In design school, my very wise professor had a saying. "Bad design hurts."
It was true. We've all experienced it, in every day things like electronics, computers, and toys. (Ok, those are MY everyday things, but you get the idea.) Maybe you tried to put together a shelf or table with poorly designed instructions. Your vacuum stops sucking and…starts sucking. Your drink bottle leaks when you turn it upside down. You read a print piece that you desperately wished communicated what it was supposed to.
When you come across bad design, it evokes some sort of negative feeling - a cringe, frustration, anger. At some point, we either sigh or call upon our inner designers to rig something up that compensates for the product's shortcomings. At worst, however, bad design is simply a hindrance to an exceptional user experience. (And likely the monetization of that experience.)
Not so for the folks at NASA. In a recent episode, "Space Shuttle Disaster," NOVA explored a couple of well-known NASA disasters: Challenger and Columbia. In the 80's, there was a culture at NASA that held launch schedules as a top priority, often at the cost of safety. In 1986, the Challenger shuttle exploded 73 seconds into flight. According to Dr. Howard McCurdy of American University, there were too many people involved in deciding what the one shuttle design should be. That, consequently, doomed the mission before it even began.
Bad management led to poor culture and prioritization, which led to bad product. (Sound familiar?) Except this time, it killed seven American astronauts.
After an investigation into the 2003 Columbia disaster, which took seven more lives, NASA's Project Constellation was launched as a road map for space exploration. It moved away from the the bulky "shuttle as a plane" approach. Instead, slim boosters were designed to help avoid damage from foam debris, a fate the Columbia shuttle suffered. An escape tower in the booster was incorporated to give crew members a chance to escape if something went wrong.
So the next time design by committee brings you down, remember the dreadful fate our brave astronauts met. It could be much worse. Bad design really can kill.
Phil | examplify.com
