Getting Meaningful Design Feedback

How applying design thinking to the feedback process ultimately helps your designs (and your team’s culture).

The design community educates quite a bit about delivering good design feedback — how to articulate the exchange of crit in a fruitful and healthy manner. My teammate Maggie has framed aspects of this into a helpful (and creative!) framework called Feedback Heroes and Villains, which we incorporate in the onboarding of new members of our product design team at WW.

Another aspect of design feedback that we need to talk about, though, is setting ourselves up to receive good feedback — “good” as in feedback that meaningfully shapes the design thinking closer to the goal in a more effective way. Figuring out the optimal ways for receiving good feedback is like a design problem in itself: You need to consider the goals, context, and people in order to shape the right execution and then iterate on the feedback process itself.

Another aspect of design feedback that we need to talk about, though, is setting ourselves up to receive good feedback — “good” as in feedback that meaningfully shapes the design thinking closer to the goal in a more effective way.

Through trial and error, I’ve found four key components to consider when planning how to set yourself up for success in receiving meaningful design feedback:

• Purposeful setup: Choosing effective timing, formats, and fidelity.
• Intentional inclusion: Including the right people in inclusive ways.
• Targeted emotional outcomes: Designing for how participants should feel.
• Evaluation and iteration: Reflecting and improving upon the feedback process itself.

Purposeful setup

It’s best to share design work when you know enough, but not everything. Aim to share at a point that’s mature enough for you to explain the problem space effectively so participants are equipped with adequate information to provide relevant feedback. At the same time, aim to share early enough that:

• The design thinking hasn’t been overly narrowed before your participants have had the opportunity to influence the approach.
• Your participants wouldn’t require a boot camp just to get caught up on the background and context.
• Feedback could realistically be incorporated as a result.

Excerpt from an engineering-focused design review workshop. We worked the focus questions into the agenda up front, along with links to collaboration resources.

In addition (and related) to timing considerations, choose a format and fidelity that makes sense for the goals of your design feedback. Need input on the use of a UI pattern? Leveraging a standing design review or a Slack thread with a front-end engineer might do the trick. Need early directional guidance from leadership? Maybe stick to low-fidelity sketches with emphasis on articulating rationale and strategic thinking. Need feedback on copywriting and content decisions? Sending a doc for writers and editors to mull over and leave comments in may be most productive.

Intentional inclusion

Think about inclusion regarding both who is invited and how they can participate.

Including the right people

Invite feedback participants based on a simple question: Who can best answer the design questions I’m currently debating? (Sometimes, this also helps pinpoint when a design really needs just a user test at that point.) Cross-functional collaboration is dead without this intentionality. Sometimes designers fall into the trap of including a token engineer or inviting random representatives of different teams for the positive intention of collaboration. Instead, leverage others’ individual subject-matter expertise and superpowers deliberately.

My most useful design feedback sessions have been due to having the right people in the room (or the Zoom): an international general manager helping us land on a more global approach to a CX (customer experience) problem; back-end engineers suggesting a smarter way to achieve a categorization scheme in the UX; WW Coaches who could layer in otherwise-unknown context for how our product would realistically play out in a WW Studio setting; a designer describing what’s worked well and not well for users with a previous use of a design pattern; our chief science officer pinpointing where an automated-tech approach would lead to misleading data interpretation; content partners helping us move toward a more personal, narrative UX approach; and so on.

Invite feedback participants based on a simple question: Who can best answer the design questions I’m currently debating?

Facilitating in an inclusive way

It’s not just about having the right people, but including them in the right way, too. Some considerations I’ve found helpful here are:

Excerpt from a cross-functional design review. We planted targeted questions throughout the review to ensure we pause and engage the most critical feedback givers at the most appropriate times.

• Leveraging cross-functional expertise: Ask for specific lenses of feedback from specific disciplines. Ask targeted questions. When it’s relevant, assign particular tasks to particular people or groups (e.g., asking engineering leads to take notes on tech dependencies in a shared Google doc while you walk through the design).
• Leveling prior understanding: Ensure everyone has the necessary background and context (through an intro, prior engagements, pre-reads, etc.) to understand the design problem and provide relevant input. Pause to translate any jargon vocalized in feedback so the rest of the group understands. Clarify feedback objectives and scope up front so everyone’s on the same page, and table any discussion that gets off topic or too in the weeds.

Excerpt from a formal design review. After providing background context, we paused to clarify intended feedback before hopping into the prototype.

• Remote inclusivity: Our time in COVID hopefully has taught a lot of empathy with the remote working experience. My tip (even pre-COVID): Prepare every design review as if there will be at least one remote participant. Digitally shared materials (e.g., participatory MURAL boards, presentation decks, working docs, etc.) not only cover your bases for someone who suddenly needs to take care of a sick kid at home that day but also provides valuable collaboration opportunities both during and after (and sometimes even before) a review. In addition, some simple social practices — like keeping video on, pausing screen sharing during in-depth discussions, and facilitating a single conversation — help ensure participants can be fully present, regardless of whether or not they’re physically in the room.

Example of using a digital whiteboard to share and collect feedback both during and after the review.

• Inclusivity for the quiet or pensive: Invite the quiet person in the room by name to share their thoughts. Consider avenues to record silent feedback in addition to the conversation in the room. Provide the ability to follow up with feedback later for those who need more time to process their thinking.
• Accessibility considerations: Strive for accessible conditions when sharing work, especially with groups you’re less familiar with. Consider text size and contrast in any slides or design artifacts you’re sharing, and room setup for folks who may have movement restrictions (e.g., pinning up Post-its and printouts for perusal on the walls of a tiny conference room may not be so accessible for a movement-restricted teammate).

Targeted emotional outcomes

Just like we consider the emotional journey for WW members, I like to consider the emotional journey for our teammates, too. A PM (product manager) I work with inspired me with his thoughtful perspective: Evaluate the success of a meeting based on how people feel when they leave.

First, there’s trying to foster psychological safety for participants to provide their feedback candidly. Three ways I’ve found success in ensuring folks feel valued and encouraged to share their thoughts are:

• Explicitly sharing why they were selected to provide feedback, emphasizing the contribution you’re hoping to get from them.
• Openly sharing where you feel weaker in the design thinking or execution, rightfully framing the crit as a step that will help you.
• Ideally, establishing relationships with the participants beforehand to mitigate any walking-on-eggshells feelings when providing feedback.

Then there’s the follow-through to ensure folks feel heard and good about what’s next. Transparency techniques are really critical for this: playing back what you heard; visibly capturing notes on the fly; getting a temperature check at the end; immediately sending out recaps of feedback received and next steps; following up with the next iteration and citing how feedback was addressed; etc. And reinforce radical candor by expressing gratitude through it all.

Without feeling valued, heard, and informed, people won’t feel as confident in or excited about the work — an outcome needed to keep positive momentum and alignment about the design with various partners and teammates.

Example email to feedback participants following a substantial design review checkpoint. The structure focuses on top themes heard, how we’re moving forward, and what they can expect and not expect to see in future designs.

Evaluation and iteration

Like any design process, designing a good experience for receiving feedback requires reflection and iteration. I’ve found it so valuable to ask for feedback not just on the design but also on the design review itself. And for team members and partners who are consistently your feedback participants, it can be helpful to check in on the design feedback process in general (e.g., via surveys, informal chats, or dedicated retros).

Excerpt from an end-of-year survey asking core crew members to evaluate their working relationship with the design team. It touches on how included they feel, how well their time is used, etc.

The key to good design feedback is not just in the delivery but also in the setup of receiving feedback. Of course, we can’t always pour in the effort for an ideal setup, but being mindful of it when possible does make a difference. Approaching the feedback process with the same empathy and experimentation we use for solving product design problems is how we can unlock the potential of our teammates and partners for the benefit of the design, and foster a more open, collaborative culture.

— Liz Rutz, principal product designer at WW (formerly Weight Watchers®)

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Product Managers — Mid to Senior Levels (Remote)

Related post: What is a Product Manager?