Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

093 Icarus Matrix

A 2 × 2 matrix representing the possible success-failure outcomes of a design iteration.

It has become fashionable to embrace pithy slogans like, “Fail fast, fail often” and “Move fast and break things”. But such slogans embody an oversimple understanding of possible outcomes. It is more productive to think of success and failure in terms of a 2 × 2 matrix, here referred to as an Icarus matrix. The Icarus matrix teaches that not all successes are good and not all failures are bad: Just as there are beautiful successes, there are beautiful failures; and just as there are ugly failures, there are ugly successes.1

• Ugly successes — The goal is achieved, but the costs are so high and the learning so minimal that success is effectively ...