You’re an Engineer or a Product Manager, and you care deeply about the product you’re building. You have awesome ideas and good taste. So you’re wondering why your feedback about designs sometimes falls flat with the designer.
Maybe you feel like your suggestions are ignored or neglected. Maybe you have frequent misunderstandings or disagreements with your designer. Or maybe, the designs are not as high quality as you’d like but you aren’t sure what to say.
If you find any of these descriptions relatable, a variety of problems are probably compounding into a frustrating relationship. Some of these factors may be out of your control, like the broader company culture or the designer’s skill level. But if it’s enough of a problem you’re committed to improving, let’s take a look at what you can do to enhance the content, delivery, and timing of your design feedback.
Move beyond opinions
A common misconception is that designers asking for feedback are looking for your opinion. But when we ask for feedback, we’re really looking for a partner in decision making, which isn’t quite the same need. A partner in decision making will help us:
- brainstorm and sketch alternative ideas
- create a pros and cons list for each option
- determine the feasibility of a vision
- break down large scope into smaller chunks of work
- narrow scope of the MVP
- identify missing gaps or dependencies
- find data to help in decision making
- share their expertise (engineering or product), and trust us with ours
Any time you find yourself starting your feedback with “Well, if it were me…” or “If I were using it…” you’re leaning toward a plain opinion. See if you can enhance that feedback by replacing it with either data or a request for data. For example, you might ask, “Have you considered A/B testing this alongside this other option?” or “Do we have any data on the similar projects we’ve previously launched?”
In a feedback session, your team should be problem solving together, not playing ping pong against one another.
Align on the problem
The first and most fundamental feedback every designer needs is, “Does this design solve the original problem?” Before going down the rabbit hole of whether the door should be blue or black, make sure you actually need a door and not a window.
Your feedback will miss the mark if it’s commenting on a tangential problem. On the other hand, your feedback will be super valuable if you’re helping the designer see that their proposed solution isn’t solving the problem you’re all aligned on.
Not sure how to provide feedback or facilitate a problem-focused conversation? Designers love hearing the “how might we” phrasing, an open-ended question that avoids bike-shedding solutions in favor of problem alignment. For example, “These mockups look like they would help improve customer activation, but what we’re struggling with is customer churn. How might we retain existing users by offering advanced features?”
Establish what’s good
Remember to start off every feedback session by sharing what you think is working about their designs. Sure, it sounds obvious. But it’s amazing how often our engineering and product partners skip this step. It isn’t about our egos. It’s truly helpful to establish what the team wants to keep so that those things don’t get silently cut in the next iteration.
But ok, ok, it’s also about our egos! You are our primary stakeholders, our closest teammates working with us on this project. It’s ok to high five us on all the little things. It makes the rest of the conversation (about the important and difficult stuff) that much easier.
Time it well
What stage of the project are you in? Your feedback might be neglected if you’re sharing it at the wrong time.
As a designer, if I’m early in the design process, I will likely be looking for input on things like:
- User flow: How does the user go through each step of this experience from discovery to install to configuration to that first moment of value? How can we shorten it? How can we automate it? How can we smooth it out or make it feel delightful?
- Information architecture: Where does the user find actions or information in relation to other elements on the page or in the app? Does this match the user’s mental map? Is it technically possible with our APIs?
If I’m later in the project, I’m probably looking for feedback on:
- Interaction design: when the user clicks or swipes through the app, how does the product react and provide feedback to the user? Does it feel intuitive and provide the right error states? Does it feel pleasant and easy?
- Visual design: colors, font styles, information hierarchy. Is it on brand or made with components from the Design System? Does it reduce cognitive load or is it overwhelming?
Are you providing the right feedback at the right time? Great feedback can derail a project if given too late. A do-over might need to happen from time to time, but if it happens frequently, your designer might get burnt out on churn.
Try to figure out why you’re giving feedback too late. Is it that you didn’t have an earlier opportunity to do so? You might need to work with your designer on a process for sharing designs early and often so that you can provide the right feedback at the right time.
Lean on the Design System
Finally, when sharing feedback, remember to lean on your design system if you have one. Chances are, the components in the design system have already gone through many rounds of feedback from other stakeholders like you. We can skip a few steps, reduce scope, and increase consistency by using our trustworthy design system components where possible.
