• Question: Did you ever make anything but failed

    Asked by 466kvna44 to Katie, Colin on 9 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Colin Keogh

      Colin Keogh answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      I regularly fail when doing projects, but failing is very important in science & engineering. When i research a problem or try to build something new, im happy to fail, as it shows me 1 way not to do what i wanted.

      You can learn a huge amount about how not to do something by failing to do it. I can then try again but i know more about it and how it did work, so i have a better chance for success the next time.

      I took me about 10 attempts to make my own plastic printing wire for my 3d printer, some burnt, so melted, some twisted etc. But after all these attempts i found the right temperature, speed, pressure etc to make what i wanted.

    • Photo: Katie Mahon

      Katie Mahon answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      Fail is the wrong word 🙂
      Often the first design is not suitable, or doesn’t work as well as you’d hoped. So you might modify it or tweak the design. Then you try again! All new designs are going to need some bit of discussion, or trial & error, before everything is 100% right. So lots of things don’t work first time, but as a designer you look at WHAT went wrong, you think about WHY it went wrong, and then, most importantly, HOW can I prevent that? How can I solve the problem? And you go again, until you succeed!

Comments