When any device, product or gizmo gets released to the world, it is the lovechild of the designer’s initial idea and hours of refinement. The refinement may come from the device’s physical makeup, the materials used for the manufacturing or the colors used for the aesthetics. It may also come from the addition or subtraction of features. But a majority of any refinement comes from removing all of the flaws, bugs and malperformances of the device.

Removing all errors from a device is an obvious goal. Some product makers don’t always seem to take it to heart as well as others do. But I can image that even for those more failure-prone devices there was some manager during the brainstorming session discussing how this product should work, with an assumption that frequent failures for the device isn’t an option.

But have you ever noticed a device that was designed for failure. Meaning that instead of fixing the problems that occur in the device, the maker designed the device to make recovering from failure easier.

It almost seems oxymoronic to do such a thing, but I recently came a device that does just that which prompted a few thoughts.

First, I’d like to give brief definition of what designing for failure is to me. Followed by my post-inspiring story of what device I came across that was designed for failure. Then I will dissect what criteria this device follows that could make it possible for devices to also be designed for failure. Finally, I will pose a few other thoughts that came to me about this whole idea.

And here … we … go