Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failure, and Lessons Learned

Steven Heller has given the design community dozens of thoughtful and well conceived books. This is not his best--I would say the quality of the articles is a bit uneven. However, the article by Richard Saul Wurman alone is worth the price of the book; It's one of the most optimistic and encouraging pieces of writing about design I have encountered. Here's a writer (Wurman) who has written 85 books, founded the TED conferences, and mapped many of the world's great cities, yet he admits that most of his ideas failed or did not come to fruition! Heller's witty design for the book is fun. My design book club read this as a selection and it generated a lot of lively debate. Worthy reading for any creative professional.

I have been doing research for a new book describing the failures of products and services. The title of this book caught my attention and I purchased it. It consists of a series of articles written by great designers. These articles describe what the designers have learned from failures in their lives. It's a great book which I read in a few days and I am glad I bought it. We all should read more of these sorts of books. I highly recommend it.