This post is sponsored by BugHerd.
Whether you work in-house or for an agency, one of the most challenging aspects of our role as UX or UI designers is handling client feedback. Without careful management, you can find yourself caught in revision hell. This process of endless iteration doesn’t just cost time and money; it also undermines the client’s confidence in your ability to deliver.
We can avoid this scenario by carefully managing how we gather client feedback. I have largely achieved this by adopting a four-step process that I want to share with you in this post. These steps are:
- Prepare the ground.
- Ask the right questions.
- Collect the feedback in the right way.
- Resolve disagreements through testing.
Let’s explore each of these steps in turn.
1. Prepare the Ground for Client Feedback
The process of managing client feedback begins at the start of your project. By laying a solid foundation in how you work with your clients, you can avoid much of the conflict that arises when they provide feedback on your design.
Define the Clients Role
That is because a client does not necessarily understand their role when providing feedback. They do not know how to assess a design and so fallback on expressing their personal opinion. That can, in part, be avoided by briefing the client on how they can contribute to the design process.
For example, when a client provides feedback, they will often express a solution, rather than the underlying problem. In other words, they will say something like “can you change the blue to pink” rather than telling you that they are concerned that the blue does not appeal to their preteen audience.
It is, therefore, worth explaining to the client upfront that although they are welcome to recommend solutions, they should also express the underlying problem otherwise you are not able to offer alternative (and potentially better) solutions.
Define What the Client Should Focus On
Another aspect of the client’s role that is worth defining is their focus. When I first talk to my clients, I provide them with guidance as to what they should be considering throughout the project. I encourage them to think of themselves as the champion of the businesses objectives and the customer’s needs.
I do this to help them look beyond their personal opinions and instead focus on what matters most for the success of the project.
By having these conversations up front, it provides me with the opportunity to remind them of them later when they start suggesting solutions based on their personal opinions.
However, it is not just the role of the client who needs defining upfront; it is also what success looks like.
Defining Success
Let’s be honest; any design is subjective. What I find visually appealing is going to be different to you, and that is inevitably going to lead to disagreement.
To avoid this problem, before the client provides feedback, we need to clearly define how we are going to assess the performance of a design.
The obvious starting point for this is to have a set of business objectives you are hoping the design will help fulfil. However, this should be only the beginning.
First, those business objectives need to be prioritised. All too often, you will receive mixed messages from stakeholders in their feedback because they have different perspectives on priorities. By resolving this issue upfront, it can avoid a lot of revisions further down the line.
Second, those business objectives need to be then translated into measurable calls to action. Otherwise, any objectives set are nothing more than vague goals allowing for a lot of subjectivity into how they translate into the design.
By deciding what calls to action have to appear in the design upfront and their relative importance, it will save a lot of debate down the line.
However, we should not just be focusing on business objectives when defining success. We also need to consider the user.
I find it incredibly helpful to have a clearly defined prioritised list of different audiences before I begin designing. Insisting on prioritisation helps the client understand you cannot design for everybody equally. If you try to design for everybody, you will simply end up designing for nobody.
A prioritised list means you can design for primary audiences while ensuring that secondary audiences are not overlooked or alienated.
With a clear idea of what success looks like, we can turn our attention to the more subjective area of aesthetics.
Defining Your Aesthetic Direction
Before leaping into creating a design, it is important to establish the aesthetic feel that you are aiming for. Designers do this in a variety of ways including mood boards, style tiles and reviewing other websites. However, whatever approach you adopt, I would recommend creating a list of keywords that you want end users to think of when they see the design.
Establishing this at the start of the project will prove invaluable when client feedback suggests that the design aesthetic is wrong in some way. When the client makes vague statements like “it just doesn’t pop” or “it doesn’t wow me” you can refocus the conversation back on the brand keywords and even test against them if required to see if users do associate your design with those words. If they do, then you have proof that you have fulfilled the brief.
However, all the preparation in the world will not avoid presenting the design and having to ask for the client’s feedback. When that moment comes, asking for feedback in the right way will prove crucial.
2. Ask for the Right Kind of Client Feedback
The single biggest mistake when asking for client feedback is to ask them “what do you think?” Asking for feedback in that way is too vague and encourages clients to fall back on their personal opinions of a design.
If we want quality feedback that can actually help inform and improve our design, then we need to ask quality questions of the client. Questions that focus the client on the right things to consider when assessing your design.
For me at least, these are the questions I want the client’s opinion on:
- Do you feel that the design reflects the brand keywords we established at the start of the project? If not, what areas are of particular concern?
- Is the design in line with previous mood boards, wireframes and design assets we produced together? If not, please explain what you feel I have missed or changed?
- Based on your experience with your customers do you feel we have prioritised the needs of your primary audience while avoiding alienating secondary audiences? If not, what exactly are the areas of concern?
- Do you believe that the design gives adequate attention to primary calls to action through the use of positioning, colour, size and use of negative space? If not, which calls to action are underperforming and why?
Notice how each of these questions relates to the areas we covered at the start of the project. They are designed to keep the client focused on the agreed objectives and not get swayed by their personal preference.
Moreover, the questions are specific, forcing the client to articulate why they feel the design is failing in terms of tangible problems, rather than vague feelings.
I have found that by asking for feedback in this way, it can often lead to clients approving a design which they might not personally like. That is because when considering their answers, they realise it is the right solution, despite their personal tastes.
However, taking the pain out of client feedback is not just about asking the right questions; it is also about gathering that feedback in the right way.
3. Collect Client Feedback in the Right Way
Understandably many designers get frustrated and overwhelmed in dealing with client feedback. If a project has many stakeholders (which most seem to do), it can feel like a full-time job wading through all of the comments you get back.
As a result, many designers ask for a single point of contact who collates all feedback and sends them a definitive list of changes. However, in my opinion, this is a big mistake because it means you lose control and the opportunity to discuss the feedback.
Whether your client collates the feedback or a project manager does it for you, it means that you don’t see a lot of the discussions and debate that happen. That has two consequences.
First, it means you do not get a say in those discussions, and by the time you hear about the decision, it is set in stone because it took a lot of debate to come to that conclusion and nobody wants to repeat that. Second, you don’t understand why the changes are being requested, and so cannot make informed recommendations even if the client were willing to change.
I highly recommend allowing all stakeholders to feedback directly to you. Not only does it allow you to participate in the discussion, but it also puts you in control because you are the only person with all of the feedback, allowing you to pick and choose what feedback you decide to act upon.
Of course, managing all of that feedback can feel painful, as you sink under the weight of long email chains and phone calls with multiple stakeholders. Then the feedback you do get can often be vague and confusing. Fortunately, it really doesn’t need to be that challenging as long as you have the right tool for the job.
.gif)
One tool I recommend is BugHerd, who is sponsoring this post. With their tool, your clients and other stakeholders can feedback directly alongside the design with a point and click interface. Effectively it adds a transparent layer over a design or prototype where the client can add feedback. It also has the advantage of being a great bug tracking tool as well allowing you to create a task list of fixes to be made.
The advantage of using a tool like BugHerd is that it ensures stakeholders feel their feedback is being heard and considered. However, whatever mechanism you use for gathering client feedback, do not see the feedback you receive as set in stone. You do not need to implement all of the requests made of you. Instead, you should see them as a starting point for discussion.
4. How to Respond to Negative Feedback
It is easy to be threatened by client feedback, seeing it is a personal criticism and that it takes control away from us as designers. However, even if it is meant to do those things, we cannot allow ourselves to get combative over it.
Avoid arguing with clients and certainly do not dismiss or ignore their comments. Instead, discuss it. Ask questions and seek to understand the thinking behind the feedback.
If you still disagree, feel free to express your viewpoint but do so while acknowledging that you may be wrong and that they could be right. Suggest that neither of you can be sure and that the best way to know will be to test.
Testing is ultimately the best way of resolving any disagreement over client feedback and doesn’t need to be time-consuming or expensive.
If you build testing into your process, there really is no need to fear client feedback, especially if you are managing it effectively.
About BugHerd
BugHerd simplifies the collection and management of website feedback. BugHerd saves communication time between the team and stakeholders by capturing technical information when feedback is provided.
