Design
Get better at giving design feedback
How to give more helpful and actionable feedback on design critique
Feedback and critiques have always been part of a designer’s day-to-day job. From design critique sessions to product reviews, user testing, and design handoffs, we constantly ask users and stakeholders for their feedback to create better design and usability. And as a designer, sometimes we also get called by our peers or colleagues to give design or product feedback.
But giving design feedback isn’t a simple task. Everyone has their opinion on design. There is always an immediate gut reaction: “Hey, I love this!” or “Meh”. Designers usually struggle due to a lack of clarity on the problem being focused on, then they are giving vague feedback which is not actionable, and reviews end up becoming ego clashes because of a lot of disagreement.
Knowing how to give good feedback will help your colleagues take, discuss, and address more actionable items. On the other hand, bad feedback will make it difficult for them to discuss the action item and it can go wrong. The most common bad feedback I usually receive is similar to what Fabricio Teixeira wrote on identifying good vs bad feedback. A few characteristics of bad feedback:
- Bad feedback focuses on the solution, and not the problem. People might be jumping too quickly into a solution by giving comments like “you should use a hamburger menu instead”. You should tell them about the problem on what you are seeing, not the solution you are imagining.
- Bad feedback includes personal likes and dislikes. Like I said before, everyone has an opinion on design. But subjectivity should stay out of the equation. Don’t say things like “I like” and “I don’t like”, you have to focus on the problem they are trying to solve.
- Bad feedback is directed to the designer, not to the design. I ever hear some people say things like “your layout” or “your choice of colors” instead of “the layout” and “the choice of colors” and it feels weird too harmful. You don’t have to judge the designer by giving directed feedback to them, because what we are discussing is a result of a collaborative design process.
Giving meaningful feedback
So, how do you go beyond that to hone your skills of giving helpful and actionable feedback? Here are things that I learn to consider when getting called for a design critique session:
1. Understand the context
Make sure you are on the same page with the feedback receiver before you throw a word. Recap on what is the project about, who the primary users are, what is the impact we want to achieve, and how we measure it. Get aligned on this before giving any feedback. Otherwise, you might speak past each other.
2. Experience the actual end-to-end experience.
Don’t just focus on the key screens. Run through the end-to-end experience. A guide from Julie Zhuo: Put yourself in the shoes of someone who is the primary user, and go through the flow step-by-step. Wear your user hat, not your company’s employee hat. The difference looks like this.
Company employee hat: “We need more people to click on X, and I’m skeptical this design will get us there.”
User hat: “When I get here, I’m trying to do Y, and this button about X isn’t compelling because…”
One is far more insightful than the other.
3. Note any issues that might prevent the project from being successful
List all blockers or issues from your overall experience that might prevent a user from having their problem solved. Jot them down and prioritize them based on impact. Deliver the feedback with language that a person on the street would understand.
4. Provide a good rationale or theory
If you have specific UI or flow suggestions, please provide a good rationale or theory so that the designer can understand your concerns better. You can give basic or common theories about UX, behavioral psychology, and UI-related theories about layout, typography, illustrations, etc.
5. Share your issues in the priority order
Last, deliver your feedback. But we may not have time to go with all issues, it’s better if you share your issues in the priority order of importance not order in the flow. Spend your time discussing the biggest issue first and you can send the rest via slack or email.
The goal of design critique is to unblocking problems and improving a design. It does not mean simply judging a design. The discussion is meant to ensure that the feedback receiver understands why the issues we’ve brought up matter, so don’t try to solve them. Giving good feedback helps your colleague avoid mistakes and thus create higher quality work. It also enables cooperation and collaboration. Creating a positive culture of critiques takes time and investment. But over time, this culture builds team trust and prevents any destructive egos from causing too much damage to a project.
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