Design feedback anti-patterns and how to defeat them
They said what?!
Design feedback is not a skill that is evenly strong across all organizations…
Your first assumption is to think about the designers around you, but your team, department, and your entire company might need to brush up on what good design feedback consists of. As a designer, you can do more than present screens; you can teach people how to read those screens and offer their feedback in constructive ways.
Above and beyond all else, feedback and how it’s taught must be kind. Giving kind feedback means showing you care by being direct, and coming from a place where you own your perceptions. You want to help the other person see the outcome of what was worked on. Is the outcome what they wanted? That’s for them to decide and take back to their desk.
Below are some ideas I’ve collected about the bad patterns in design feedback and what makes good design feedback. You can use this as an appendix for your own feedback playbook, or pull bits and pieces to help give words to a situation you’re experiencing in the workplace. If you find something to add or end up using some of these, please comment on this post!
Set the agenda. Discussions with unclear objectives and not enough context are a surefire way to derail your discussion from the start. Set the agenda with the boundaries of play outlined. When you start the meeting, restate the agenda. This is a great way to frame the conversation and set expectations around the rules of play. You will find that people actually want some boundaries defined, and if you can do that confidently and keep the conversation focused, it frames you as a leader of that meeting.
Lack of goals. If your design or your meeting lacks goals, I hate to break it to ya, but it might be your problem to solve. If you’re setting the agenda, why not own the goals of the feedback too? Put them out there and ask if those are ok goals for the meeting, if someone has something to add, thank them for the feedback. If we’re talking about broader goals like features, teams, or departments that might be another type of meeting altogether (but you could own that too if you’re so inclined). If your team needs to define its goals, have a 30 minute session to align on goals by having everyone spend 5 minutes writing down their perceived goals, then go around and share. This will create the right conversation, and get you going towards what the right goals for the team.
The absence of vulnerability, and the safety to be honest. The arena for design feedback needs to be safe for voicing opinions, doing that in kind ways, and accepting the feedback openly. Being open to feedback doesn’t mean you always act on it, but feeling safe enough to take it in without argument is a highly valuable skill. In turn, you make it safe for others to offer feedback to you. Playful creation techniques like opening the meeting with an icebreaker (Ex: “is a hot dog a sandwich?”) or a formatted critique program like a design studio, are ways to level the playing field and engage stakeholders in a safe and fun way.
“I don’t like it”. Unproductive and frivolous feedback is when someone says things like “this is sub par”, “I’ll know it when I see it”. With vague feedback, values often lie just beneath the surface. Try teasing values out by asking questions like “if this is sub par, what would be above par?”. Remember, the person reviewing your work, no matter who they are, might not have strong feedback skills. In this situation, get them to focus on how the work makes them feel and get them to own their feedback. “Such as” is a great response to anything that trails off without detail. “I don’t like it, and I’ve seen better examples” can be met with “such as…” which puts the accountability back on them. This helps teach good technique and makes you a better facilitator.
Scope-ignorant, or scope-busting feedback. “I think we should overhaul the entire back end”, “This small task should be done with a UI system!”, “Have you explored this option from my personal agenda that will take you several more weeks?” This type of thing is partially on you and your team to sort out. What are you doing to tell the story of the constraints and guidelines of a given body of work? Have you sought feedback and buy-in on those guardrails? Some stakeholders will still ignore the constraints, or surprise you with new ones because they weren’t incorporated earlier. If you can build a case for the goals, anti-goals, risks, mitigations, and the guardrails of your project, it will go a long way towards explaining what can be accomplished.
Build the story for those with low awareness of your work. Some stakeholders buzz in and out of awareness of your work, it’s just a fact of life in busy organizations. What are you doing to build a story that is concise, tees up the problems and solutions, and is accessible enough to grab off Drive or Dropbox and have a read when there’s some free time? Starting with a super well formed (and informed) problem statement is vital to good story telling. Think of that old bar joke: “So a skeleton walks into the bar…” right then and there you are setup to receive the punchline “…and orders a beer, and a mop.” Send a strong initial signal of what the premise (problem statement) is going to be, and build your story around that. You can also use the skeleton joke as an icebreaker if you like ;)
Not reviewing the design or pre-read. It’s hard for me to not have feelings about this one because putting in all that work for people not to engage is painful. If this is a reoccurring dynamic in your organization, then kindly have the group read the pre-read for the first 5–10 minutes of the meeting and invite them to write down their three key responses. Then, go around the table and allow each person to elucidate on their feedback. As you go around the table, the feedback will thin out as people will have repeats, and by the end you’ll have gotten the room fairly aligned, but more importantly, owning their own feedback. Doing work in meetings is a great way to get work done, so if people are too busy to focus, use your in-person time to do some work together.
Going long. Some meetings just go long, but why? Designers are meant to be storytellers and facilitators, tour guides who take a group through the wilderness of uncertainty that is design discovery. Use this metaphor as a way to think of yourself, you’re the facilitator, the time keeper — so facilitate and keep the time! Establish the time boundaries up front, and warn people you will play time cop. Not comfortable interrupting or keeping the time? Have a co-facilitator do it for you. Impartial co-facilitators help keep things running smooth while you work on the feedback.
Jumping to solutions before understanding the problem. Solutions are the ultimate shiny thing. Why worry about a user problem when we can throw ideas out there about solutions. Again, framing the conversation is crucial to keeping things focused and receiving the feedback you desire. Create a discussion around the problems and have the discussion around 1) are those problems, problems? 2) what problems are the highest priority 3) risks and mitigations to those problems and/or 4) people those problems impact (internally or externally). When you keep the conversation tightly focused on problems, you garner alignment and strong velocity towards the right solutions later.
Scheduling meetings instead of taking feedback asynchronously. Are you at a point where the work is straightforward, well socialized, or just really really tiny in scope? Having an in-person meeting sounds pretty pointless for small bits of feedback. Take the reins and send a slack message or email asking for feedback on your small increment of work.
Personal agendas. Now we’re getting spicy. Some people bring strong opinions and a drive to bring their ideas to life. There is a saying out there, by someone, haha, that says “feedback in private, praise in public”. If politics or personal agendas are taking things off course, assume best intentions but schedule a 1:1. Just remember, if you’re the one that needs to give the feedback in this situation, do it with kindness: “When the meeting became more about your teams yearly objectives than the bit of feedback I needed to deliver this work, I felt like my meeting was being taken over”. Own your feelings, and own the feedback.
Stakeholders changing their minds, and ill-timed feedback. There can be many symptoms to this and I’ve tried to avoid organizational power dynamics here, but this is a very real and important part of feedback. We should allow for opinions to change over time, particularly if they are in response to quantitative or qualitative intelligence like analytics or user research. That said, sometimes “no” is going to be the answer, it’s all how you deliver it. Seeing them, and communicating the value of the feedback is important. After all, we should aim to be kind. “That is a perfectly relevant thing to add, but not at the cost of spending the effort now. Would you help block and tackle for me when we iterate on this? I’d love the schedule the work”. If the suggestion isn’t valuable, you can always tie it back to the story you built. “Thanks for the feedback, this is a piece of feedback we are increasingly aware of, but is simply not a goal for this body of work”.
Sitting. Sitting is when you bend at the waist and release all the urgency you have to make decisions rapidly. Is the feedback more than asynchronous but less than a 30 minute sit-down? Have an impromptu standup where you tee up the problem or thing that’s happening and solicit feedback. The key is to shrink the decision making to something doable in short order.
Always indoors. Why are we inside all the time? Go outside! What parts of the design process can happen outside? Are you brainstorming? Sketching? You don’t always need wifi, airplay, and a huge monitor to discuss design. Sketching studios can be done with sketchbooks or small dry erase boards. Conversations about the work can take place in a park or on the patio of a coffee shop. Get outside, enjoy the day, and break up the monotony!
You probably experience at least one of these challenges as you move your design from its origins to a final product. When a feedback challenge arises, what are you doing to manage the situation? A critique of your work is your meeting, and you’re free to shape the agenda and tell the story in ways that optimizes the time to supply the best feedback possible. The next time you’re in a tough critique or feedback session, just remember, the skills of the room might not yet be at the place you need them for constructive feedback. Take it as a design challenge to solve, and make elevating your entire team as the outcome you aim to accomplish.
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