Your gut really matters

Welcome

Welcome to better design feedback! This is a free course for designers, engineers, product people. We all know we should solicit feedback. But sometimes it can feel hard. This course came about as I was hanging out with a bunch of designers from Automattic [https://automattic.com/]. As we were talking throughout the week at a meetup, ways to solicit feedback kept coming up over and over again. I thought wouldn’t it be neat to come up with a comprehensive resource that I could share? The obvious disclaimer is that this is not all encompassing. But these are some of the things that I’ve picked up over the past 20 plus years as a product designer. I hope you enjoy this resource! If you do, please consider sharing it with others. And please let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your feedback and your thoughts. Thanks! Next – Be curious [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/be-curious/]

Be curious

If I had to boil this course down to a single phrase, it’s: Be curious. As the designer. You don’t just design pretty things. You’re like good scientist, always experimenting and searching for new ideas. You’re like a psychologist, understanding how people think, act, and feel. You’re like an Explorer discovering new ways to solve problems. You’re like an artist, creating beautiful and meaningful designs. And you’re like an engineer building things that work well and last a long time. In this course, I will encourage you to blend all of these roles. If you find yourself resisting something, I’d encourage you to take the time to take a closer look and figure out why. Is it fear of the unknown? Is it your ego or pride? I’ve found that an easy antidote to all of that is to simply let your curiosity guide you. Previous [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/welcome/] Next – Your gut really matters [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/your-gut-still-matters/]

Your gut really matters

Before we get into all of the many ways that you can solicit feedback. Let’s first talk about your gut. I’m a firm believer that your gut really matters. Probably more so than our industry likes to admit. But what is your gut? It’s a combination of the experience and insights you’ve picked up over the years, combined with intuition. If there was a spectrum with gut driven on one side and data-driven on the other and a line right down the middle, my guess is that the best designers tend to lean towards the gut driven side of things. But you can’t be 100% gut driven. The shorthand I often use for this is “gut driven, but data informed”. I’ve worked with many junior and senior designers over the years and I’ll share a common pattern that I’ve seen over and over. Junior designers by necessity tend to be very open to feedback. As the designer progresses in skill and experience, there’s often a phase where they assume they don’t need any feedback. They assume that as a designer, they’ll know what’s best and their gut is all they need. This is obviously a trap! Unfortunately, some designers get stuck in this state forever. Most designers eventually recognize that their ego and pride is getting in the way and eventually course-correct. There’s a symbiosis here. Without your gut, there would be no designs to solicit feedback. And without feedback, you’ll never consistently take designs from bad, to good, to great. Previous [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/welcome/] Next – Reduce time to clarity [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/reduce-time-to-clarity/]

Reduce time to clarity

Time to clarity is the time it takes to reach confidence that your design will work. We can think about this across a couple of different scenarios: 1. Scenario one, you never talked to any of your customers. 2. Scenario two. You ask customers for feedback after you launch a feature. 3. Scenario three, you have a beta test group that you test with prior to launch. 4. And then scenario four, where you’re seeking feedback from customers at every stage of the design process. So, which of these scenarios do you think will get you to clarity the fastest? It’s obviously the last one. Gathering feedback at every stage. Every new product that you make, every new feature that you ship starts out at clarity zero. And how do you reduce time to clarity? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about throughout the rest of this course. Previous [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/be-curious/] Next – Not just for designers [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/not-just-for-designers/]

Not just for designers

Everyone knows that they should spend time with customers. Sadly in many tech companies, this doesn’t actually happen. Some product companies have dedicated departments of people who communicate with customers. This has always felt like a shame to me. Some companies, relegate customer feedback to designers. This is equally a shame in my mind. Gathering feedback is not just the role for designers. Every role at a company can benefit from interacting with customers. You can ask them what’s working. Ask them what’s broken. You can watch them use the product and see where they’re getting stuck. If you’re a happiness engineer, if you’re a product manager or a project manager or a program manager. If you’re an engineer. You should all be regularly interfacing with customers. Done across multiple departments, it can create a compounding effect that has no downside… Other than needing to get over your aversion to talking to customers. 😉 [https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/1f609.png] This work can pay dividends. And it benefits everyone involved, and it will help your company continually dial in your product market fit. Previous [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/reduce-time-to-clarity/] Next – Multi-stage feedback [https://betterdesignfeedback.com/2024/03/23/multi-stage-feedback/]