Talk - Giving and receiving design feedback - UXCampBrighton 2019

This is a quick recap video of the talk I gave at UXCampBrighton 2019 called 'Giving and Handling Design Feedback' for anyone interested - I've mislaid the index card notes for the talk, so it's very much a high-level from-memory recap, so probably varies slightly :)

Topics covered included:

• Examples of and differences between 3 kinds of feedback: reactive, directive, and critical thinking.
• Tips on giving good critique - be aware of what you don't know, ask for guidelines, be timely.
• Things to avoid -having a selfish mindset, drive-by feedback, letting personal preferences get in the way, no feedback whatsoever.
• Techniques for setting the scene - exploring goals, using a creative brief, talking about what good feedback looks like.
• General tips on presenting designs - presenting with business goals in mind, not showing lots of iterations, not asking 'do you like it?', and avoiding jargon.

I ended on talking about reframing bad feedback with a few examples and some quotes.

Thanks to all that attended - I always find that when forcing oneself to write a talk on a given subject and talk around things, it's a great learning experience as you always end up reading around a subject and diving deeper than one normally would.

20 minutes sounds like a long time, but it isn't really, and I felt I crammed a bit too much in. If I were to redo it, I probably would have narrowed it down further a bit more, to give me more time to talk about specific aspects, but there's always next year :)

First up in the @WeAreAmido main room is @alpower on ‘Giving & Handling Feedback’ #uxcb19 pic.twitter.com/PyAc1z6H8k

— Tom Prior (@tomprior) March 9, 2019

"My wife likes it in green". How to handle unhelpful feedback and make feedback helpful. @alpower @UXCampBrighton pic.twitter.com/ZMF3iCiKFO

— Rebecca Hugo (@becstex) March 9, 2019

Evergreen quotes from @msjaneaustin in @alpower’s talk this morning pic.twitter.com/PcGcoG9tb6

— Tom Prior (@tomprior) March 9, 2019

Further reading

The whole talk was a bit of a high-level drive-by on critique (given we only had 20 minutes), and much more thorough whole books have been written on the subject which I'd recommend for further reading: Design Is a Job by Mike Monterio, Practical Design Discovery by Dan Brown, Discussing Design: Improving Communication and Collaboration through Critique by Adam Connor & Aaron Irizarry and Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience by Tom Greever.