Recovering from UX failures
It is ironic, as UX Designers, we learn a lot about how to help users to recover from errors, but nobody teaches us how to manage our own professional mistakes. User Experience methodologies allow us to understand emotions and context, which means we can use them to process our own blunders.
In the UX world failures feel bigger, mainly because most companies are still trying to understand how to incorporate user experience into their structures and practices. You had to fight for each decision, faced resistance every single step of the way and when finally you got the chance to deliver what you promised, your heart breaks when you see everything goes out in a huge cloud of smoke! No other way to put it, you failed.
First, how not to manage failure
Sometimes failure is approached as a jagged pill that needs to be swallowed and taken out of your system as fast as possible. No time to chewing on it nor even digesting it. I would suggest that for you because if something is hard to gulp down, it is going to be really painful when it comes out or even worse, it could get stuck there forever (Not like all that bubble gum you ate when you were a kid. Your Mom lied to you. You can digest Hubba Bubbas!).
I would not dare to say “Everyone makes mistakes” as an exit route, because it is like telling you “Everybody body poops” while you are floating in a river of shirt (typo). While well-intentioned, I might come across as condescending because it is just a simple way to tell you: You are just an average Joe and your problems are statistics. This will not help you to swim your way out it of that nasty stream.
I am not going to depress you by saying “This too shall pass”. Bringing up how this failure is only temporal and life will move on, will not help you to process the pain you are feeling right now. Life is short, and all the effort you put on that project seemingly will go to waste. At this moment this blunder, and possibly every past error you can remember, are the only things going on in your mind, and you are going to spend some more time troubleshooting and doing damage control.
And really, painting failure as a path to success is connecting two very distant dots that might be light-years from each other. The worst is when some people bring stories like Edison went through 3,000 failed light bulbs before getting to the right one. Correlation does not imply causation, and as brilliant UX designer as you may be, you are not Edison and I can bet you cannot afford that many prototypes. Feel free to wear your errors as a batch of honour, just remember that the light bulb has been already invented.
Before we start managing this failure
Find out what your body is doing
We all have different reactions to negative outcomes. Your heart could be beating really fast and you can hear it echoing all over your body. Your hands might be so sweaty that your phone’s touch screen is not long recognizing your fingerprint. Or if you are like me, something inside you just breaks loose and you really need to make your way to the toilet as soon as possible.
Let your body do its thing. There are millions of years of evolution set in place just for this kind of moment. If your reason is forcibly trying to stop it right now is like trying to catch a bullet midair. Your reptilian brain just showed up and told your neocortex: “Look at me I am the captain now”.
You are in the famous “fight or flight zone”. This primitive headspace does not seem to have a spot in modern open office layouts. The closest thing to a place where you can set something on fire or being self-destructive (without hr taking notice) is the “smokers area”, just remember, anger, fear, and second-hand cigarette smoke could give you cancer if you do not get a heart attack first.
The good news is that this state is unsustainable for your body. You are spending a lot of energy, and it will be worn out at some point. You can help it by burning that charge as soon as you can. Getting your heart going fast resets your brain. Hit the gym, go for a walk, take your dog out or my favourite, a HIIT 60 cardio interval (yeah right, the last one was hard to believe).
Find out what your inner troll is telling you
I am not a psychotherapist, my credentials to describe negative self-talk and asphyxiating guilt come from my catholic upbringing, so I kind of know a thing or two about taking more than my share of the blame and blowing my UX sins to an apocalyptic extreme.
Everyone reacts differently, and this could be an opportunity to notice what the worst part of you, your negative inner voice, will say “the worst parts of you” are. Your subconscious is like finding out that the browser history in incognito mode has been logging your searches all this time. It will dig out any terrible secret, open the doors wide open of that closet full of skeletons and threaten you to share that 10 GB folder named “homework” with your grandma.
Just listen to that monologue from hell. Take notes of what poison comes out spewing of that little voice, and think, if you were actually saying this to a person you have to live with your whole life, every second of it, would you still say it? Would you say that to a friend? A partner? A lover? Or your worst enemy on Twitter?
Watch very carefully the words you use and how you empathize with yourself. As UX designers we need to have a rapport with people from all walks of life. You need to mirror the user’s emotions, sympathize with their motives, and walk back to your team with an objective view of that experience. Your negative inner talk will be an obstacle in your future and possibly block you from truly connecting with your users. It will not allow you to be vulnerable, put your ego out of the way, and experience somebody else’s perspective at its full extent.
Start recovering from failure
After your mind and body are in the right spot, you need to proactively set up the right environment to facilitate the recovery.
Note: This is when relationships with teammates, stakeholders, and managers will expose the real company culture and its approach to errors. If you are already in a toxic environment and you know that some colleagues inside or outside your team are going to use your errors for political gain, (e.g. they will keep on bring it up whenever they can), please consider three things:
- You can only control yourself and influence your circumstances.
- Prioritize where your energy needs to go. Fix the problem first and then deal with the political implications.
- The way you handle things is an opportunity to show the kind of professional you are. Show you are above those silly games.
If in the past you have used somebody’s mistakes that way, well the wheel of karma is about to roll over your toe. Another mistake you need to own.
Start with communication and continues the documentation
This is going to hurt, but you need to communicate your findings to the affected parts. A part of you will beg you to keep it secret until you find a solution, but it will potentially make things worse and you will be adding an element of negligence to it. Talk to the right people, not everyone in the company needs to get an email about it. Select the best way to express the situation and be as clear and transparent as possible and be available for follow-up questions. Try to get some numbers to describe the situation a much as you can, but the conclusion of this statement must be that you own your part of this and you will find a way to fix it.
You also need to leave a paper trail for any of those interactions to document the situation for further reviews and to create a blueprint to guide others in the future.
Most likely the first follow-up question is what are you going to do about it. You will be tempted or asked to come out with a solution on the spot. Remember as a designer you need to follow the methodology, and ideation of solutions comes after understanding the problem. Skipping this step can make the problem worst.
Set a deadline and milestone
Find out how much time you have to understand what is going on, set a timeframe, and stick to it. Is it a couple of days, a spike story inside your sprint, or the next release? Be sure you stick to it and try to avoid analysis paralysis.
The DADA Decision-Making framework
As a UX designer, you need to know different frameworks and when to use them. The DADA framework was created in the Air Force to understand the aftermath of World War II. It is fast, flexible, and easy to implement. It is highly iterative, just like any design thinking framework.
Organize your efforts following these steps:
Data > Analysis > Decision > Action
1) Data
Get as much high-quality information as possible. Deep dive into the quantitative and qualitative you used in your project and try to create a new data set to contrast it against. If you have any 3rd party software like Google Analytics, Pendo or Hotjar, that can get you definitive results in a couple of hours, do not hesitate to use them.
Put your UX researcher hat, dress like a crime noir detective, and ask questions to know the full extent of the problem and its implications.
- Planning questions: Eg. What happened in the early stages of the project or its development that lead you here?
- Execution questions: Eg. some problems impact work and workflow? Did you have the resources needed to meet the expectations?
- Results questions: Eg. Are you sure the metrics used for performance are correct?
- Communication questions: Eg. Did the tools, medium or communication habits have any influence on it?
It is also possible that a similar situation had happened in the past, maybe some senior team members can give you a direction where to get any relevant information.
2) Analysis
Process the data, find new patterns and synthesize info. Choose your favourite way to organize information. Whiteboards, post its, flow charts, and affinity maps are your best friends. Also, think how this information could be shared with other team members for review, there are great online collaboration tools that you can make use of, especially if you are working remotely.
You will also need to make an impact assessment, so it will help you to breakdown the problem into several parts and start thinking about priorities. Consider the following equation as a standard, but you add many values as needed :
Impact * Frequency * Business Value = Total (Importance)
The easiest way to do it is by having a spreadsheet with values as a column and one problem as a row, and assign points to each cell based on a scale. So it looks like this:
Impact scale
1 point = It is a visible problem, but the user can complete the action
2 points = It is a speed bump, the user can complete the task with some friction.
3 points = This a show stopper, the user is stuck and will drop the flow without completing the task.
Frequency scale
1 point = The feature is barely used (Eg. 3% of visitors in the last 180 days changed their avatars)
2 points = The feature is frequently used (Eg. 30% of users check their monthly payment report)
3 points = The feature is used all the time (Eg. 90% of users get to the dashboard)
Business scale
For the business scale (1 to 3 points) it is better to collaborate with your product owner or a business analyst. They will bring more things to consider that most of the time you do not get to know, like the importance of the feature in the coming roadmap, ROI, dependencies with other developments, and potential legal implications.
3) Decision
Understandably, there may be a bit of hesitation on the path to follow since you are still personally recovering from negative emotions and do not want to make another. Keep your head cold and carry on, you have deadlines to meet and after a while, the quality of your decisions is not going to get any better, do not burn time that you could use on actions.
Do not forget to document the reasons for this decision and frame it as a hypothesis to be tested.
4) Act
Ready, set, go! Design your way out of this mess and do not forget to prototype and show results early and often to the involved parts.
Use the DADA framework as a loop. Rinse and repeat.
The history of UX seems to be written by winners that never made a single mistake, but it is all a facade. Not a single famous designer you get to hear at a conference will be able to narrate their own mistakes without a hint of sadness in their eyes. Some of us are still not comfortable to talk openly about our shortcomings, nor being brave enough to cut through the pain and find where things went wrong.
Now that you have failed, you have added a new dimension to your career and discovered what is underneath the foundation of what is called “business as usual”. During this whole process, you might feel lonely, frustrated, or ostracised. Failure can bring people together or show the true value of the relationships, especially those you once cherished but had proven to be fake. Consider yourself lucky, seek, and invest in genuine connections.
Please continue, do not let your head down, and move on like the badass UXer you are.
