The UX toolbox part 5: Take feedback to mind, not to heart
You will have critics in your life telling you how to do anything and everything differently than the way you did. Emails are drafted and redrafted with sentences that say the different things but convey the exact same message. Your partner will ask you to was dishes differently than the way you do. Your design team will tell you your design could of been executed differently.
Everyone has feedback for you no matter what it is. Even the little voice in your head will recommend changes to what you’ve done. It won’t stop and they won’t change. No matter how upset you get and how often you get that upset. In fact, many of them are wondering why you got that upset, after all, it’s only washing dishes we’re talking about right? Why should UX designers care?
The truth about feedback for UX designers
Unfortunately, if feedback hits you like a cement truck every time you are going to have to learn how to brace yourself. As a UX designer, feedback is a necessary part of everything you do. Getting others feedback is essential to your work and will lead to much more impactful insights and designs.
On top of all of that, it shows that your team can be open with you, and therefore more likely to enter into all types of conversations with you. It shows others that you are listening and accepting of what they are offering up to you. When feedback is met with heavy resistance, those who offered it are tempted to then react to your reaction. If that reaction is not positive, then theirs will likely not be either.
Having said that, don’t do this for them, do this for you. Taking feedback so hard keeps you in a fixed mindset. You begin fighting their words in your head and creating scenarios that defend you and your ego. In this moment, the real scenario shows it’s face. Your ego has decided to play DJ in your head. Your ego wants you to stay where you are, don’t change anything, change and growth scare your ego.
Feedback as fuel
As a UX designer, you will get feedback constantly. Learn to love every word of it that is offered to you. Dive deep into the feedback that isn’t positive. Do this for you because you deserve to grow. Embracing feedback as your fuel, your motivation to grow will show you so many things about yourself you never knew.
Maybe you like to design everything with a certain color palate. The first time someone tells you they’ve seen these colors a million times in your designs, really feel what they are saying. Don’t get mad at them, but understand they see so much potential in what you do and want to see even more from you. Suddenly your new designs have all new colors and you become more and more confident in using them. Your new designs flourish and it’s all because you made the decision to grow and accept someone else’s feedback.
It’s not about you
The final thought here is not UX specific, but rather humans in general. Feedback is an important part of your life no matter what you do for a living. We experience it daily and we handle it horribly.
Maybe the person offering it isn’t the first in line to cast a stone but, it’s your choice on how you handle it. More often than not the feedback being offered is not a personal character judgment. Often, you might find that the person offering it is actually giving this feedback as a result of something they are going through. Their own human experience is shaping how they see the world and offer feedback.
Even if it is about you, you get to choose how it affects you. You get to choose if you stay where you are and feel the pain of someone’s words on your heart. You also get to choose if those words will push you forward towards growth and achieving more for yourself, establishing solid relationships with others, and creating a more abundant world for yourself.
So what will you choose next time?
