In our last blog post, we explored the need for good feedback. In this one, we’re here to tell you how to go about giving your team members clear, specific, and actionable feedback that they can use to improve their work. It doesn’t matter if you’re providing feedback to a copywriter, web designer or to a web developer, these 7 tips will definitely change the way you go about giving feedback to others.
1. Set clear expectations for the feedback process
The first thing to do is set the right expectations. This means that the brief you provide to the creator should be succinct, clear, and useful. If the directions are murky, then the product isn’t likely to be anything great. Take the brief into account when you provide feedback and evaluate it accurately, without adding any personal biases. Ensure that the feedback process is honest and transparent.
2. Offer feedback at set intervals
Collecting good quality feedback early on is extremely important in the entire process of web designing.The longer you wait to offer feedback to the creator, the greater the investment of time and effort that they might have to potentially undo and/or rework. Providing feedback at multiple stages of the process can weed out errors quicker and save a considerable amount of both cost and time.
3. Don’t make it personal
Like we’ve mentioned above, keep your feedback separate from any personal biases you may have. This is not the time to evaluate it based on “how you would have done it” rather, you need to share how this can be improved — the work should be done well while providing a learning opportunity for the creator. If they have ample expertise already, the feedback should serve to help them develop something everyone can be proud of.
4. Give actionable feedback
Simply saying “this doesn’t work” without giving any directions on how or why it doesn’t is just bad feedback. Good feedback is contextual, actionable, and specific. Simply saying “another option, please” without stating why you need another one and what you expect to see changed is another example of what you shouldn’t do. Offer actionable feedback — make sure you’re giving actual ways to improve the end result rather than just stating that you didn’t like it.
5. Ask questions and give answers
Understanding the creator’s thought process can be extremely helpful, especially when the feedback is negative. Blanket statements like “fix this” or “make this change” will result in the desired changes but you will face the same issue again if the creator doesn’t understand why you’ve asked for those changes in the first place. Ask the right questions and encourage them to ask you questions as well. Every creator brings something to the table and good feedback incorporates that. This serves to give the creator a morale boost and makes them feel their opinion and thoughts are valued.
6. Highlight positives
We all like being praised, especially if it’s for work we’ve put a lot of effort into. Make sure to point out the good parts of the project when offering feedback. If you only talk about the negatives and what needs to be improved, your creator will be left disgruntled and annoyed because you didn’t notice what was done well. Reassuring the creator that they are on the right track is an important part of providing feedback.
7. Provide contextual feedback
This is self explanatory but ensuring that the feedback you share is contextual and appropriate for the project can help the creator rework aspects easier. When it comes to offering feedback for writing, you can use Track Changes so your comments explain why you’re making this change. Designers and developers tend to use a myriad of free tools ranging from screenshots to slides to collate feedback — this can get really frustrating.
We’re working on creating a website feedback tool that can really simplify the feedback process for designers & developers.
ruttl is the future of design review. It’s going to change the way you review live website and share feedback. Offer contextual feedback, make edits to live websites, replace images and copy, see all comments from team members in one spot, and more.
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