Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Aloke

How to give and get good design feedback

A piece of design is only as good as the last round of feedback it gets. The clarity and relevance of that feedback determines the success of the design.

Bad feedback can be detrimental to a team. It can result in wasted time, and endless explorations, wrong expectations and poor execution. Bad feedback dictates and is vague in its direction.

So what does good feedback look like?

Giving good feedback is…

Understanding the role you serve and the perspective you offer. The more you create a frame around your what you are commenting on, the more valid the feedback is. The ideal feeling as a collaborator is that you know exactly what you are giving feedback on. Is it the visuals? Flow and messaging? Or the bugs?
Mindfully thinking of the audience and questions they may ask and not just reacting to the visuals. Thinking from the user’s point of view aligns your feedback with the intent of the designer. Personal reactions are only useful if you identify as a person who experiences the problem being solved. Relevance is better than reactions when it comes to feedback. ‘This testimonial gives confidence in this statement’ is better than ‘I like it’
Asking questions help surface the design rationale. Once the designer’s intent is vocalized, you can have better conversations about tradeoffs, problem statements and key assumptions. All of these are ingredients to dismiss any biases and misguided assumptions. You can then reference the design brief to shift the conversation from opinions to objectives.
Making it as actionable as possible. If it is digital, take a screenshot to have a visual cue. If you’re giving feedback on a website, include which operating system and browser you’re using. If it’s a Web app and you’re giving feedback on a bug, include the steps you took to reach buggy app state.
Suggesting a solution along with the issue. Be specific. “Change the colour on this paragraph from grey to black, as per the design brief” is much more actionable than “Wrong color”

A few things to keep in mind here, but believe me when I tell you this level of effort will be recognized by the person asking for feedback. They rely on your analysis to further explore and shape the end result.

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For the past 6 months, I have been working with a team to make the feedback process on live websites simpler and better. As easy as leaving a sticky note. The result is Pastel. A simple way to gather feedback with a simple link. Pastel allows anyone leave comments like sticky notes right onto the website.

I will try to share more of the discussions we have internally when building Pastel. If you ever need a better way to collect feedback on live websites, try out the product. We will be listening to your feedback 🙂

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

The Art of Feedback

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