Wrong Ways to Share Feedback with your Designers

Feedback is a valuable gift for us Designers because obviously, two minds work's better than one. If the feedback is given properly, it can lead to extraordinary success but when you kick your Designer in the rear and downright demean his Design while doing so, it not only hurts the morale of your Designer but also, you prove yourself unworthy of the title ‘manager’. While this may not have happened to all of us, but all you Chefs and Managers need to keep few pointers in your mind while sharing your thoughts to keep the relationship with your Designer fairly healthy.

1. Step aside, I can feel you breathing down my back!

Ever experienced in the examination hall, when you are trying to rack your brains to figure out the answer and as soon as the teachers look down on your answer sheet and you just black out? Well, hate to break it to you but it still happens! If you keep hovering around the Designers and point out every little thing that you find wrong when the Designer is experimenting with his Designs, he is bound to get irritated. It’s incredibly typical of managers to say “do the edit now and show it to me” but they have to realise that a lot of experimentation goes on before finalising the design. So let the Designers creativity flow in the direction he deems correct and don’t restrict him.

2. Design Elements? Sorry, no change!

We understand, how will anyone improve without any constructive criticism? Without bringing in light our blind spots, we can’t get better. But there needs to be a reason behind the criticism. Changing elements like text boxes or fonts is a cumbersome process, the whole pattern changes when you ask us to do that without having any valid reason for doing so. So, don’t be a jerk about it and be upright with your feedback.

3. Is it ready yet?

Deadlines are something that we all have to adhere to, we understand that you managers are responsible for the product delivery and that makes deadlines even more crucial. But the downside of this is that you don’t know the amount of contemplation that goes into a Design, you have to curate a vision and then you have to further contemplate the designs. Hence, we should fix up the deadlines once the concept or background is ready. This will help us Designers with keeping our Designs and timelines in sync.

4. It’s a ten-minute job!

Let’s not embarrass yourself and my work by saying this. Managers mostly aren’t familiar with the Designing nuances, they don’t understand that if one element is touched, the others have to be reworked too. So what might look like a trivial change to you, might possibly be a huge task for us and doing that isn’t a ‘ten-minute job’ as you might very conveniently think? Trust your Designer with doing his job correctly, don’t demean his title and let him work.

5. Screens are missing? Use your common sense!

A designers job is to create engaging interactions, visuals or concepts. So it is essential that he has enough data and mock scenarios to make a complete design flow; if not, the pattern would be lacking few elements that would make his Design incomplete. A lot of friction between the Designers and Managers occurs because the manager asks to accommodate few more screens at the end moment which means the whole design will get screwed.

6. Hey, copy this!

Well the answer to that statement is NO. A big, fat, absolute and non deterrent NO! It is an insult to us designers to make us copy something that isn’t ours to call in the first place. An artist cannot replicate his own work, let alone the work of another designer whose thinking patterns we aren’t familiar with. So, don’t make us deter from our creative patterns and make us replicate some other’s work. We Designers are meant to curate designs that are unique and beautiful, not copy.

7. Another option, please?

I have a question to raise here, why the hell do we need so many options? Let’s work on the design we have, let’s make it better. As I have mentioned earlier, we won’t say no for constructive criticism but if you ask us to bring an option after option then you are negating our work. Our energy and thinking goes to waste when you select one out of the pool of ‘options’ you asked us to create. You cannot keep thinking that something extraordinary will come out of the incessant working on the options. Let’s not do that, on the other hand, let’s take a step back and discuss what we can do to make the current design better.

8. Friendship, the answer to all ailments!

Developing a personal relationship with your Designer is always a plus. Let’s accept it, you are going to spend a lot of time with your Designer, so might as well get something out of it. Be friends, it will definitely be more fun and exciting that way; as you work better when you are in a situation which you are familiar with and with people you like!