Essential tips for non-designers on providing productive feedback for their designer friends

Being an in-house designer on a small marketing team definitely has its perks. I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much about marketing strategy and techniques — from seeing what goes into demand generation campaigns, to participating in event planning and logistics meetings, I feel lucky to have the opportunity to step outside of my own area of expertise once in a while.

But being a creative on a marketing team also has its fair share of challenges — especially when it comes to receiving feedback on design work.

Not only does iteration need to happen quickly and efficiently, but you’re often handed feedback that may be “challenging” to work with. I’m not sure how many times I’ve simply been left with the words “I don’t like it,” or “It doesn’t look good”. Receiving good feedback is one of the most crucial parts of the design process for any designer, and it’s important for anyone with a role in evaluating or approving design work to understand how to provide these critiques productively. This helps your designer do his or her work more efficiently, AND sharpens your toolkit in articulating ideas. Also, you’ll probably end up with a more effective and comprehensive solution to the problem you were trying to solve in the first place, meaning better results for everyone!

So, if you’re a non-designer who works closely with designers, here are a few tips for providing productive feedback in a way that will make your designer a happy camper :

1. Think about why you like or don’t like something.
   Is it the feeling you get when you see it or interact with it? Is the link that you need to click too hard to see or find? Does it look too playful? Maybe you don’t like the color orange. Any details that you can provide more than just saying “I like it,” or “I don’t like it” are useful. We need to understand and value your perspective, as the product we’re designing should reflect the needs and wants of the larger community, not just ourselves. Even though we try our best not to bring too much personal bias into our work, sometimes we need others to tell us that something just isn’t working from their perspective. A better articulation of why that is will help us dig into the root of the problem and remedy it, rather than being left guessing about what’s wrong.
2. Take the time to look something over, and don’t rush.
   I’ve seen people rush through reviews just to push something out, only to come back to it a few days later after it’s already been implemented and sent out asking for changes. At this point, things don’t look great for anyone — the designer hasn’t pushed out his/her best work, and the marketer probably won’t get the results that he/she is looking for. In many cases, your initial reaction to something may be very different from the reaction you get looking at it a few days later. Taking some time will allow you to gauge your emotions better and will allow you to collect your feedback for your designer — just make sure that this is comped for in your release timeline.
3. Give us a chance to defend our design decisions.
   There’s usually a good reason behind why we designed something the way we did. After all, our job as designers is first and foremost to create a usable, functional product. Just as we’re open to hearing feedback from you, be open to hearing your designer out. Design is a collaborative process, and although you may ultimately hold the decision-making power, your designer may reveal caveats or constraints you might not have realized presented themselves during the design process.
4. Realize that feedback is feedback, we won’t take it personally.
   Getting feedback on our work is one of the most important parts of the design process (I know I’ve said that before, but just to reiterate, it’s that important!). It’s not helpful to the designer if you’re holding back comments because you’re worried it’ll hurt her feelings, it’ll just keep your end product from achieving its full potential in the long run. Realize that it’s our job, yes, job, to create a product and iterate on it until it fulfills the required specifications. As long as your critiques aren’t personal attacks on us, we won’t be upset and will be happy to take your feedback into consideration.
5. Give your designer a chance to do her job.
   By this, I mean that you should try to make your feedback open-ended, trusting the designer to work through the problem and design a solution that will better satisfy your needs. Your designer should know the best techniques to resolve the issues that you are presenting, after all, it’s their craft and expertise. Although specific instructions are sometimes helpful, it’s important to recognize that they may also not be the best solution for the problem at hand. Instead, give them feedback on different emotions or feelings you’d like users to experience, if you’d like emphasis on a different idea, etc. This affords your designer the freedom to solve the problem in a more effective way than you were originally aware of.

To you non-designers who read this far, thanks for caring and being interested in learning about what we designers would like to hear from you! I certainly value everything I’ve learned from my non-designer friends, and I hope that this information is valuable to everyone who’s read it in the same way. Here’s hoping that this will help foster your friendship with a designer even more!

This would be a great place for people to discuss other techniques or strategies for working between design/non-design teams…If you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them!