Tips for ✨me✨on new approaches i can try to foster open discourse amongst my students is also welcomed. The class is virtual and I feel like I’m struggling to create meaningful engagement
I’m trying to teach my students how to give meaningful and constructive design feedback that’s not just “I like it” What are some tips you’d share with them?
That’s my goal for the start of today’s class! At minimum I want to put a sheet together of ways they can frame their feedback and have them utilize it when reviewing work
If you’re looking at design ask yourself first what are the different dimensions you’re analyzing; like the why of the design, its goals, the audience and also the logical and visual details, the content (meaning text) etc. That’s what I would start advising students today
So almost breaking down the different directions you can analyze a design from to help them form their opinion? I love that!
Exactly, help them gain the tools and language to understand the different ways of how to view something. In my experience, breaking things down to the root intention will help students understand what is relevant and what isn't, beyond personal taste. I love this subject haha
I’d love to hear any other thoughts you have on the topic! This is my first time teaching and it’s an interesting challenge trying to break down everything I just intuitively understand and practice into more functional methods
I think working on a design critique method/framework could help a ton on this. Students usually associate 'critique' with something negative, so probably starting from there, letting them know that the rules are wide open can help create a good environment to kick this off
Here’s the structure for how I run design crits + template I hand out to participants to use (shamelessly lifted from a previous job)
I love the rules and instructions listed on the template too. Especially: - critique must pertain to a specific design principle the author has predefined - round robin style, 1 feedback item per person, then next person goes (🔁) - if someone mentioned a point, don’t repeat it
Actually I'll just share a real deck for a design crit I ran in the design phase of a specific initiative at Trustpilot (an independent platform for customer reviews). Only omission is a slide w/Very Secret Business Metrics files.jonas.so/design-crit-ex…
My pleasure! If you find an opportunity to try it out in a crit session, I’d be super happy to hear your thoughts
(non design) student here. Asking questions about the thing that they "like" might also prompt the person being asked to walk through their process, which can unlock more conversation/iteration. "hey this x detail is impressive, what were you inspired by?"
this way, students might are "rewarded" with praise and engagement for walking through their process and justifying design decisions which is, I assume, a good habit for young designers to start building.
I greatly appreciate the student-based perspective! I’m going to approach comments like this tonight while I work on pulling together some of the other items in this thread
when i used to TA, i’d share Netflix’s 4A framework for giving and receiving feedback for giving feedback: aim to assist and make it actionable for receiving feedback: first appreciate the critique, then choose what you wish to accept or discard
I think it is really important to leave a meeting with actionable next steps.I use the RBT method with my team. colorado.edu/researchinnova….
I would replace with "like" with "works." So instead of "I like it" you could prompt them to rephrase it as "It works because.."
Love this! Such a simple language shift to help self-prompt a deeper answer
When you need to provide feedback always remember that you are not just giving an opinion, but rather an important part of their future, which will help them progress. Offer advice in a motivating way, like, "You've done great work! Here's a tip to make it even better.
In our graphic design program, we spent weeks critiquing the the smallest differences between subtle variations. Like it would just be text on a page, trying to decide if 10pt/13pt looks better than 10pt/12.5pt.
It forced us to develop more nuance in how we view design rather than "i like it" or "i dont like it". The really helped us hone in on the craft of design rather than the end result. Always focus on the process.
There is always a reason. Why do they like it? How does their reason apply to the communication or business goal of the work they’re reviewing? They might like it and it maybe or may not be “good” for the problem.
I like to start it as a designer asking for help from the group. “What are you trying to achieve with this?” “How can we help make it better” Also found the flashtags I discovered in this article really useful for framing feedback: figma.com/blog/welcome-t…
I also like the tree metaphor. If there’s a tree of possible solutions, with each fork a decision, the group is trying to understand how the designer got to this branch, help them understand whether there’s other branches to look at, and if this is the path to the most fruit.