Can a design failure teach us something about why failure is good for us?

Failure is a huge part of everyday life. It’s a big reason to get out of bed in the morning. It’s one of the first things we learn how to do as humans; in fact, it’s the reason we learn to do anything at all. Think about learning language. We make sounds and imitate and get things wrong, and the way people react to them teaches us the difference between right and wrong. It’s why babies are so absorbent- they’re always failing. But when we get older, we start to attach a stigma to failure. We start getting self-conscious about it, when it’s really the most important thing we can do for ourselves. An article from Big Think about the benefits of failure argues that we should aim for a «failure rate» of «roughly 16 percent.» If you always succeed in everything you do, it means you’re not pushing the upper limits of what you might be capable of. It might be embarrassing, and it might be painful to fail, but it’s definitely crucial. Anyone who goes to the gym knows this to be true. If you’re not pushing to the point of the burn- even if that means dropping the weight or falling out of a balancing position- then you may never know what your potential is. We get so afraid of making a fool of ourselves or seeming bad at something that it can stop us in our tracks. These design fails teach us that that’s all okay.