Understanding the process
Each designer, agency, studio may have a different process for reviewing work with their clients. For a successful experience, as mentioned before, it’s important to understand how the process will work before it begins.
A few questions you should consider asking are:
- How many revisions or rounds of reviews will there be?
- How will our review sessions be run? Online? In person? Via a phone conference? Where will they be held?
- What will we review in each session?
How-to give effective and constructive feedback
Feedback can really make or break the effectiveness of a design. From a designer’s perspective, it can be easy to take criticism the wrong way. Reviewing sessions should lead to improving a website’s effectiveness not the other way around. There is always a fine line between personal preference and trying to focus on the end goal – the targeted user. Designers can help to improve review sessions by asking questions that can lead to constructive comments. You can also improve your reviewing sessions by commenting in effective ways. Below are a few do’s and don’ts to giving feedback.
What to avoid
When reviewing a design, it’s important to avoid statements such as:
- “I don’t like it.”
- “It doesn’t work for me.”
- “I don’t like green.”
What to focus on
Instead, try using more descriptive language such as:
- “The background texture you used doesn’t fit right because it looks too rugged for the style of products we are selling”.
- “The layout on this page isn’t showcasing our most important elements and may be confusing to our older users.”
- “Our company colors are shades of blue with small accents of green. Can we utilize less green and focus more on using different shades of blues?”
The more you give, the more you shall receive
Don’t be afraid to give too much feedback. The more questions brought to your team’s attention in the beginning, the less time will be spent later on fixing and/or redesigning missed or inappropriate elements.
Start from the top of the page and work your way down, making sure to cover all elements, from fonts, colors, photos and illustrations, to spacing, layout and user interactions. If something is missing, make sure in the next review session it is covered.
You can see how important it is to immerse your team in your business’ goals, practices and target market before the project begins. Researching competitors is also a critical step in designing. If your designer doesn’t know who your competitors are, they wouldn’t know why you want them to change the entire site to blue instead of green, the color scheme your direct competitor is using.
Ask questions
If you aren’t sure whether a particular design element should be used or changed, ask the designer why he or she did what they did. There should be a reason for everything they’ve done. This will help ease any tensions when giving negative feedback. If they are unsure or have their facts wrong about your business, you can then correct them and improve the design at the same time.
Examples of questions:
- “What happens when the user clicks on “x”?”
- “Why did you choose that particular photo?”
- “Will that particular area of content be easily updated by our staff?”
- “Why do you think the title font you selected fits our target market?”
Read Chapter 7: The Finishing Touches
