Creating a Feedback Culture

This case study is in conjunction with a presentation I gave at the 2023 RainFocus User Conference

The title of this talk is "Happy to be wrong: Embracing failure to cultivate innovation"

Why talk about Failure?

In 1985 New Coke was launched. They faced increased competition from Pepsi.

They had seen success with Diet coke and spent millions of dollars on marketing and promotion. 

Despite all of this effort, however, New Coke was a complete failure. 

However, the story does have a positive message about the importance of learning from failure.

Professor of neurobiology at Stanford Medical

In his research he has asked the question, "How do we learn?" 

I believe this is an important question to ask ourselves right now in the events industry. 

There is so much changing in the market from virtual to hybrid and the greater economy. 

How do we learn how to create the best event experiences for our customers? 

Huberman makes two points:

• Our ability to learn anything depends on the plasticity of our brains

• Plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt in response to new experiences

Fun fact, plasticity is highest from birth to the age of 25. After 25 we need to modify our behavior to engage plasticity. 

• One major way to accomplish this is by making errors over and over again. 

Ultimately, the best way to innovate and create new, engaging experiences is trial and error.

If you only remember one slide, I hope it’s this one. ^^

To me, the big question is:

How do we become failure resilient and cultivate this culture among our teams 

Here are the 3 pillars to becoming failure resilient. 

1. Don’t penalize failure. You might go as far as celebrate failure

2. Maximize your attempts

3. And I’ll mention a few key principles for gathering and giving feedback

Don't Penalize Failure

Former NASA and Apple engineer, Mark Rober, conducted an experiment by having 50,000 people move this tiny car through a maze by completing a computer programming puzzle. 

While it looks simple, it wasn’t easy so when an error was made they were given feedback.

One half of the group received the message, “That didn't work. Please try again.” 

This group had a success rate of 68%

The other group’s message was, “Incorrect. You’ve lost 5 pts.”

At the end of the experiment, who do you think had the better success rate? 

The results

68% vs 52% Success Rates

It was the “You’ve lost 5 pts” group that did worse. 

The results also showed the “Incorrect. Please try again” group tried many, many more times.

Group 1 had more than 2 times the attempts than the other group.

The only difference between these two groups was the message within feedback.

When failure is penalized it discourages the number of attempts which ultimately hinders success. 

Now, we might not intentionally or purposefully penalize failures among our teams, 

but every ounce of fear our teams may have about being wrong, can dramatically impact their motivation to try and try again.

Maximize Attempts

Maximizing attempts means generating many potential solutions to the problem at hand. 

It’s an opportunity, early in the process, to be creative, to fail and be wrong, and get all of the bad ideas out of the way

An ideation exercise that we use in product design is called Crazy 8’s

The purpose is to generate radically different ideas to one problem within a short period of time.

1. Take a sheet of paper and fold it into 8 rectangles. 

2. Set a timer for 8 minutes and sketch 8 different ways to tackle the problem. 

The beauty of this approach is that it’s super cost effective

Imagine if Coca-Cola used this exercise to generate ideas to compete with Pepsi. 

New Coke would’ve been 1 of many attempts to consider. 

You can use this exercise to determine the layout of the exhibitor hall. It can be done by yourself but it’s also a great way to get the entire team involved.

When your team gets involved you can use sticker dots to vote on ideas.

AlphaZero

The value of maximizing attempts becomes even more clear when you consider how AI learns

AlphaZero is artificial intelligence developed to play chess.

The reason they named it AlphaZero 

Is because there was zero human input in AlphaZeros chess training. 

It wasn't given any known opening systems or strategies.

It was only given the rules of the game and it learned by playing itself over and over again. 

After 4 hours and millions of games it was better than a grandmaster

• AlphaZero's ability to learn from its own mistakes is what allows it to continually improve its play and greatly surpass human performance

RainFocus UX Research Repository

We apply this principle at RainFocus by keeping a catalog of research findings. 

Anytime we propose solutions to users of our platform, we document the feedback and try to learn from failed attempts. 

We consider each attempt as a step towards success.

The more attempts we make the more likely we are to increase our success rate.

Gather and Give Feedback

Attempts are only a piece of the puzzle.

As we saw from the New Coke campaign it’s crucial that we learn from our failures.

To learn from our failed attempts we need effective feedback loops.

I’d like to take a moment and mention a few key principles to gather and give feedback effectively.

I couldn’t find a better quote to summarize my feelings on gathering and giving effective feedback.

This is a quote is by Ed Catmull, the Founder of Pixar animation studios

It’s also difficult to find a more successful track record than Pixar… Catmull said,

A lively debate is not being waged in hopes of any one person winning the day. To the extent there is “argument,” it seeks only to excavate the truth.

You can imagine his team sitting around a table focused on piecing together the best story. 

I think we all understand how important it is to create the best experiences for our customers

Catmull emphasizes that the truth is not always obvious and that it requires effort to uncover it. 

The goal is to win as a team rather than one person winning a debate.

Gather Feedback

Regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative, don't take it personally.

Provide context

Before presenting your work, it’s always helpful to mention:

What’s the objective you’re trying to achieve?

What is the type of feedback are you looking for or NOT looking for?

Show your work

When you show your process, it allows others to understand your reasoning and how you got to the solution.

This allows people to provide feedback on the process itself, rather than just the final outcome.

Make it conversational

Practice active listening

Ask follow-up questions like, “What would you expect to see”?

Will you tell me more about that?

Be open minded

Give yourself permission to consider different perspectives.

This allows you to identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes.

Being open minded will build stronger relationships with colleagues and improve communication.

Give Feedback

Feedback should be clearly stated, specific, and based on what is observed; feedback is not about personal judgement.

It should be focused on improving the experience. 

Respectful

Your peers are smart. Be kind, authentic, and upfront.

Candid 

Create a space where honesty can flourish.

Think out loud

Raw reactions with fresh eyes provide valuable input.

Offer Solutions (What problem would that solve for you?)

Proposed solutions offer insight about problems with the design.

Embracing Failure to Build a Culture of Innovation

Failure is not the enemy of success—it is a prerequisite for it. Whether we look at the cautionary tale of New Coke or the science behind neural plasticity, the lesson remains the same: progress depends on our ability to learn, adapt, and iterate. As we've seen, innovation thrives in environments where failure isn’t punished but recognized as a necessary step toward improvement.

By removing the stigma around failure, maximizing attempts, and fostering open and constructive feedback, we create a culture that encourages creativity, resilience, and bold problem-solving. Mark Rober’s experiment underscores how small shifts in framing failure can dramatically impact motivation and outcomes. AI systems like AlphaZero reinforce the same principle—success is built on the foundation of relentless iteration.

As leaders, designers, and knowledge workers, we should aim to cultivate an environment where failure is not just tolerated but embraced as a fundamental part of the process. If we want to create groundbreaking products and better experiences for our customers, we must build teams that are failure-resilient, feedback-driven, and unafraid to experiment.

The best ideas often emerge not from getting it right the first time but from being happy to be wrong—and learning from it.

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Hi, I’m T.J. 👋 A product design leader who loves mixing big ideas with practical advice to help people create their best work—and enjoy life along the way.

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