Observing Failure To Create Better Designs

Learning from your failures is one of the true keys to success in any part of your life.

If you can learn to embrace failure, you will always be a step ahead of those who fear it.

But in any case, the best kind of failure... is someone else's! 😲

Now before you consider me a meanie, learning from others mistakes will save you time and energy, no matter what your goal.

But trust me, people are going to make mistakes, so it would be remiss of you not to take these free life lessons and run.

Turning this back in the direction of leather goods, one #leatherhack I like to do when creating designs is to google search the item I want to make with the word 'repair' or 'restoration' and look at similar items that are broken and damaged.

I then ask myself the following questions and note down my answers:

- Where did the design fail?

- Why did the design fail?

- What would I change about the design to prevent this?

So lets give you a rough example and Google say, 'strap attachment hardware repair':

Now at this point, how the repair was done is really not as important as observing where the design failed (click the image if you want to see the repair job).

This is a huge generalisation, but rarely are leather goods repairers as skilled as the people who make these items from scratch. (Some brands like Hermes, do employ craftsmen to work in their repair shops though).

So taking the above picture, lets ask the same 3 original questions:

- Where did the design fail? At the turnover around the square D ring where the strap end is stitched horizontally.

- Why did the design fail? The stitching is opposing the 'line-of-pull' creating a perforation that weakens the leather under load.

- What would I change about the design to prevent this? Finish the line of stitching along one side of the strap, add two binding over stitches to reinforce the seam, back stitch two, pass the needles through to the other side and repeat for the next seam.

This is a rather simple example, but you get the idea.

Take a look at some other repair examples. Don't ignore the repair jobs in the links as you may get some ideas.

But be aware, many repair workers are only interested in the item 'looking repaired' for the customer.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/thehandbagspa/

And just for laughs, you gotta watch this priceless restoration video.

So, what do you think? Do you have any design hacks to share? Let me know your thoughts and experiences!