Useful feedback: a lesson in communication

Let’s dive into what’s possibly the most difficult part of the design process: giving and receiving design feedback!

Your designer sends you homepage_final_v7c_updatedFooter.jpg. This is well past all the primary stages of design, of course. This clever pusher of pixels has taken all the words they received in the brief, and carefully poured those into PhotoShop, Sketch, Figma, whatever. You open the exported file, and are now looking at blood-sweat-and-tears made JPG.

And it’s decidedly mediocre.

“Sure is a looker”

Thanks to the fact that design deliverables are generally visual assets, it’s natural to draw the conclusion that designers “just want to make everything look pretty”.

However, decisions like colour, spacing, position, dimension, orientation — they were all made with certain goals in mind. Quite possibly (hopefully) the same goals outlined in the initial design brief.

So when a design comes out looking like yesterday’s kebab, you’ll have to do what you can to steer the ship back into the right direction. … and that starts with clear communication.

Giving feedback

Your gut tells you to quickly punch up an email to your designer, starting with “love your work as always.” “I really like the colour scheme!” Or maybe “That’s my favourite picture of our product!” It wants to feed the designer the usual kill-them-with-kindness sandwich-between-compliments type of feedback.

Kill it. With fire. Your gut’s being a disingenuous twat. (… we know you’re just trying to be nice!)

Honestly, don’t be this person. You’re not here to (pretend to) be nice. Both of you are here to work towards the goal of delivering a product that works. This is about results. About efficiency. Save the compliments for the water-cooler/coffee machine talk. But obviously don’t be nasty to them either.

1 ) Assess

Good feedback starts with finding out where the problem areas are. If a design doesn’t work for you, ask yourself what it’s not accomplishing. Every design should try to complete specific objectives.

Refer to the brief, and see if you can put check-marks behind all the goals that were initially outlined. If any goals aren’t met, that’s what you’ll talk about!

You can consider all the true knowns for this. The brief, brand guidelines, design rules, etc. So don’t expect “I don’t like [x]” to be actionable. You’ll have to help your designer understand why you don’t like something. Talk to them, because they might be able to help you understand why something doesn’t quite feel right.

2 ) Address

Now that you know what goals aren’t being met, put that into actionable words. Point at the target you’ve identified before and explain what is going wrong there. Here’s some examples of solid, usable feedback:

• “The primary action on the page doesn’t stand out enough”
• “Blue isn’t used in our brand guidelines”
• “The user’s avatar isn’t following the pre-defined pattern we use elsewhere”
• “It’s hard to discern the different content types”
• “I can’t find where I go to change notification settings”
• “There’s so much text that it’s hard to read”

The common thread here is that you’re highlighting problems, and not solutions. Try not to hand a designer a solution — instead, highlight the problem you’re solving. Designers specialize in solving design problems, and if you never tell them what problem you’re solving, they won’t be able to think along or base further choices on this solution!

3 ) Re-brief

You’ll do this in collaboration with your designer. Most of the time the designer will be able to come up with a solution on the spot. Re-styling a button to stand out more, changing a colour into one that appears in the brand guidelines, or adding a “gear” icon to get into the settings portion of your website.

Occasionally, your designer won’t be able to answer an issue on the spot. Give them time to go off and come back to you with a proper solution. Design isn’t always as simple as slapping a new style onto a button.

Sometimes they’ll have to refer to documentation about previously used patterns. Research how other people solved similar problems. Or they might have to survive a bare-knuckle fist-fight with a lead developer in a dark alley, over whether or not a specific plugin can be used for the project. True story.

Receiving feedback

Still reading? okay, confess. You’re a designer, aren’t you? That’s right. You’ve been smiling and nodding the entire time. Heck, you’re probably still struggling to wipe that smirk off your face… “Finally someone that understands how hard it is to deal with the crummy feedback clients give us all the god-damn time”, am I right?

Well the bad news is that this works both ways. You’ll have to work on how you ask-for and receive critique as well.

1 ) Return to sender

You’re a professional. A pro. Treat yourself like one. When Lebron James misses a potential game-winning shot*, he doesn’t want to hear “well you had really good form on the jump!” He doesn’t want his coach to tell him “wow that looked like it’d go in!” Or a reported harp about how “you hit the other one, two weeks ago!”

* MJ wouldn’t have. Just sayin’.

Instead, he wants to think about the 8 times he lost the ball. The 25 total shots he missed during the game. That time he let his defensive assignment slip past him.

Tell your clients feedback is not about likes or dislikes. When they say “it looks awesome”, tell them “that’s fantastic, happy you like it … but ultimately, that’s not important. What‘s important, is that it will work.”

Quite often I find myself proving this by telling my clients I love yellow:

“[…] I can’t help it! It’s my favourite colour! Check out my CV — it’s got a gigantic yellow header! But I didn’t use any yellow in our project because it doesn’t gel with the message we’re trying to convey. It doesn’t rate well with our target audience either. I did use yellow for the branding of an infection prevention product series though. Because it’s a colour that implies a warning! You know, from back when our brains had to be afraid of bees!”

You can take this pretty far, especially when you’ve worked with someone for a while. Be honest and upfront, but candid. When they say “I love it!”, answer with “oh, I don’t care if you like it or not […]” and follow it up with the following…

2 ) Ask for it

It’s vital to ask questions that allow you to assess if you’ve met your brief. You want to find out if everything you tried to convey is achieved. This is not

Ask questions like:

• what do you think is the primary goal on this screen?
• what message are we trying to convey here?
• what can you do on this page?
• where do you click to accomplish [x]?

In other words, take the brief, and reverse it. In all honesty, these questions should’ve entered your mind long before you started gathering user feedback. This is exactly what you think about while you’re creating the design!

3 ) Why? … so?

Designs are (generally speaking) not made for 1 person. They’re made to convey some type of message to a larger audience. That same audience might have individuals that hate the colour red with a passion because it was their ex’s favourite. Or maybe they’re allergic to sunflowers and thus hate yellow. Heck, some might’ve been boo’ed off stage by a dude in a green shirt. People are whimsical like that.

Don’t take “I want this button to be red” as feedback. Ask why. And if the answer is “because I like red”, point out that this doesn’t affect what other people think of the design, because everyone has their own preferences.

Every so often, your client will answer more appropriately. “Red implies something’s wrong, and we’re trying to highlight a positive here.” In that case, they just might be right. So keep on your toes. The client isn’t always right. But they’re not always wrong either.

In short:

• find out why something is disliked
• find out if & how this impacts the user’s experience

This allows you to understand the problem, before you solve it. Changing a colour is easier, but you want to know why, so you can base subsequent choices on the same premise!

Too long, didn’t bother reading:

Yeah, that’s a lot of words. Nuance and stuff. So here’s the skinny:

No flattery — we’re not here to stick feathers up rear-ends

1. Assess — find out what’s not according to spec
2. Address — state how the design is not meeting the requirements
3. Re-brief — re-state the original brief, or alter/clarify where poorly defined

Always keep in mind that you’re both working towards the same goal.

For the other side: (designers, that’s you!)

1. Return to sender— don’t. accept. useless. compliments
2. Ask for it — Ask goal-oriented questions to confirm the brief has been met
3. Why? So? — Aim to understand the problem, before you solve it

Compliments are your chance to show that you don’t give 2 cents about “likes” or “dislikes”. Design is about solving problems. Not about “but I love red”. Or “that’s really pretty”. Or “their website looks better!”

Don’t make it pop. Make it WORK.

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