How to Do Design Feedback

Improving design feedback

Photo by Ferenc Horvath / Unsplash

1 min read

Giving and receiving any kind of feedback is hard. Design feedback is no exception. Feedback is difficult because it involves people and feelings. It's easy to get wires crossed and take feedback personally, especially if the feedback is not communicated clearly or properly understood. Remote work also infinitely complicates this process.

I lead a design team and giving and receiving design feedback is a constant challenge for us. Over time and with lots of experimentation, we have found a few guidelines that have helped us to get better at design feedback:

1. Use a design feedback tool like Figma that allows individuals to provide comments directly on the work. We've found that a lot of the "nit-picky" comments can be quickly knocked out or discussed directly in Figma.
2. Schedule regular working sessions to riff on each other's ideas and provide direction as a team. There is a creative energy that happens when multiple designers get together and discuss designs.
3. Schedule regular design review meetings to discuss feedback and make decisions together as a team.
4. Create a structured feedback plan with clear guidelines and templates to ensure consistent and actionable insights. Our team aligned on trying to move reaction and direction based feedback into Figma, while using review meetings to discuss whether a given design is expected to meet the desired communication objective.