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Today I want to talk about a sensitive subject: how and why designers are failing at their jobs by disregarding some key responsibilities, and what they can do to avoid design disasters.

Being a designer comes with many duties, mainly because this role is in charge of creating what a company wants to put in the hands of its customers. Thus, this role is involved with plenty of teams—from engineering, product management, marketing, and customer service to research and development.

The main drive of a designer’s work is its users; they are powering their capacities. They will also, eventually, be the deciding factor of the product’s success; a product that can sublimate a business vision and rejoice its users will be successful. But if designers aren’t able to do so, they create more problems than they solve, failing the users and failing at their job.

The cost of bad design

As described in the book Tragic Design, there are plenty of ways for a designer to fail at their duty; from simple frustration to a life-threatening situation, design holds a lot of responsibilities. Here are two examples:

A Ferry Crashed in New York City (2013)

Injuring 79 people because of a confusing control board.

More than 300 passengers slowly boarded the ferry that crosses the river from Seastreak to Wall Street. As the ferry neared the pier to dock, something went wrong: instead of slowing down, the ferry accelerated. It rushed toward the pier and struck a second pier, causing a sudden jolt that sent passengers and glass debris flying. When the ferry finally came to a stop, 75 people sustained minor injuries and 4 more were seriously injured.

A Plane crashed in France (1992)

Because of a bad information hierarchy.

On January 20 1992, the Air Inter Flight 148 took off, commanded by two experienced pilots with over 12,000 hours of flying. The plane was an Airbus A320 which could be programmed, even before takeoff, to land on a specific runway.

On that night, during their approach, the control tower notified the pilots that they needed to land on a different runway because of adverse weather conditions. Planes’ autopilot systems use radio signals sent by a beacon on the runway to provide precise navigational information. Unfortunately, the adverse weather and the mountainous terrain caused interruptions in these signals.

The air traffic controller suggested they head to an alternate alignment beacon. The captain agreed, started to calculate the new descent approach for landing, and programmed the autopilot. He properly calculated a smooth descent angle of 3.3 degrees, which he entered into the instrument. He then made the final turn to align with the runway and beacon, corrected his direction, and initiated the landing sequence he had programmed in. The landing gear went down and the speed brakes on the wing went up.

Everything was going according to plan, aside from some slight alignment issues, which they turned their attention to fixing. Suddenly the cloud cover broke and they came face to face with the mountain. Within a few seconds, the aircraft struck trees and impacted into an 826-meter-high ridge. Eighty-seven people died that day, and amazingly nine survived with injuries.

Both of these incidents were caused by a faulty design (I recommend reading Tragic Design to learn more about the conditions and outcomes).

Why designers fail

Many reasons can be the cause of a designer’s failure:

• Surrendering responsibilities: Many designers are hiding behind the fact that the responsibilities are not up to them, that these harmful ideas weren’t theirs and they simply followed the orders of their superiors. Ironically, these very same designers will argue to have a seat at the table.
• Assumptions: Either consciously or unconsciously, designers tend to not consider the user input when they are sure to know better. Often the devil is in the details; a tiny failed interaction can lead to the demise of the product.

The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is imbedded in the legal system. When major accidents occur, official courts of inquiry are set up to assess the blame. More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.

— Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things

• Incompetency: Empathy isn’t just a buzzword, it must be considered as any other skill to create a proper human consideration in the design process. If designers lack empathy to care enough for their users then they aren’t suited for the job, this skill must be taught, assessed and appraised to the same standards as wireframing, testing or prototyping.

What can we do?

The designer is the gatekeeper of a useful, pleasant and safe user experience. They are expected to make the right decision at the right time, and must know when it’s worth fighting for the users and when to walk away. Having a comfortable seat at the table comes with responsibilities; the designer should be expected to challenge and provide solutions when necessary.

On a daily basis the designer must consider the users in their process in multiple ways:

• Fake personas can create delusional considerations toward the real user base, ditch them if possible.
• There are no more excuses for not testing your assumptions, even the tiniest interaction must be validated through tests. From a simple guerrilla testing session with colleagues to a quick prototype set-up in Maze, there are plenty of cheap and quick ways to validate assumptions.
• Be informed by setting up service blueprint and empathy maps. Learn what your user sees, thinks, does and feels at each step of the workflow.
• Learn how companies like Amazon or Facebook are using dark patterns, understand the ethical part of designing a product and be aware of what can turn your design into a disaster.

The simple fact of having an empathic approach towards the design process will tremendously help designers to avoid failures.

Be human, be informed and be challenged and you will be in the direction of a successful design.