Showing someone your design work too early can be an awkward experience. They tell you it is pretty. They tell you something isn’t quite right. What they are telling you is that you haven’t made a decision yet, and what they need to tell you is: What can you change? For a beginner, feedback only becomes helpful when it tells you that you can change something. The first step in getting feedback is not looking for more opinions. It is learning how to formulate questions. Since design improvement comes from making specific changes, we should seek feedback that helps us see where something may lack clarity or balance, where the emphasis might be wrong or where something isn’t working.
Show a single element of your design to another person. Ask just one or two specific questions about it. Is this headline strong enough? Do you think this layout is too busy? Is the color choice right for this project? Asking “what do you think?” about the entire design will generate a vague response. Asking “do you see the text block here?” will generate a useful answer. “What is the first thing you notice?” What feels the least readable? Does anything here feel like it has too much going on? You are steering people to see your hierarchy, to find a point of confusion, to notice the spacing of your design elements. These are some of the first skills you will need to develop. Once someone points out a specific problem, you know what to adjust.
Try to differentiate between people’s tastes and what is not working about the design. Someone might tell you they don’t like this particular color, style, or font. That may be their preference. Ask if what they see is not working as a communication tool. If multiple people say the block of text seems tight or you are not seeing what the purpose of the graphic is or the layout seems to have no beginning point, these are very clear points. If one person says they would like to see more playfulness and another would like to see more seriousness, what you might be looking at is a matter of preference. A mistake beginners make is thinking that they have to respond to every piece of feedback they get. The result ends up being something confusing and that loses the original point. What you want to look for are patterns and points that seem to get in the way.
To create a simple opportunity to get feedback, set aside at least 15 or 20 minutes for this. Look over the design yourself for a few minutes. What are your questions about it? Show the design to someone else. Ask just two questions about it. Allow a few moments after they give you an answer. Note where they indicate the problem is, rather than going in to redesign everything right away. Take the rest of the time to make one adjustment: increase the contrast? Add more space around an image? Reduce the number of competing elements in the center of the screen? A focused review will be more manageable for everyone than the prospect of having to respond to a full critique. It also teaches you to translate a response into an actual revision, rather than trying to do everything at once.
If you cannot get feedback from someone else, you can create a feedback system yourself. Wait a few hours or a day before looking at your project. Then review it again as if you didn’t create it. Squint at your design to see if one element dominates the others or if the pieces feel jumbled together. Decrease the screen resolution of your image to see if it still communicates the basic hierarchy at a glance. Look at your design without any text and see what is the first element your eyes move to. Read through the text out loud and note if it matches the pacing of the design. Consider printing the design out, or look at it on a different screen or device. Changing the context will reveal elements that you may not notice if you stare at it on the same screen for hours.
Feedback doesn’t have to be critical to be useful, and it doesn’t have to tell you everything in order to move the project forward. What matters is that you are able to notice something specific, revise it, and see if you like it better through new eyes. With practice, the questions you once got from others will become internalized for yourself. You’ll be checking your hierarchy before you ask someone to review it and making adjustments to the spacing on your own or noticing the contrast issues before showing the piece. That’s when feedback will cease to be a judgement call and will become an integral part of your work.