“We all need people who give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
— Bill Gates
Undoubtedly one of the best ways to grow as a designer is to seek feedback — as much as you can. All of us agree on this, right?
However, not all feedback is useful.
What if you seek feedback from one of your colleagues and all they say is “Something is missing. Work on it.” or “It just doesn’t feel right.”
Is this feedback useful enough? Would it help you improve your design or know what went wrong and how to get it right the next time?
No. It wouldn’t.
If you want to improve your designs, don’t just seek feedback, seek “actionable” feedback from the right groups of people.
You can use feedback button website tools and survey forms to garner feedback more efficiently.
What exactly is actionable feedback?
Let’s dive further into this and understand why it is super important to seek actionable feedback and how to consider their critique.
We will start with understanding what is actionable feedback and explore a unique way to get actionable feedback through screen recording.
What is Actionable Feedback?
To put it simply, actionable feedback is the feedback that you can immediately act upon.
Actionable feedback is specific feedback that clearly describes what needs to improve. Remotely, it may even point the designer to their next steps a.k.a tell them how to fix whatever went wrong.
Keeping that in mind, feedback such as “Something is missing.” or “It can be a lot better.” doesn’t qualify as actionable feedback.
Whenever you create a design, you put in your best. You come up with the best solution according to your understanding of the problem statement. You use your very own intellect, viewpoint, and opinion to create every single design.
But when you seek feedback, you attempt to use the other person’s understanding of the problem statement. Seeking feedback is more about looking at the problem from their lens.
And that’s the reason why “Something is missing” doesn’t count as actionable feedback.
Because you don’t know what exactly is missing, you can’t act upon it. You have exhausted your imagination and understanding already that you can’t expand your horizons out of nowhere when someone reverts with “Something is missing.”
Actionable feedback would be letting you know “why” exactly they felt that something was missing. Or, what their thought process was when they said “It can be a lot better.”
High quality, specific and actionable feedback provides designers with an alternative point of view, which ultimately helps them improve both their current and future design projects.
Thus you see, it isn’t the feedback but the alternative point of view and perspective that you must seek and use.
Why Does Actionable Feedback Matter?
Actionable Feedback Inspires Confidence
A design feedback session can turn into a hurtful session real quick.
When feedback is not well-defined, you don’t know what’s wrong or what is to be improved, you may come across as rude, arrogant, or dismissive.
When the feedback is figured out and comes from a place that tends to build, the designer can tell that you’re trying to improve the work and inspire confidence.
This way the session doesn’t turn into a hurtful experience.
Let’s have a look at a practical situation:
Joe: What do you think of my color choices here?
Alex: It’s poor, overuse of one color.
Emily: I like the design, especially what you’ve done with the footer (positive reinforcement of correctness). However, it looks like the primary action color is everywhere. I think it may detract from your intended workflow and maybe a bit too overwhelming for a segment of the audience. What do you think about it?
You feel the difference, right?
While both Alex and Emily have conveyed essentially the same thing, Emily helped Joe understand her thought process as well, thus making her feedback more actionable.
Alex’s feedback feels like he is imposing his personal preferences, thus making his feedback very prescriptive. Not to forget, he came across as rude in the process.
Giving actionable feedback saves you from coming across as rude (sometimes unintentionally).
When you give detailed, actionable feedback, you make the designer feel like you believe in them and just want to help them reach the project’s goal sooner. That motivates them to do a good job.
Helps Improve
The most important benefit of receiving actionable feedback as a designer is that it helps you grow.
Getting feedback helps only when you can use it. And, it’s a fact that you can use actionable feedback alone.
Little Room for Miscommunication
When you give/receive clear, concise, specific – in short actionable – feedback, you leave little to no room for miscommunication.
“I like it. It looks good. Bright colors, man. Too bright actually, tone them down a bit.”
Designers receive such feedback all the time. Trust us when we say this, it’s widely normal and acceptable.
But, the problem is that this feedback is vague. When you receive such feedback from a client, for instance, you don’t know exactly what to do next and you are just left scratching your head.
You don’t know how toned down the colors have to be. You can tone them down a shade or two or just remove the shade entirely.
And when you go to the client again with the changes, you shouldn’t be surprised if they say:
“Jesus! I asked you to tone it down a bit, you have made it so dull.”
On the flip side, when you receive actionable feedback, such as:
“I like it. It looks good. Bright colors, man. This red all over is too bright actually, maybe it can be too distracting for the user at the first glance. I think it’d be great if you could re-think the tone and go for something more pleasing to the eye such as blue.”
You know exactly what they thought and there is little to no room for miscommunication, saving you from unnecessary rework.
This also becomes important when you’re working in a team.
Actionable feedback helps establish a clear and honest flow of ideas, thoughts, and information, thus saving you from errors caused by miscommunication.
Not to forget, there is minimal regret and you don’t feel like you failed.
Negative Feedback is Easy to Accept When It’s Actionable
Actionable feedback not only helps the designer see what they might be doing wrong but allows them to take and accept it as a piece of advice, not judgment.
No wonder, negative feedback is easy to accept when it’s actionable.
Negative feedback often is not negative, it’s just that it’s not actionable enough.
A lot of people around you, from whom you seek feedback, especially clients give seemingly ‘negative’ feedback because no one has ever told them what good, actionable feedback looks like.
And, when you receive such feedback, it’s your job to not let it affect you personally, rather ask relevant questions that help you understand why they said what they said so that your purpose is fulfilled and you improve.
Yet another very crucial point to note here is that you must know whom you’re seeking feedback from.
Before you seek feedback, make sure they understand what it is you’re showing them, where it fits in the larger picture and how their feedback will help you improve.
If you’re designing a SaaS product, it makes little sense to seek feedback from someone who doesn’t have any experience with SaaS products or how users interact with them.
Well, that brings us to our next segment – how to seek actionable feedback?
Seeking Actionable Feedback
A lot of designers would love to receive actionable feedback, but they seldom realize that it is something they must actively (and directly) ask for!
As a designer, you must tell your clients what kind of feedback you’re looking for. For instance, if you’re designing a SaaS product and designing the sign-up flow, rather than asking them an open-ended question like ‘What do you think about it?’, ask them a specific question that has a specific answer. An example could be – “Can you easily find the sign-up button at the first glance?”
Your Clients Are Not Designers!
Your clients are not designers, they don’t understand design language. And when you write them a long email asking for feedback, backing your design with principles from the color theory, you’re inviting trouble.
We suggest that rather than writing emails that are too difficult to read and understand for non-designers, make use of tools such as the StoryXpress Free Screen Recorder. Walk your clients through your designs using a video.
As you record your screen and webcam while making a video, tell your clients what exactly they should pay attention to and what doesn’t matter. Remember, it’s not a design presentation, it’s you explaining to your client what you’ve designed and how it helps meet the project goals.
Keep it as natural, interactive, engaging, and most importantly, jargon-free as possible.
Further, if there are multiple rounds of revision involved, it’s a good practice to keep summarising the previous conversations towards the end of the video.
When you send across a video outlining the goals the design helps meet, you’re doing more than just sending a video. You’re guiding the client’s thought process and encouraging them to look beyond the font or color and judge the design based on how useful it is for the end-user.
Easy enough?
Well, that brings us to the end of this post. We hope this helped you get some actionable advice on seeking actionable feedback.
Remember, feedback helps you improve, but only when it’s actionable. And, if you are not surrounded by folks who know how to give actionable feedback, you must know how to get it. Get good at getting feedback and the sky’s the limit for you! Cheers and good luck!
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Written by DesignCrowd on Thursday, June 10, 2021
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.