How to manage feedback from your stakeholders
Dan Tolster | Product Lead at Purplebricks
Every Product team has been there. You’ve spent hours trawling through user research, wrangled everybody into a workshop (or three), and poured your heart and soul into designing a good solution. You’ve prepped for your demo, considered every aspect of your work and how to present it. And then, just when it’s all going so well, you get the dreaded question…“can we make that button stand out a bit more?”
Unexpected feedback can be hard to answer, especially when it’s something you hadn’t considered or if you’re unsure if it’s even the right thing to do. In my time working in Product & Design, I’ve come up against (and struggled with) this more times than I can count. But over time I’ve amassed a few learnings that not only help me to deal with those curve-ball questions, but also allow me to use such interactions to help create a better product.
1. Don’t be defensive
By far the most important first step is to respond constructively to any challenge. This can be hard — ours is a profession that requires personal investment, and is also bound by multiple complexities. Consequently we are often seen as temperamental and ‘precious’, or that we hide behind jargon to bat away more work. To avoid compounding that myth, the worst thing you can do when faced with feedback you don’t agree with is to react emotionally. All you’ll do is create an ‘us and them’ situation, which isn’t conducive to effective collaboration. Keep your language positive and focus on the intent behind the question, rather than taking it personally.
2. Understand your stakeholder’s needs
I encourage my team to view our stakeholders as users in their own right, and to understand their underlying needs. Feedback will be driven by a specific problem, and as human beings most of us are hardwired to find solutions. So usually, when your stakeholder begins to start making suggestions, remember they are only trying to help in a way they see as productive. The solution might not be right, but it’s our job to work backwards with them to unpick their problem from their proposed solution. If you can get to the root of the problem they are tying to solve, you’ll have a greater chance of finding the right outcome together.
3. Acknowledge that good ideas come from everywhere
Just because you work in Product and your stakeholder doesn’t, you’re not automatically right and they’re not automatically wrong. Your stakeholders will have a wealth of knowledge in their respective fields and will often have had experiences with your users that you haven’t had. They might well have had first-hand interactions with users that evidence the problem at hand, so it’s not wise to discount suggestions, however reactive they may seem. Listen to their feedback and work with them to understand their point of view, before then translating that into a workable solution for the product.
4. Justify your decision-making (even to yourself)
Effective product design should always be easily defendable, for the simple fact that you are trying to solve a user problem. Before you get near to showing your work, ask yourself why you’re making the choices that you are. You should be rationalising your decisions at every step of the design process, and everything you do should be for a reason. That way, when it comes to having to defend your decisions, your job is already done.
5. Become a master of storytelling
It’s too easy to launch into showing your shiny new prototype without properly priming your audience. There’s a lot to be said for telling a story when you’re showcasing your work. Explain the problem you’re trying to solve (even if you think your audience know it already, reiterate it), the data that supports it, and the reason you feel that your solution is the right one. Explain or caveat up-front any limitations to what you are showing — particularly anything you think will be picked up on, questioned, or create nervousness in your audience. If you do this clearly, succinctly and upfront, you’ll be challenged far less later on.
6. Co-create
You should be bringing your stakeholders on the design journey with you. Involve them right the way through the process, show them your research (or better yet, include them in the process), and collaborate with them in coming to a solution. Workshops are a great way to this, but really any form of regular communication will help, especially if co-creation is a new concept within your organisation. By doing this, it’s not ‘your’ solution, but ‘our’ solution. Stakeholders will be bought in from the get-go, and more importantly, you’ll end up with a higher quality product.
7. Be honest
Ours is a discipline that requires thought, consideration and exploration. Sometimes, if you’re caught off guard by feedback you weren’t expecting, it can be hard in the moment to even know whether it’s a good idea or a bad one. If you need to think about it, discuss it in more detail, or look at the data — never be afraid to say so. It’s far better to be up-front and say it needs more thought, than to try and come up with a convincing answer on the fly. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying “I need to take this away and look into it”, but always be specific and make sure you follow up, otherwise your audience will lose faith and likely think you were trying to fob them off!
So, in summary…
Ultimately, what I have learned over the years is that the key to all of this is actually pretty simple. Most of us will need to fight our natural inclination to lock ourselves away and pore over our work until it’s ‘perfect’ (and obviously, there’s no such thing), for fear of being challenged on what we put forward. The reality is the longer we do this, the greater the likelihood of a challenge becomes. Stakeholders will always feel left out and will have many more questions and concerns. Indeed, they’ll likely feel concerned just by the very fact that they don’t have visibility of our work. Collaboration is the best way to create good outcomes, and we can only achieve that through clear, effective & transparent communication. You might even learn a few things, too.
