire service revealed how close-knit a multidisciplinary team we had become.”
The discontinuation of the brand could be seen as a failure. However, counterintuitively, the very project set to wind down the entire service revealed how close-knit a multidisciplinary team we had become. The commitment from everyone was exemplary. We shared a story and did not want to let each other down. Also, we deeply valued our customers who entrusted our personal shoppers and us with expressing their personality through style.
Having a strong culture and being truly customer-centric made all the difference: this challenging project was a success, and its hard and merry times made me a stronger professional.
Never fail to trust in the process
Jack Murray
Senior Content Designer, Content Design team
Design is a mixture of a creative and a scientific process. We come up with ideas and we experiment with them. So what does failure mean in this context? Is it not hitting a certain metric? Is it a feature not going live? Or a concept being questioned by leadership?
I believe that if we are following the design process correctly, we can’t call any of these outcomes failures. To me, true design failures come from not doing enough research, not following the right stages of the product development process, or not aligning properly. Similarly, I would consider not bringing my best self into the process, project, or team as a personal failure. For example, not being open to feedback, not collaborating well with others, or working on assumptions that aren’t backed by data or a proper process. I learnt early on in my career that I have the best ideas when I create a healthy lifestyle and environment that innately supports creativity.
Whatever failures we encounter as designers, I believe they can be turned into successes simply by returning to our tried-and-tested process, principles, and core values. When we have that level of grounding and awareness, we can move forward smoothly, iterate on feedback, and learn a lot along the way.
Have you experienced a failure that became instrumental in your product design career? Feel free to share in the comments! Next, read our community’s insights on how to enable your whole team to shine.
