Survivorship Bias in Design: Consider What You Don’t See

Because for every pixel-perfect success, there’s a graveyard of “almost” buried just outside the spotlight.

You ever look at an award-winning website and think:

“Wow. If I just follow their process, use that same font, copy the color for my CTA and borrow their layouts … I’ll make magic too!”

Yeah… no.

Here’s the thing: As designers, we’re constantly told to “learn from success.” But what we don’t see? That success was one survivor in a battlefield of unlaunched redesigns, broken stakeholder dreams, and brilliant ideas crushed by one badly timed comment from “Steve” in Marketing (yes “Steve” - I still remember).

It’s called Survivorship Bias, and it’s sneakier than a dark mode toggle hidden in a hamburger menu.

We study what survived. We imitate what’s visible. We ignore the things that never made it past the prototype graveyard - or worse, did launch and immediately tanked harder than a skeuomorphic iOS 6 app in 2025.

I’ve seen this in the classroom. I’ve seen it in design sessions. I’ve lived it. (RIP to that one “clean minimal UI” project that died because someone wanted to “make it pop.”)

So, next time you’re tempted to follow someone else’s “10 rules to guaranteed UX success,” maybe pause and ask:

🔍 What didn’t make it to the case study? 🗂️ What failed quietly behind the scenes? 🧠 And are we learning from the real thing - or just the polished survivor?

Success stories are useful.

But failure is where the spicy lessons live.