failure, it's part of the process – aim conference

Failure, it’s part of the processGetting iterative in your approach to design

Credit: Flickr user ‘ucumari’

Dear Digg,Go fuck yourself.

Your pal,— J.G.

Failure is a good thing? Sort of.

Take chances and release. Listen and iterate

Failure != Mistake

Who am I? What do I do?

Creative Dir. Digg, Co-founder Pownce, Co-founder Silverorange

Your website sucks

Trust me, it could be a lot better

Photo Credit: Flickr user d-a-n-i-e-l

Digg c. 2005

Digg c. 2009

Credit: Phil Gyford

Desire paths

Don’t try to predict everything

Point Reyes Station, California, April 2009

Not a failure... a perfect opportunity

Credit: kimballhoman

Realign, don’t redesign

Cameron Moll is awfully clever... read it on A List Apart

Credit: Rev Dan Catt

Subtraction is iteration too

Try to remove as much as you add – don’t be afraid to prune

Credit: Flickr user ‘law_keven’

Really listen to your users

Both explicit and implicit feedback are crucial to identifying successes and failures

Digg comments

A case study

Get it out there

Step 1

Add sophistication

Step 2

by dburka 20 minutes ago

by marktrammell 16 minutes ago

Of course, what McCain is trying to avoid anyone noticing is that the problem isn't regulators failing to do

their job; it's that that man he tapped to write his economic policy - Phil Gramm - removed oversight of the

instruments that are laying waste to the finance sector from the regulators' job descriptions.

Reply to this comment


We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out the

finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when Phil hit the road.

5 Replies to this comment

by kevinrose 10 minutes ago

We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out

the finance sector.





by kurtwilms 12 minutes ago


the finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when

Phil hit the road.


Start revising

Step 3

Add multiple levels of nesting

Establish goals

Reduce complexity of nesting

Discourage top-posting

Increase participation

Improve quality of discussions

Address scaling issues

Make things feel simpler & improve interactions


by marktrammell 16 minutes ago

Of course, what McCain is trying to avoid anyone noticing is that the problem isn't regulators failing to do

their job; it's that that man he tapped to write his economic policy - Phil Gramm - removed oversight of the

instruments that are laying waste to the finance sector from the regulators' job descriptions.






by kevinrose 10 minutes ago


the finance sector.





by kurtwilms 12 minutes ago


the finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when

Phil hit the road.


Add multiple levels of nesting

Measure success

Reduce complexity of nesting

Discourage top-posting

Increase participation

Improve quality of discussions

Address scaling issues


One long year...( I’m sorry )

Credit: Flickr user xjrlokix

Then we got it rightWell... sort of

Gather feedback

Explicit and implicit

(Idea is to avoid feature creep and gauge success)

Set new goals


Improve performance

Add most requested functionality

Create some compsSomewhere to start discussion

User test #1Focus group novices and experts

Ask for more feedbackReally? Yes.

Create refined compsIn this case html/css/js comps

ImplementWork closely with the development team

User test #2Perform task analysis

Launch it!It works? It works!

Achieved goals? Make things feel simpler & improve interactions

Improve performance

Add most requested functionality

Start on next iterations

Done? Nope

Still weak for casual visitors

Scales technically, but not socially

Pseudo-pagination is cool, but not great

Onerous registration to comment

Hard to keep up-to-date with your conversations

Stay fit: Adapt to survive and thrive

If iterative design isn’t instinctual, be convincing

digg twitter flickr dopplr clustershot last.fm

[email protected]

Thanks! I’m dburka

slides will be on slideshare.net/dburka

failure, it's part of the process – aim conference

Design