Dear Team & Client, This how feedbacks that we expect from you
How to make us thankful by giving vague-free feedback to build a better product or design.
Giving a comment on a User Interface design is easy stuff, giving feedback is another one. However, as designers, we always looking for feedback, true feedback. But we end up getting comments. Arrgh. 😨
Just think Hiro and Andi are the stakeholders that I work with on.
And this is what I feel when I see annoying feedback like that.
Feedback is a response to improve the design quality by showing clear what’s wrong and a clear cues, while a comment is just using a personal gut without having clearly “so what” for the designer
We show the design, you give feedback. Then we learn what your needs from them. It’s a natural part of the design process.
However, many times we worked with clients, we often facing vague, not clearly feedback.
Let’s call it just a comment rather than feedback.
In this writing, I’m writing for you guys my beloved stakeholder, client, developer, or everyone that works with me to share with you how you can be involved in making better product/design by giving good feedback to us.
Read, understand, and try to implement it in our working style.
Let’s check it out.
Why Good Feedback Matters
First of all, your feedback is important for the designer, for you too as our stakeholder.
The thing is your response is affects the designer’s emotion. Good feedback could make the designer feel energize, enthusiast, want to learn new stuff. The important one is the designer knows what they have to do next.
If the designer so, you will get the effect. The product design will be better. That’s a piece of good news.
On the other hand, vague feedback just makes us don’t go anywhere or just feel weird about what I have done. We feel annoyed, confused, and other situations that make us hard to acting up.
Good Feedback matters since it’s the way we collaborate together. I know maybe you have no idea how good feedback looks like. It’s okay.
That’s why I wrote this writing to you.
How feedback that we hope from you — guys
Feel free to go negative about things you don’t like. If you don’t tell us what you think isn’t working, we’ll show you the same thing again and again.
Frame your feedback into a context
The first thing that you need to consider is giving feedback to remain by your goals and metrics to success for your product.
If it’s not relevant to those goals, probably it could be just the personal gut which is all doesn’t too useful.
It also better if you share more details on the context or situation that how the user will interact with the product or design.
Think of the why and be specific
Point out and go into as much detail as possible as to why you feel something is not working. More than anything, your reasoning is critical to solving the problem.
The discussion of finding “why” could help us extract why some design doesn’t work and then we can find a better alternative.
Stay thinking for your user first
It also necessary for every design conversation, you bring the user eye in mind. Try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes when viewing the design.
It can be easy to fall into a trap to give feedback based on own personal likes and dislikes. But at the end of the day, we have to remember that this product for the user.
Describe the problem, don’t prescribe the solution
Prescribe solutions can be an easy thing for a designer. But if we don’t know the reason and just doing it, we can end up with something above.
The better alternative is you can share the problem and goals, then the designer design something in order to achieve the goals.
Share your references as well
If you want a certain style of button, don’t say “I want the button where there is a box within a box”
We will vague with what you said.
The alternative you can give us an example or references. It can be a link that goes to the example or image or something else.
Check this feedback below.
Consolidate the feedbacks
There are a lot of different comments from different stakeholders when viewing the design for the first time. But we as designers will be going to love you if you take a few days to review internally and consolidate the strongest and most effective feedback.
Limit the number of people participating in the review cycle to as small as possible — for faster, more succinct feedback.
Be honest and of course, polite awesome
Design feedback is critical to the growth of designers and the success of the execution of the project/product.
That’s why you need to tell us why we’re wrong about certain design decisions we’ve made. That’s part of the process is finding the diamond.
What I want to share with you at this time is the way you communicate the feedback. The same message with different ways to deliver can affect different reactions from the designer.
What we hope from you is try to empathy first with the user, then with us, of course, the designer.
Bonus, Make your designer proud of their work 😎
Good design is like a refrigerator — when it works, no one notices, but when it doesn’t, it sure stinks.
Yes, you can make your designer feel honor if you found some good design from them, say that their design is good and you like it.
Simple words like that can improve their emotions, mentality, the spirit of what they do.
Of course, there is always a chance to improve the design because it’s hard to get the best design for the first time.
You can use at least your 5–10 minutes just to appreciate the design that goes well by your designer.
They will recognize how design look like that you approve. The important one, they will like working with you.
This writing we prepare for Melalie Design Sharing Session by collaborate with my awesome fellow designer Dwi.
Kindly to 👏 clap if you found this writing valuable, 👉 follow me for more writing like this.
Another good reference for you both designer, client, or stakeholder on how producing good design feedback 👇
