6 Tactics To Give Feedback To Your Designers

Tips for Product Managers when giving feedback to designers.

1- Lead with praise when you get a new iteration

Design takes effort. Always acknowledge that first.

• Bad: "I didn't like the design. The navigation is fine but..."
• Better: "Thank you, Jim. I love how you managed the navigation here. Let's see how..."

2- Pose questions rather than judgments

Create a 2-way conversation, not a dictation channel.

• Bad: "Arvind, the carousel looks off to me. Please remove."
• Better: "Arvind, will users miss the carousel since it's so far down the page? Should we move that up or maybe think of another browse component?"

3- Use the right jargon

Know what terms like margin, contrast, typography, hierarchy, alignment, whitespace etc. mean (provided your designers know what they mean too, of course).

It'll make you relatable & will accelerate conversations.

• Bad: "The sub-headings are hard to read. Can you please improve it?"
• Better: "Can we increase the line spacing on this H2? I think it'll help in readability."

4- Be specific, when possible

Sure, there may be times where you want to just create more versions of a design to open options. However, if there are specific aspects you need to improve, articulate what's wrong.

• Bad: "This form layout isn't working with me. Can we iterate on this?"
• Better: "Thanks for the effort, Sara. I'm just thinking about the length of the form. Do we want to explore breaking this into sections or multiple pages?"

5- Share goals & context

Suggest changes by linking it to the goal you're trying to achieve. That allows designers to use their creativity to come up with ideas you might not be thinking about.

• OK: "Harris, please make video more prominent."
• Better: "Thanks Harris. Btw, data shows people who watch the video more, convert better. At the moment, people might scroll past and miss it. How can we ensure they won't miss it?"

6- Collaborate using a tool

It's so much easier to iterate on a design when working on a collaborative tool like Invision or Figma where the comments are adjacent to the visual element you're working on.

With email and Slack, you'd have to take screenshots to point out what you're talking about.

That slows down your feedback cycle and is harder to consolidate for the designer as the comments don't live on their canvas rather they're spread across the email/Slack ocean.