How To Give Better Design Feedback As A Product Manager

A huge yet often overlooked part of building products is giving design feedback. It may seem trivial, but it’s actually crucial to the success of your products.

If you do it well, you can help your designer translate your vision into reality and allow them to do their best work.

But if you do it poorly, the team can get stuck because the designer can’t understand what you, the PM, wants. Then at some point you build resentment towards each other because the work seems subpar and the feedback is vague.

To help you avoid that, here are some of the best tips that’s worked for me: 

1. Direct it to the work

We all heard about “Working from a place of trust” that’s totally right and I completely agree. But I find that to be vague too. 

So just to make it clearer, I’d say to direct all feedback to the work. 

Of course, you want to build rapport with the designer and establish trust. But that can still be broken if your feedback seems antagonistic. 

So when you’re giving feedback, make sure that all of it is directed to the work and not the person.

This can be a “it goes without saying” thing, but it also helps to preface things and say “all of the feedback that I’ll give is about the work and not you.”

Then proceed to talk about the work itself. 

If at some point you find that the lack of quality in the work is because of the designer themself, then always approach things from a place of care. 

Instead of saying “You’re not putting enough effort in the exploration!”, say “Is our timeline too short for you to explore more ideas?” 

Lastly, avoid using labels. Don’t call people names. That’s just rude and not constructive and actionable. 

Don’t use radical candor as an excuse to be rude. They’re not the same thing.

2. Give context

It’s hard for designers to understand feedback without proper context. So when you’re giving feedback, make sure that you are sharing that with them.

What problem are you trying to solve? What goal is the business trying to achieve? What kind of experience are you trying to serve?

Of course these are things that the designer should know, but once they dive into things, it’s easy to forget. So referencing goals and context with your feedback will help align their efforts.

3. Be clear and precise, but not prescriptive

“It’s just not it. I’ll know it when I see it.” “Make it pop” “It’s not user-friendly.”

These are memes in the design world for a reason. They’re vague and unworkable. And almost all designers have heard some version of these.

As a designer hearing this, you don’t really know what to do next. This kind of feedback doesn’t really tell them what to work on specifically.

If you don’t want to be that person, then be clear and precise. 

Be specific about what is not working about the design. You can even say how it feels to use the UI, that’s already good insight.

You’re being clearer if you start giving feedback like:

“The elements are too close to each other and it feels too busy and overwhelming”

“This interaction is not very intuitive for me. I had to think hard”

“I think this section needs to be more prominent because…”

It’s also very easy to focus on the negatives too when giving design feedback. But sharing what works for you and what you like is just as important.

It gives the designer a better idea of your vision. Plus, of course, they feel good about hitting the mark. 

So make sure not to skip on pointing out what works.

And lastly, it’s amazing if you understand basic design principles. It will help you translate your ideas into their language which just makes for easier and faster work. 

But please avoid being prescriptive. Nobody likes being micromanaged or to be told how to do their job. It also shows them that you don’t trust them.

Knowing design principles will help you understand how they work but don’t step on their toes.

4. Show rather than tell

Design is mostly visual and experiential. 

No matter how good a wordsmith you are, people will not create the same image as you in their heads when you describe things.

So when giving feedback, it’s best to show exactly what you’re talking about. If it’s a specific part of the flow, show it to them instead of just describing it.

If you’re sharing your ideas, find pegs or examples of solutions that are similar to what you’re thinking about. 

Showing rather than telling helps you communicate a lot faster and smoother.

5. Immediate Feedback

One of the most important things that I taught junior designers that work with me is the importance of immediate feedback.

I stress this to them because not only does it help us align better, work faster, and save resources. It also saves them from the pain of designing the wrong thing.

I personally hate spending 2 days on a high-fidelity prototype of an interaction, only to find out that the solution was wrong.

So to solve this problem, I tell designers that I work with to get feedback as early as possible. 

As a designer myself, I even try to get feedback from a high-level concept sketch stage. Feedback this early helps me eliminate design directions that totally miss the mark. Then I could just build on the things that are working and explore further from there. Until I reach the hi-fi stage. 

Design works as a series of elimination of possible decisions until you converge into the right set of decisions which makes your solution. 

The challenge for designers is to choose from an infinite number of possible decisions given different inputs. From users, stakeholders, and so on.

So if you can come in early and help them eliminate decisions that won’t work, then you’ve made it easier for them.

A word of warning though, some designers may not like this approach. But it comes down again to building trust with them so you can create this kind of approach to collaboration.

The relationship between the Product Manager and the Designer is key to building a successful product. And being able to communicate well with each other is the cornerstone to that relationship. 

Yes, a big part of a designer’s job is to translate other ideas into tangible products, but communication is a two-way street. As Product Managers, it’s also your job to make sure that others can understand you and see your vision, so they can build it.

Which one did you find the most interesting?

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