A big part of the creative process is parsing feedback on designs or a problem you are trying to solve, condensing it and deciding whether or not there is an actionable solution hidden within that feedback. Now before I say anything else, all feedback is important to some degree, as designers are only human (as much as we dont want to risk our egos admitting) and things will always slip through the cracks in our heads. So during the testing/prototyping phase of product development feedback is absolutely key. The biggest part where this breaks down for me though is when people deliver feedback like: I have a really specific problem and disagree with a part of your design but I have no idea how it could be solved or if its really a problem at all, but I just wanted to voice my concern. So like I said before, feedback is good, but before you jump to leaving feedback or creating a task about something you think is really wrong, think about the problem or issue you wish to voice your concern about. Is this problem a core usability problem that is going to hinder the products comprehension or usage? Is this a concern you have based on a past experience that the team lacks the context on? Or is it just something you disagree with and had a gut reaction to based on choices that may feel arbitrary to you based on your own lack of context? There is definitely a point where too much feedback is a bad thing and can be distracting, overwhelming and sometimes for a designer on a project, stupefying. This can be avoided though! Because anyone on a product development team has as much power as a designer to analyze and think about the trade offs and compromises for decisions that were made that have led to what you think is currently a problem. The designer isnt the only one that should be thinking about these issues and drawing their own conclusions based on intuition. As always if you feel really unsure about a design or product decision that was made straight up just come over and have a chat, having heated discussions over design decisions is not always a bad thing as it always has the potential to either strengthen or refine current ideas. In conclusion heres a funny clip from Step Brothers that my friend Brandon showed me in which Will Farrell sums up pretty well my feelings on this subject.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:02:12 +0000
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