Think Like a Rocket Scientist
by Varol, Ozan · 283 highlights
In a proper test, the goal isn’t to discover everything that can go right. Rather, the goal is to discover everything that can go wrong and to find the breaking point.
The best way to determine an object’s breaking point is to break it.
Testing can help turn unknowns into knowns.
All it takes is a willingness to design tests for the worst-case—rather than the best-case—scenario.
When you make a last-minute change to a product and ship it out the door without retesting the whole thing, you’re risking disaster.
“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”
“The truth is that nothing went as we’d planned,” he responded, “but everything was within the scope of what we prepared for.”
“You don’t race on a treadmill with Netflix in front of you,” Boone says, “so you shouldn’t be doing your training like that.”
“Nice to see you again. Let’s dance.”
when it comes to reporting their own behavior, people tend to bend the truth.
instead of creating artificial testing environments disconnected from reality, we’re better off observing customer behavior in real life.
“If you want to improve a piece of software,” as IDEO’s founder David Kelley explains, “all you have to do is watch people using it and see when they grimace.”
Observing people, it turns out, tends to affect how they behave.
The act of observation disturbs humans in a different way. When people know they’re being observed, they behave differently.
Test as you fly—subject yourself to the same conditions you’ll experience during the flight—and you’ll soon begin to soar.
If we aren’t guaranteed to win, we assume the game isn’t worth playing. This natural tendency to avoid failure is a recipe for failing.
If failure weren’t an option, we never would have dipped our toes into the cosmic ocean.
Doing anything groundbreaking requires taking risks, and taking risks means you’re going to fail
Elon Musk says. “Failure is an option here [at SpaceX]. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
took Dyson fifteen years and 5,126 prototypes to get his revolutionary bagless vacuum to work.