Chapter 3 in “The Design Feedback Handbook“
Changing what it feels like
The most common reason that feedback doesn’t happen – or happens and is ineffective – is our feelings. The thing stopping us from asking for feedback is usually not a lack of method or time, but our discomfort at the prospect of being judged and found wanting. The thing stopping us from giving feedback more often than we do is our fear of upsetting others. This is putting it bluntly, I know, but most designers I have spoken to confess that they find both giving and receiving feedback to be uncomfortable. Things that are uncomfortable, we avoid. We might avoid feedback altogether, or we go through the motions, but steer clear of sensitive and perilous matters. If we only play at feedback, the activity becomes boring and the outcome of limited use. Gradually feedback ceases to seem a worthwhile thing to do.
How it feels to receive feedback. This is a good place to start. If we can remove the worry and discomfort from the activity, then everything else will more easily fall into place. When feedback feels good, we will ask for it, feel fine with showing unfinished work, and become curious to learn about our design from our peers. When it feels good, we also increase the odds that we make use of the feedback we collect. As we become more comfortable, the shift in our attitude is noticeable to others and changes the ways in which they respond to us.
Over the years, I have come up with a number of ways of thinking about feedback that have the potential to change what it feels like. The rest of this chapter will deal with the experience of receiving feedback; chapter 6 will change your experience of giving it. You are unlikely to like all the perspectives that I am about to outline. Some of them even contradict each other. Each one is a way of framing feedback that works for different people, and on the same person on different days. You only need to find one that you will actually use. So keep your eyes open for anything that strikes a chord and ignore or bookmark anything that doesn’t.
Before you continue reading, it might be useful to stop a moment and think about what receiving feedback is normally like for you. Try to recall a recent time when you received some feedback on your work. What were the things you found difficult or uncomfortable? Was there anything that you enjoyed? What type of feedback do you generally find to be useful?
Done that? Then you’re ready to become acquainted with some novel ways of thinking about receiving feedback.
Feedback is a gift
You may have heard this before: feedback is a gift. It’s a statement which may have lost some of its impact from overuse, but it remains true. Good feedback can help you improve anything that you create as well as any skill you are working to develop. It can make you see or understand something that you would otherwise not have seen or understood, or which would have taken you much longer to grasp. It can help you get unstuck, and it can provide you with renewed energy. Without the feedback that was given to you, you would not have been in the advantageous position that you are now in. Good feedback makes you and your work better. That is why it is a gift. It’s a gift regardless of the actual intent behind it.
Discomfort is a signal
When someone is judging your work, it can feel as if they are also judging you. Lapses and omissions in your work can feel like lapses in judgement on your part. Those times that I feel discomfort (and I still do, even after having written a book on the subject), I have a neat trick that I use: I remind myself that the unease that I am experiencing is a sign that I am receiving useful information about my work, information that can further the ambitions that I have for my design. The more uncomfortable the feedback is, the more useful it may actually be. Over time, these feelings of discomfort during design feedback become a signal that alerts you to the importance and value of the moment. What used to be a creeping sense of unease turns instead into heightened attention and curiosity.
It’s just information
Feedback comes in the shape of words (and sometimes gestures and scribbles). It is just information. You don’t need to be upset or threatened by information. You don’t have to obey information. It is there for you to use in the ways that you see fit. You can weigh it, take different stances towards it, probe it, and experiment with it. The information that you accrue during feedback is one more design material available for you to use. Thinking of feedback as information can neutralise its occasionally distracting emotional effects and free you to see and make use of the value it provides. Later you will need to assess the information and separate what’s useful from what’s mistaken, but that is a separate job, and the topic of chapter 5.
Be curious
Once you begin to view feedback as information, it becomes easier to elicit more of it. The more you collect, the more feedback you have to work with. You can be curious about feedback in the same way that you are, presumably, curious about user insights. When someone gives you feedback, apply the same skills and attitudes that you (or perhaps the researchers on your team) employ when conducting user interviews. Listen to what is being said, try to understand it from the perspective of the speaker, and ask follow-up questions to dig for more information and to test your understanding. Not only will you amass more feedback, but the feedback you collect will be deeper and more useful.
This is the opposite of what sometimes happens when people ask for feedback. Some people ask for it and hope not to receive any, or at least not too much of it. There is nothing strange about this; we all wish to have done well and prefer not to have our lapses pointed out to us. However, since giving feedback can feel as awkward as receiving it, the person giving feedback will often collaborate in securing a quick escape from feelings of discomfort. Neither party learns much in the process.
You can break this pattern. Try viewing the act of collecting feedback as a kind of game, the object of which is to extract as much useful information as you possibly can about how people understand and react to your design. Make it a goal of each session of feedback to amass as much useful information as possible, rather than solving problems or spending time defending your design decisions.
When you are open to feedback in this way, showing genuine interest in what people have to say, you simultaneously communicate the value you place on their input. This will make people even more generous with their thoughts.
Don’t take it personally
When we show our work to other people and ask for their opinions, they may point out mistakes and omissions, and voice objections to the design choices we have made. After all, this is what we have asked them to do and also what we need in order to improve our work. Even so, having our work critiqued can make us feel foolish and embarrassed. If only we had done better, if only we possessed the requisite skills and experience, then our incompetence would not have been exposed for all to see. Whether justified or not, the reaction itself is natural. Most of us feel like this at some point. Unfortunately, the fear of these feelings can prevent us from showing our work and reaping the benefits of feedback. It can even pre-emptively stifle our creativity and limit the kinds of choices that we make.
A giant leap towards becoming better at eliciting feedback and making use of it is to worry less about what people think. Care what they think, but care less about the fact that they think it. This is the classic counsel to not take things personally. Easy enough to say, but harder to do.
It can be helpful to remind yourself that you are in the process of making something and that part of that process is to get feedback from others. Your design may seem to be lacking something because, to some extent, it is. Your design is lacking because you are not yet done with it. An easy mistake to make is to compare your design-in-progress with some finished product or service. The finished work of your peers and competitors were once too works in progress.
We may sometimes feel disappointed that others don’t like something we ourselves are pleased with. This can sometimes feel as if people don’t like us. But requiring that everyone like our work doesn’t make much sense. We are all different and have different preferences. The goal of a piece of design is not that our colleagues should like it. Liking is rarely, if ever, a very useful metric of what constitutes good design. You need to figure out, instead, which kind of metric would be appropriate and bring that to the design feedback session – this is what the design goals of the previous chapter are for.
It is rarely about you anyway
If you still worry what people think of you, and what their various reactions to you and your design might mean, realise that most of the time it is not about you anyway. People will sometimes frown, lose attention or fixate on minor and unimportant details. Be aware that a lot of the time, they are not reacting to you or to the work you are presenting. One mistake we often make is to misinterpret the reactions we appear to be getting. A person’s thinking face might make them look grumpy or displeased, when in fact they are just thinking hard. Some people sound angry when they are excited. In some cases, a person may be genuinely grumpy but for unrelated reasons that have nothing to do with you or your work. They may have slept poorly, recently had an argument, or are simply stressed about something.
My general advice is to not overreact to the apparent reactions of others. Suspend your own reactions until you know more. Avoid making wrong assumptions about what other people’s reactions might mean by testing your understanding of them. You might summarise what you believe to be the other person’s point of view to see if you got it right.
Feedback is inevitable
As noted previously, people sometimes ask for feedback, but secretly hope to receive only praise and agreement. Since there is no design that cannot be improved in some way and since there are always alternative perspectives from which to view and judge something, there is no designed thing that doesn’t warrant feedback. If you ask for feedback or present your design for assessment, you will receive feedback. There will always be something that can be said. If feedback is something that is inevitable, there is no reason for you to be hesitant and apprehensive about asking for it. Simply assume – from now on and forever – that there will always be something that can be said about your work.
It will still sting sometimes
Even if you value feedback highly and have conducive ways of thinking about it, what people say will still sometimes sting. Occasionally, what people say will get you down. This is going to happen, and that’s OK; you’re only human. Accept this and be understanding and forgiving of yourself.
These moments of unease are opportunities to learn something about yourself. After a session, try to pinpoint, as closely as you can, the precise moment when the unpleasant feeling was triggered. What exactly was the feeling? Can you remember what was said and by whom? What was it about the situation that made you feel the way you felt? You will need to be brutally honest with yourself here. You may feel foolish digging into such unflattering feelings, such as shame, inadequacy, envy or irritation. But keep going; no one is watching. What you are feeling, and why, may be diffuse and vague. It may require several episodes for you to be able to pin down what is happening. Are your feelings relevant to the design feedback itself? Do they revolve around your self-image? Or are they about your relationship with the person giving you feedback? As your reactions become more intelligible, your agency over them will increase, and you will be in a better position to decide what to do about them.
Summary
❡ This chapter offers a menu of ways to reframe what it feels like to receive feedback. You are not going to like all of them. Finding even one that works for you is a great start.
❡ Feedback is a gift. Without it, you would not be in the advantageous position you now find yourself in.
❡ When feedback makes you uncomfortable, remind yourself that it may be because you are receiving information that can help you improve your work. Viewed in this light, you can reframe your discomfort as something positive.
❡ Feedback is just information. What you do with it is up to you. Get good at eliciting more of it. Approach it like research: listen, work to understand what is being said from the speaker’s point of view, and ask follow-up questions to dig for more.
❡ Don’t take it personally. Care what people think, but care less about the fact that they think it. Your design is lacking because you are not yet finished with it. Comparing your work in progress against someone else’s finished product is an easy mistake to make.
❡ People’s reactions are not always about you. A thinking face may look the same as a grumpy face. Suspend your own reactions to the reactions of others until you know more. Test your understanding of what people mean before acting on it.
❡ Feedback is inevitable. There is no design about which nothing can be said, so there is no reason to be apprehensive about asking. Know that there will always be feedback.
❡ Some feedback will sting. That’s fine; you’re only human. Treat these moments as an opportunity to learn something about yourself.
Some things to think about, discuss and do
❡ If you didn’t do the exercise at the very start of this chapter, then do so now. Think back to when you last got some feedback. What was that experience like? Was the feedback you received useful? If so, how?
❡ What do you like and dislike about giving and receiving feedback on design?
❡ Which of the ideas in this chapter captured your attention? How might you incorporate them into your daily practice?
❡ If you had to pick just one thing from this chapter to start doing, what would you pick? Figure out how you could remind yourself of it at the appropriate time. Will you write it on a Post-it, create a reminder on your phone, or is it perhaps time for a new tattoo?
❡ Do you know someone who gives especially good feedback? What is it about the feedback they give, and the way that they give it, that you appreciate?
❡ What could you do to make feedback a more frequent occurrence in the place where you work?
❡ Choose a favourite book or movie, then go to an online shop like Amazon (or perhaps Rotten Tomatoes, if you picked a movie) and read the unfavourable customer reviews for it. Read the one- and two-star reviews. You may be incensed, amused and surprised by the kinds of things people have to say about your favourite book or movie. No creator is exempt from the diversity of opinion. Do this and realise that there will always be divergent and contradictory points of view. When some people praise what you have done, while others hate it, you might like to remind yourself of this exercise.
This is a sample chapter from “The Design Feedback Handbook: The art of giving and receiving feedback on UX design”.
Read more about the book, try the design feedback cards, and get a copy here.