Principles to provide better design feedback
Through my years as a designer I dealt with critique and feedback in different ways. I’ve worked in different countries, companies and positions, this helped me design a process to give and receive feedback which I call “the three wise monkeys of design critique”.
Designers and feedback
I grew up as a designer being pretty confident about my work and skills, even on my junior years when I had to go through feedback sessions and present my designs to managers or clients I was confident (sometimes stubborn) to defend my proposals and didn’t pay much attention to comments and suggestions.
However and even being confident I couldn’t help being affected, sometimes hurt by the feedback and comments.
I believe that any designer, the confident ones and the not so confident ones, all share a common thing: to a greater or lesser extent all are sensitive to feedback and critique.
It’s quite understandable, any profession that implies making something from scratch where we are the creators gives us a sense of ownership and even parenthood over the product made.
The three wise monkeys of design critique
“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”
Understanding how designers work and feel helped me design this process for review, give feedback and critique focused on being empathetic with my peers and trying to come with a collaborative and better solution.
???? See no evil
The reviewer should ask the reviewed designer or team to share as much information as they can on the project and the solution without showing any draft or design.
Reviewer’s role is to listen and collect information, let them explain the reasoning behind their thinking, why they chose one path over another and how they land into a particular solution.
Because no design proposal was seen there won’t be visual influence and the focus will be on the information to later build comments and suggestions.
???? Hear no evil
In this second phase the focus is to match the information collected with the design the reviewer sees and experiences.
It’s important to try to understand the design presented without asking questions and trying to not give feedback, the goal here is to see if the design translates the previously acquired information.
???? Speak no evil
This is the perfect time to give feedback to the team members.
In the first two phases the reviewer focused on understanding the problem and going through the proposed solutions, at this phase and with all the knowledge about this project, the reviewer is in a better position to come with some constructive criticism.
The feedback should be clear and direct in order to prevent misunderstandings and never be taken as personal.
It ain’t monkey business
There are plenty of approaches for reviewing design and designers, this is the one I built by my own experiences as the one being reviewed and the reviewer.
This process usually works as a guideline and general approach to criticism as would be impossible to divide a review session with peers in such a strict way.
It’s important to understand that criticism should be bi-directional and independent of positions and titles.
What do you think? All feedback is welcomed!