The Designer’s Guide to Giving Good Feedback
by Daniel SchutzsmithThursday, May 15th, 2008
filed under Business, Web Design
Having been around the block several times, we know how some clients can get fixated on the wrong things when reviewing a design composition. This often frustrates the design team and makes the feedback process stressful for both parties. We want clients to know that they don’t need to worry about items that we can change fairly quickly (fonts, colors, etc.) and focus more on making sure our design meets the objectives they have set forth (tone, flow, etc…).
For this reason, we’ve started giving our clients a quick guide, via email, when we send over the first round of designs. If you’re a designer, feel free to use this as well or give us some suggestions on what else you’d put in it. If you’re a client, feel free to let us know how it has helped you or share your suggestions on how we can improve.
DO
- give feedback as if through the eyes of the person whom you’re targeting
- let us know how the tone feels (colors, wording, style)
- tell us how the flow feels (layout, navigation, eye movement - does your eye move gracefully or fixate on a specific spot)
- let us know if we’ve missed anything essential to the design.
- most importantly, have fun and show it off (this is custom made for you, so go ahead and feel good about it!)
DON’T
- get too focused on colors or fonts (these can be changed rather quickly)
- let us know how “Harold the janitor” disliked the type on the website if “Harold the janitor” is not the target audience
- take this design to committee (you know what they say, everyone has an opinion)
- tell us we’ve got it all wrong (there has to be some gold in there!
Elsewhere:
Speak Up > Getting Proper Feedback From Clients
New Fangled > Helping Clients Solve Website Design Problems
New Fangled > Website Profile (pdf)
May 19th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
What an excellent idea Daniel, I can’t believe I haven’t seen this before or even thought about doing It can get a little frustrating when you have worked hard on a concept and when presenting it the first thing the client says is “You’ve used blue, I don’t like blue!” when this can be easily amended and its just the overall concept and design that is important.
I think I’ll be using something like this in the future to help the client along. Great work! thanks, Gareth
Dot Designs last blog post..How to avoid a “Frankenstein’s Monster” of a Brochure Design!
May 20th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Perfect timing! I was just having a discussion about this very topic at work last week. Your method and verbiage seem dead on. The only thing I might also suggest is adding some info about the ramifications of what can happen if they don’t follow the guidelines.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
@Dot : Our pleasure! This is really something we’ve started doing to avoid any weird issues that might arise down the line.
@Adam : Great minds think alike! Ramifications seems like a harsh word to us. We’re not really here to make the client’s life miserable if they don’t follow these guidelines. At the end of the day, they are only guidelines, not rules. We’re not here to police clients or point fingers so we’ll probably never put something like that in there. If you decide to add something, feel free to come back and share it here.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:26 am
Great article. I wish I would have read something like this when I was first getting started. I’ve had a bunch of projects get off on the wrong foot via the first two DON’Ts over the years. In the past I was reluctant to guide them on how to give feedback on what they didn’t like because it was casting a somewhat negative shadow over the project before anything was even presented. But after learning alot about the managing of expections and the like when it comes to presenting initial comps, I realize that was a poor way of looking at it. Seeing these listed like this is excellent, it can really help people build a solid foundation to communicate with client. Bravo!
May 21st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
At Newfangled, we have a document that we send clients before we begin the design process. Justin Kerr, our Creative Director, put it together a couple of years ago and recently wrote a blog post about it. It’s available for download, and we hope you also find it helpful.
We find that asking these questions at the beginning gets the client warmed-up to giving feedback, but I can totally see how letting them know what not to do is a huge benefit!
Cheers!
May 21st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Hi, everyone.
This is a great! I think design critique guidelines for clients are long overdue. My clients are exclusively internal; they’re project managers who are engineers and scientist, and often have no clue about design and don’t really know how to critique a design using a language that a graphic designer could understand. Furthermore they broker the design work for their clients who are in the same boat. The end result is much heart-ache, back and forth and a much watered down design.
I think the guidelines can help steer the client and designer towards the goal of communicating with the target audience.
I would suggest to add to the list of Dos:
Do determine if the design communicates your message/brand idea clearly; jot down your impressions and discuss them with the designer.
To the list of Don’ts:
Don’t make major formatting/design changes that you think might ‘fix’ the design if the draft makes you unhappy. While you should trust the designer’s ability to properly execute the idea, it’s more important to determine if the work is getting your message to your audience or not and to describe why or why not as best you can.
(in so many words)
May 21st, 2008 at 8:11 pm
DON’T:
- For christ’s sake, please, for the love of god, say “Can we make the logo bigger”
May 21st, 2008 at 9:31 pm
very good stuff guys. absolute necessity, clients need this to be helped through the process.
If you don’t mind, I will adopt a few of these ideas in our processes.
http://www.lifecaptureinc.com/blog/
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:08 am
[...] gem, from DSGN+DVLP, the designer’s guide for getting good feedback. Their points, I feel, are very much on the mark and apply to many contexts, including even within [...]
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Love it, Dan. Great pointers.
Off-topic (sorry), how do you get that real-time comment preview to appear? Pretty neat.
One tip is to include the ’subscribe to comments’ plugin for WordPress. It’s definitely one of my ‘can’t do without’ additions.
David Aireys last blog post..Creative roundup 19 May 2008
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
@Patrick: Thanks for the compliment! Glad you like them and if you use them and adapt be sure to let us know.
@Able: Thanks for bringing that post to our attention. I’ve linked it up as further reading. Great site btw! And your company name is absolutely right on - I can tell you’re all probably smart asses just like us!
@Omar: You’re suggestions are great! I think we’ll definitely start using them for our guidelines.
@John: You’re cracking us up over here! Obviously we’d never say anything like that to our clients but it sure is funny.
@Geoff: Thanks for the compliment and feel free to spread the word!
@David: Thanks man! On your OT, we installed Live Comment Preview - its pretty nice but we need to tweak the styles a little bit. Do you know what the comments plugin is that you used?
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Good list you guys have going on here.
I would add to the Don´t something i always tell my clients:
If you anyway took it to the committee, don´t collect all the comments in one e-mail and send it to us before you first read trough them yourself. More often than not comment number 6 from the chief engineer will be in direct conflict of comment number 2 from the PR-departement.
And to the Do´s something vital (imho):
If you are not sure what you think of the design, sleep over it and take a second look tomorrow morning. This is better than to reply in 30 min with one message and then change everything with another message tomorrow.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Love the list.
My one (verbose) suggestion:
When critiquing, DO Provide problems, DON’T provide solutions. Instead of saying “replace the font with Arial” let us know what you are trying to accomplish from that. Does the current font or logo feel too formal? Let us know the problems, and we’ll find you a solution that really works. It’s what we do.
May 24th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Sounds like a really great way to further the client - designer relationship. I like it most because it builds a sense of trust between you and the client. Its kind of like a no BS policy - which it looks like DSGN + DVLP practices. Good job and good luck!
May 25th, 2008 at 5:33 am
[...] The Designer’s Guide to Giving Good Feedback | the chronicle of a designerd Списък с напътствия, които да даваш на клиентите си, когато за пръв път им представяш дизайн. Какво да гледат и какво да не гледат. (tags: GraphicDesign process) [...]