Ever struggled to explain why a design wasn’t quite right? Are you at a startup and without a design manager, and not sure how to level up your design team? Have you ever received feedback that left you more confused than before and without direction?
I’ve experienced these problems. In a recent instance, there wasn’t an established design culture yet. Both leadership and the design team were still working out how to communicate with each other to create better solutions, and I had been brought in to help.
Good feedback doesn’t just refine a design — it accelerates learning, improves team dynamics, and leads to better outcomes. But what makes feedback actually useful? In this post, I’ll break down what makes feedback helpful, common pitfalls to avoid, and how both designers and managers can foster a healthier feedback culture.
What does helpful feedback look like?
Good feedback is clear and specific.
“Not simple enough.”
“Not feeling the way it looks.”
These comments aren’t specific. They’re vague, and aren’t something a designer can take away and act on without probing for something a lot more tangible.
Instead, the feedback provider should take more time to explain their thoughts, and point out the specific elements of the design they think isn’t achieving the goal.
e.g. “Adding that dropdown field seems redundant because we can automate that step for people, and we want them to have to do as little work as possible.” versus “This doesn’t feel easy to use.”
Good feedback is appropriate to the design’s level of fidelity, and the stage of the project
When giving feedback, it’s important to bear in mind what stage the project is in (if you don’t know, ask, and set expectations that the designer should provide this).
When a designer is exploring the sequence of use cases through design, the specifics of the spacing, the colour, or the icons we’re using don’t matter – we’re not there yet. The flow does though, so if something seems out of place or like it doesn’t belong in the workflow, mention it.
Give appropriate feedback – if the team is trying to explore value, provide feedback about the value and whether doing something is worthwhile. If they’re exploring details of the interaction, or effort, or how the workflow is structure, cover those instead of diving into specifics of the visual design.
Similarly for content, focus on what is being said before how it’s being said. Are any points missing? Should anything we’re saying be removed?
What kind of feedback isn’t helpful?
Serving a shit sandwich
A shit sandwich is when crucial and maybe critical feedback is served between two warm toasty loaves of positive feedback.
This isn’t helpful, and diminishes the impact of the most important thing – providing feedback to improve someone’s work. There is a massive risk that when you serve a shit sandwich, the important feedback squeezed in the middle isn’t registered, since people tend to remember the first and last things they hear – the serial-position effect.
Instead of doing this, be clear and watch your tone – share the critical feedback without being insulting, demeaning, or accusatory.
Turning feedback into a competition of ideas
Feedback is about surfacing context or problems with the design, not providing alternatives and turning the discussion into comparing the pros/cons of each idea.
You can provide alternatives, but any alternative should have justification and rationale (“why” you believe the alternative is better) to help the designer. But it’s up to the designer, on their own time, to take that suggestion and think about it. The feedback session isn’t the right time to continue arguing about ideas and making a decision about which path to take.
Making it personal
When giving design feedback, give feedback on the design, not the designer.
Using “you” in your feedback is a trigger that can immediately bring the designer’s self-worth into the equation, and we don’t want that. It’s important to set the expectation that design and ideas are concepts that are separate from us as individuals. We need to make sure that we can evaluate the feedback without feeling like we’re evaluating ourselves or being attacked.
So to be safe, never use “you”.
It’s very easy to transform a question targeted at the individual, like “Why did you feel like it was the right approach to take?” into a question about the design: “What makes this the right approach?” and avoid the whole problem.
Wrapping it up for givers
Effective design feedback is specific, stage-appropriate, and focused on the work, not the person. Avoiding common pitfalls like the ‘shit sandwich’ or idea competition can make critiques more productive.
Next time you give feedback, ask yourself: Am I being specific? Is my feedback aligned with where the project is at right now? Am I critiquing the work, not the person?
Receiving design feedback
Communicate your needs
Similar to “Good feedback is appropriate to the design’s level of fidelity, and the stage of the project”, you need to communicate what stage you’re at and what you need help with to set the stage for the person looking at your work. This will help them understand what needs their attention.
Assume positive intent
Everyone has different ways of communicating – so when people provide feedback in a less-than-ideal way, remind yourself that they’re coming from a place of care and don’t mean to offend. They, like you, want what’s best for people.
And then share this post so they can read up and improve.
Ask questions and clarify
There is no way that a single piece of feedback will contain all the context you as a designer need to understand what opportunities you now have to change your design. Ask simple who (would need that), what (did you mean by…), when (do you think this…), why (would someone want to…) questions to dig into the feedback some more, and get more details from the feedback giver.
Together, you’ll be going on a journey to dig into that perspective and understand it better, because the feedback provider might not have all the answers either.
Ask for critical feedback
If the person you’re getting feedback from is too positive and isn’t providing enough critique, push them a bit harder to uncover the more subtle concerns they may have. They might be too polite to bring something up (or they’re serving shit sandwiches).
Ask them to play devil’s advocate or view the design from a different perspective to find areas that could use improvement. The final design will be better off with as much scrutiny as possible.