I re-read "Creative Confidence" by David and Tom Kelley earlier this year, and there was one particular quote in the book that hit pretty close to home, and it might for several of you as well:
“In our experience, one of the scariest snakes in the room is the fear of failure, which manifests itself in such ways as fear of being judged, fear of getting started, fear of the unknown. And while much has been said about fear of failure, it still is the single biggest obstacle people face to creative success.” - Tom Kelley
Each time I’ve read this quote, it has at least made me pause and think, and it has even made me tear up a little bit. For the last thirteen years, the fear of failure has been one of the defining characteristics of my life. Sometimes that fear has positively manifested in some level of healthy motivation that has played a role in whatever achievements I may have acquired within my career. Still, fear of failure, rather than the pursuit of success, has led to more harm than good, making me take fewer risks, choose safer options, and not allowing myself to create any meaningful personal confidence, no matter what I accomplish in my career and in life.
I’m giving you a little bit of a personal backstory here because, if you’re not careful, the fear of failure can really take a monumental toll on your personal and career goals and development. As Kelley said, it can be the greatest obstacle to not just creative success but business success as well. I like how Kelley further divided the fear of failure into a few sub-definitions, and they will act as a great primer for the rest of this article.
Fear of Being Judged: Creative professions, including design roles, can often put practitioners of those roles in positions where they have to be open to being more vulnerable or judged than other professions. No matter how much research and data are brought into a design decision, that decision still contains some amount of subjectivity and creativity from the designer making that decision. In other words, the designer is exposing their ideas, opinions, and ways of thinking in a way few others have to do. And yes, that can be quite scary. In fact, the longer I find myself working in the design world, the more pressured and scared I feel to have the answers and to “be right” all the time. There are a couple of ways I try to get past this mindset when I am working. First, my original graphic design teacher, whom I owe so much, used to always tell me, “Once you put the work up (on the critique wall), it’s not yours anymore; it’s the team's, and we’ll work on improving it together.” Thinking this way has helped me approach my work in a way that allows me to create quick but dirty first drafts of something and share it with my colleagues so they can critique my work and so I can end up creating a better solution. The second thing I try to do when it comes to, in particular, getting past that fear of judgment is to focus more on the process than the outcome. Many folks will argue for either one being the most important of the two, and I myself go back and forth on their value (I end up thinking both are equally important). But in this case, focusing on the process helps me mitigate my fear of being wrong. I tell myself that if I went through what I thought was the process in the best way possible, I have to be satisfied with the outcomes. This, of course, doesn’t mean I won’t try to improve a process, and in fact, when I reflect back on a project, that’s what I typically focus on first. As a service designer, the best thing I can do is to focus on creating the best process possible to get to the solution my team and I need to get to, rather than putting too much pressure on myself or my colleagues to “get it right.” Of course, we want to experience measurable success whenever possible, but I have to trust that the process will get me there in a way that allows me to erase the fear of being judged.
There’s also, of course, a whole separate layer of judgment that exists on social media websites, which for me and a lot of other creative professionals, will be LinkedIn. I’ve mentioned and even written whole articles on basically how the fear of judgment has led to dozens of LinkedIn bio and content iterations. When it comes to social judgment, the best advice I can give here is to be completely authentic without also being too hard on yourself.
Fear of Getting Started: Designers and creative professionals often fear that “blank piece of paper” or the empty space before the beginning of the creative process. There can be many reasons why this fear pops up for us, and each has their own reasons why we fear the first step. When I was younger, this fear was absolutely connected to that larger fear of failure because I believe I was subconsciously telling myself that I’d rather not start something than start and finish something and fail at the results of whatever that something is. Fortunately, I have been able to embrace the iterative mindset as a comfort when I am starting a project. I now assume that the first version of whatever I create will need to be iterated upon, and knowing that helps me to get that first version done and out in the world so I can experience the feedback and critique needed to complete the work at a satisfactory level. “Fail fast and iterate” is probably an overused and abused term, but this concept is my greatest tool to help me get started on an idea or a project. This concept helped me evolve from the person never doing the work to the person getting the work done the quickest. I stopped letting the pursuit of perfection and avoidance of criticism deter me from getting the work done. Of course, we always want to put our best foot forward, and I try to make my first iterations of a design, presentation, brief, or report the best it can be, but I don’t put extra pressure on myself by trying to “get 100% right” the first time. Also, I understand that different organizations, teams, and cultures will have different expectations of what the beginnings of a project should look like, but hopefully, you find yourself in an iterative environment that I’ve always tried to create for the teams I’ve worked with. I believe if that environment exists, it can alleviate the fear of getting started on something.
Fear of the Unknown: This is a significant challenge for me. It stands as the most substantial root in my tree of fear of failure. I believe the subconscious desire to remain within my comfort zone has been one of my most significant obstacles to growth as a designer and as a human. UX design, Los Angeles, and its surrounding areas, along with my current career path, represent comfort zones for me. To counter this comfort, I am actively pursuing service design, attending grad school, and living in a different city (I see you, Austin!). The discomfort inherent in the unknown creates our growth and diminishes our fear of failure.
For other designers and creatives out there, the fear of the unknown might manifest in different ways than the personal examples I've shared. You might be a UX designer afraid of conducting user interviews, a painter hesitant to experiment with a new style or medium, or a product designer reluctant to facilitate a design thinking workshop. In the UX world, many individuals are either transitioning or aspiring to transition into UX, presenting a substantial unknown currently being experienced.
As I admitted at the beginning of discussing this fear, I genuinely struggle with it, and I don’t believe I have a definitive "how to get past this fear" piece of advice. However, I can come close by stating that the best way to combat the fear of the unknown is to borrow a phrase from Shia LaBeouf: "just do it!" Whether it's boarding that plane, applying for that job, or asking that person out, taking the leap is crucial. In the context of design professions, I've managed to grow and overcome the fear of the unknown by simply engaging in activities I once found intimidating. Workshops, design sprints, user interviews – these were initially uncomfortable for me, but I turned them into activities I love. The trick for me (and likely for you) is to keep going! Continuously try new things, discern what works and what doesn't, and, in essence, transform the unknown into the known.
As we wrap up 2023, we can probably all look back and agree that it has been a challenging time for UXers, and many individuals have experienced various degrees of failure. I hope that the failures we have encountered will lead us to fear failure a lot less in 2024 and beyond. So, if you are a practicing designer or creative, I encourage you to embrace judgment, get started, and welcome the unknown! I know these will be the themes of my goals for 2024.
My Favorite Things from Last Week
I love how this article from LiveWork breaks down the key benefits of mapping and designing a patient journey for virtual wards. I specifically enjoyed how the article pointed out the need to identify clinical decision points and the need to align various teams towards a common vision.
This short article by Bernd Herbert and Mani I for the Design Council features excellent approaches on how to view strategic and systemic design. I think their 4-point evolution of design is a great way to showcase and explain different levels of the practice of design.
Mauricio Manhaes has recently been writing wonderful content in relation to the future of artificial intelligence and service design and this article in particular speaks to how AI will impact communications within services.
I am a huge fan of the content Marina Krutchinsky’s posts and here is a good one related to what you should and shouldn’t do when telling a good UX story.
I stumbled upon this older article but still a good one by Simone Wegelin that speaks to the need to look at improving internal processes in order to make customers happy. This is a topic that hits close to home right now as I am currently on a personal crusade to explore process optimization at my own organization and being able to help internal employees in a similar way UXers help front-end users is one of my favorite parts of practicing service design.