Member-only story
Nine qualities of effective feedback
How to give feedback that actually helps people
I re-read the comment on our support thread:
“Over the years, it seems to me that JotForm has become slower and less responsive to user requested functionality improvements.”
Ouch.
It wasn’t the most uplifting thing I’d read that day. And I’ll admit, it stung for a moment.
But I could also see that this user had a fair point.
We were in the middle of rolling out JotForm Cards, and things were manically busy. As a result, we needed more time than usual to evaluate all those feature requests.
I replied to the comment personally and reached out to the customer right after via email, doing my best to explain the situation and offer a solution.
But it drew attention to something we needed to know: what it was like, for this person, to use JotForm. And that made it valuable. Because as developers (or designers, or writers…), no matter how hard we try, we will always have a blind spot.
So, when someone offers us that mirror, in the form of feedback, it’s a gift: no matter who we are, what we do or how much we’ve achieved.
But this feedback has to be effective.
Feedback is effective when it sheds light on the present and offers a window into the future — without dwelling on the past.
Feedback isn’t effective when it inflates — or bruises — someone’s ego.
Finding this sweet spot is incredibly tricky. Feedback-givers need to toe a (sometimes paper-thin) line between explaining and preaching, sensitivity and sugar-coating, impartiality and personal blame.
Emotions, histories, fears, over-justifications — these boulders tend to trip us up.
So how can we cut through the noise and learn to deliver feedback that is genuinely helpful?
Here’s what I’ve learned across 12 years of building a product for 3.5 million users and managing feedback with our team of 100 employees:
