Designers, Beware: Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Handling Feedback
How to triage stakeholder feedback for better design outcomes
Ah, feedback — the necessary evil of the design process. Like a gift from your well-meaning grandparents, you have to accept it with a smile, even if it’s not quite what you were hoping for. While “how to ask for feedback” and “how to give feedback” have been done to death, little attention is given to the art of managing feedback. But as a product designer, feedback helps you produce better solutions and make informed decisions.
Have you ever left a feedback session feeling overwhelmed by a laundry list of small changes but no real progress? In this article, we’ll explore some tips on how to triage feedback like a pro and take your designs to the next level.
Parkinson’s Law of Triviality
Why does it seem like nearly everyone has an opinion on design? Turns out, this is actually due to a phenomenon known as Parkinson’s Law of Triviality (also known as the “Bike-Shed Effect”). This term came from C. Northcote Parkinson’s book where he used the example of a committee that is tasked with approving the design of a nuclear power plant and a bike shed.
Parkinson observed that while the committee members were well-informed about the technical aspects of the nuclear power plant, they spent a disproportionate amount of time discussing and debating the design of the bike shed. The bike shed was a simple, concrete problem that everyone could understand and have an opinion on, whereas the technical details of the nuclear power plant were complex and difficult to understand.
In other words, people tend to offer feedback on subjects they feel they understand, regardless of their actual expertise. This often leads to a focus on minor, superficial issues and a glossing over of more important and complex ones. For example, in a big feedback meeting, you might not see non-technical stakeholders having strong opinions on complex issues like system architecture, but everyone seems to have an opinion on the color of a button.
Now, this isn’t to say that design isn’t complex. On the contrary, design is a highly nuanced field. However, at face value, everyone can comment on the aesthetics of a mockup, but not everyone can comment on interaction design, information architecture, or design system implications. So how can we steer stakeholders away from superficial feedback and encourage them to provide valuable feedback that drives the product forward? The answer lies in how you 1) ask for feedback, and 2) frame your design.
Feedback vs. Alignment
It’s important to understand that feedback and alignment are two concepts that serve distinct purposes in the design process. Feedback involves gathering opinions and ideas from various stakeholders to refine and enhance the design. At the same time, alignment focuses on ensuring that everyone shares the same vision and goals for the project. Both are important but serve different purposes in the design process.
To move beyond superficial feedback, I’ve come up with three best practices on how to move past superficial feedback:
- 1) Be intentional about who you want feedback from and when you want it
- 2) Be specific about the feedback you want
- 3) Frame your work based on points 1 & 2.
Asking the right group for feedback at the right time
To start, let’s talk about how to be intentional about who you want feedback from and when you want it. When there are too many people in a session, it’s common for the most vocal person to dominate, or for a significant portion of the group to start multitasking and disengage.
As a general rule, it’s best to avoid having a big reveal meeting with mixed stakeholders for feedback. Instead, opt for multiple feedback sessions with small groups (4–5 people or less recommended) of stakeholders with related disciplines.
It’s also important to consider when you want feedback and from whom. In the early stages, I tend to seek feedback from other designers, user researchers, product managers, and data scientists, while in later stages, I seek feedback from content, marketing, legal, and other relevant stakeholders. For example, you might hold a feedback session with stakeholders from marketing, brand, and content design in one session, and another session with just engineers. This approach ensures that everyone is actively engaged and can share their feedback more openly.
Writing feedback prompts
Let’s move on to discussing how to ‘be specific about the feedback you want’. First of all, if you’re using a generic feedback prompt like “what do you think?”, you’re setting yourself up for failure and encouraging stakeholders to provide ‘any’ feedback (which often ends up being superficial). Assuming you’ve already arranged a feedback session with a small group of stakeholders, you should create feedback prompts tailored to your audience.
There are four key points to communicate when asking for feedback: 1) the specific problem you’re trying to solve, 2) the most valuable type of feedback at this stage, 3) the feedback that isn’t useful at this stage (i.e., visual design feedback during wireframing), and 4) the minimum viable context (i.e., constraints, requirements).
For instance, if I’m seeking feedback from other designers on an interaction design issue, I might use a prompt like “I’m redesigning the checkout process to boost conversion rates (1 — specific problem). I’m looking for feedback on how to reduce the cognitive interaction costs associated with this user flow (2 — desired feedback). At this stage, I’m focusing solely on interaction design and haven’t considered visual design or content design, so I don’t need feedback in those areas at this time (3 — what isn’t useful). Our goal for this project is to launch a series of experiments within the quarter, focusing on small high ROI tweaks instead of a complete redesign (4 — context). A well-crafted feedback prompt directed to the appropriate audience should elicit much better feedback and avoid the pitfalls of Parkinson’s Law.
Adjusting design fidelity for feedback
The last consideration for getting effective design feedback is how to frame your design work to solicit the desired feedback. In the past, designers typically shared low-fidelity designs at earlier stages of the process due to the time-consuming and expensive nature of high-fidelity mockups.
However, with the advent of robust design systems and the productivity improvements made by tools like Figma, designers now often share high-fidelity work regardless of the situation. Unfortunately, high-fidelity work often includes many superficial visual elements that distract from the more important underlying aspects that actually need feedback.
To increase the quality of feedback we receive, we need to adjust the fidelity of our designs. However, it’s important to understand that design fidelity is not just about the visual aspects of the design (from sketch to high-fi mockup). In fact, there are actually 5 dimensions of fidelity:
- Visual: How realistic does it look?
- Interaction: How realistic does it feel (micro-interactions, states, gestures)?
- Breadth: To what degree is this the whole or just a part (an entire product vs. a single flow)?
- Depth: At a given level of breadth, to what degree is the user constrained?
- Content: How real is the stuff and is it contextual to the user?
To adjust these dimensions, you might:
- Use low visual fidelity and high breadth fidelity when working with product managers at the start of a project to facilitate scoping and requirements conversations.
- Focus on interaction, depth, and content fidelity when testing a voice UI concept (like with Alexa) to simulate how users engage with a novel interaction model for a specific use case (such as asking about the weather).
When you adjust the fidelity of your designs, you can ensure that feedback is directed toward the aspects that currently require feedback. This process often involves removing elements rather than adding new ones. By doing so, you can help your stakeholders focus on the core elements that require feedback and avoid getting sidetracked by details that aren’t relevant at the current stage.
One trick I often use for in-progress design work that looks high-fidelity (i.e., leveraging design system components) is to grayscale the entire mockup. You can greyscale a mockup easily in Figma by 1) drawing a rectangle over the entire frame, 2) moving it to the top of the layer stack, 3) changing the rectangle’s color to black, and 4) changing the blending mode to ‘color’. These small tweaks make it obvious that the work is still in progress and helps people avoid getting distracted (or too excited) at the beginning. In addition, when the content hasn’t been thought out yet, I’ll use the ‘Flow’ font meant for wireframing, or when the content is still a work in progress I’d change the font to ‘Comic-Sans’.
In addition, you should also be mindful of the number of design options you present to different audiences. While offering multiple design options to stakeholders can be beneficial in soliciting feedback and exploring different design directions, presenting too many options can be overwhelming and counterproductive (i.e., Hick’s Law).
When presenting to non-design stakeholders who may not be familiar with the design process, it’s usually more effective to present a limited number of options that represent different design directions. On the other hand, when among fellow creative professionals, it can be more appropriate to offer a larger number of options to spark discussion and explore a wider range of design directions. Ultimately, the number of design options presented should be tailored to the specific audience and their respective areas of competence.
How to triage feedback
After you gather feedback from stakeholders, your next step is to triage large volumes of feedback effectively and still drive product progress. To do this effectively, you should avoid two common pitfalls: being too defensive by countering every piece of feedback and feeling pressure to act on all feedback.
In the past, I used to “die on every hill” when facing opposing feedback from stakeholders. But one of my former managers gave me valuable advice: sometimes, all you need to say is “thank you for your feedback, and I’ll consider it carefully for the next iteration”. By doing this, you can avoid or reschedule potential debates until they become relevant in the future. In some cases, it’s better to simply document feedback and acknowledge it without necessarily acting on it. This allows you to show that you have heard the feedback and are taking it into account. In most cases, the stakeholder would’ve forgotten their feedback by the next session (unless that piece of feedback was critical, but not relevant at the current stage).
To focus discussions on the most relevant feedback, I suggest asking everyone to spend the first half of the session silently writing comments in Figma. This prevents the loudest person in the room from dominating the discussion. In the second half, choose specific comments (not all) to discuss live. This allows the designer to focus the discussion on the most helpful topics. A helpful tip I give stakeholders is to rephrase their feedback in the form of a question. For example instead of “make the button blue”, it should be “why did you choose blue for the button color”? This small tweak makes the feedback seem less prescriptive (i.e., a task), and more of a suggestive prompt.
In addition, the question format allows the designer to explain their rationale and often leads to stakeholders agreeing with them after learning the context. As the designer, you should lead the discussion around the comments that would be most helpful to you, rather than passively letting another stakeholder take up all the time talking about something that may not be relevant to you. I call it ‘steering the conversation.’
Conclusion
While feedback is valuable during the design process, not all feedback is equal. You should focus on the feedback that is most relevant and aligned with the current stage of the project. Rather than acting on every single piece of feedback, view feedback as optional inputs and sources of inspiration for your problem-solving process. Very rarely do I take feedback at face value (especially from non-designers); however non-designer feedback is great for inspiration for diagnosis if you read between the lines.
In conclusion, treat feedback like a buffet; take what you need and leave the rest. In the end, remember that feedback is not a scorecard, it’s a tool to help you refine and improve your design. So, don’t get bogged down in debates or take everything at face value. Stay focused, stay selective, and let feedback guide you toward a better solution.
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