Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Dave Riensche You did great, buddy.

This article was written from a UX Designer’s perspective, but I suspect it can be applied to any environment where feedback and collaboration exist, or where you wish them to.

Isn’t praise great? You work hard on something and smart people you respect tell you you’ve done a great job. They validate the time you’ve put into it and satisfy some primal urge to be approved by your tribe. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this. Often times it’s our only reward for a job well done, and it can be absolutely worth it.

A mistake too many of us make, however, is to expect praise before the work is done. This leads to defensive communication and can bring project progress to a standstill. We can avoid these nasties by making feedback an essential step in our design (or any) process, and by learning to extract insight from anyone willing to review our work.

It’s not that hard. It just requires a mind shift, communication with a humble agenda, and practice.

Adjust your expectations

Let’s say you’re about to present a redesign of the search results page for Fruits N’More, an online produce company, to a group of colleagues for review. Before anything, remember that this is not a handoff meeting. It is not a glorious praise session. It is not a slap-on-the-back rally. It is a step in the design process. You have the opportunity to tap into the minds of your colleagues for your benefit. They are giving you their time to make your project better. Also, lose the ego. There’s no need for it here.

Be clear about what you need

Once your mind is right, set up the feedback session for success by clarifying the following:

The problem you’re solving. Explain the problem that exists and what you are doing to solve it.

The stage of the process you are in. Is this a high-level concept? Is this something you’re hoping to ship tomorrow? Something in-between?

The type of feedback you want. Do you want feedback on the concept in general, or content, or visual design?

The answers to these questions will help keep feedback on point and avoid confusing tangent discussions that can waste everyone’s time.

Seek actionable feedback

Once the feedback starts coming in it’s your job to make sure you get value out of it. Listen to the feedback and check for the following:

1. The feedback needs an explanation.
2. The explanation should make the feedback actionable.

Let’s say Jeff is giving you feedback about the size of the logo:

“The logo is too small.”

Jeff hasn’t explained his perspective so this isn’t helpful. It’s not clear what problems he is seeing and subsequently what actions you can take to solve them.

unexplained ≠ actionable ≠ helpful

In this situation, it is on you to peel the onion and get the answers you need. Ask something along the lines of:

“Can you explain that a bit more? What is making you feel like it’s too small?”

Tone is important here. You are humbly asking for an explanation with faith that there is value in what he is telling you. You just don’t understand it yet. By asking these questions, hopefully you can extract useful feedback. Jeff replies:

“The logo is too small for my eyes. I have a hard time seeing it. I’m concerned others will have similar difficulties.”

or maybe he says:

“The logo is too small according to the brand guidelines, which state it must be at least 200 pixels wide.”

explained = actionable = helpful

Now you can see his point of view. Whether the feedback is derived from his subjective experience or an objective reference to brand guidelines, both are explained and imply a solution to the problem. (Make the logo bigger.) This makes the feedback actionable.

Actionable feedback is not prescriptive

Sometimes the feedback can skip actionable and go straight to prescriptive. For example, let’s say Jeff feels the visual design of the price display doesn’t accurately reflect the hierarchy list created from a recent content prioritization exercise.

But instead of explaining that, he says:

“I think you should make the price element 50% bigger and change the color to red.”

Jeff’s feedback presents a specific solution, but the problem it is solving is unexplained.

unexplained + prescriptive ≠ helpful

In this case, you must peel the onion again. Ask something like:

“What problem would we be solving by making the price bigger and red?”

Your goal is to get him to tell you what problem he saw before he came up with the solution that he shared. The problem is the feedback explanation that will lead you to actions you can take.

“The price element (#3 in the prominence list) feels too similar in prominence to the strikethrough price (#10).”

Now that you know the problem Jeff if seeing, you should first decide if you see the problem too. (And remember that you are operating without ego.) If you agree that the prominence of the two elements is too similar, you can consider his solution but also experiment with other ways to increase price prominence.

explained = actionable = helpful

Once again, remember that this person is helping you make your project better. Even if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, appreciate it, because they are doing their job.

Seek feedback. The praise will come.

This stuff isn’t natural for emotional human beings that love to be praised for their work. There’s nothing wrong with liking praise. The problem is the habit of expecting it before the work is done. Make feedback part of your design process, lose your ego and adjust your expectations. Dig for explanations. This will all lead to praise-worthy work, because two heads really, truly are better than one.

Feedback Before Praise was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Feedback Before Praise

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