Escape the feedback spiral

You're a noble designer roaming the land in search of ugliness to quell. You come across a hapless product manager, desperate to slay some pernicious product monster. Virtue dictates you must help them.

You pull out your shiny laptop and descend into the cave of terrors to unleash some design magic.

Lo and behold, you've created a design that will slay the monster! And magical it is. You're ready to leave the cave! But the product manager is still in distress. She says "this will totally work... but it needs more blue and the sales team doesn't love it".

Fair enough, you want to make people happy. That's why you got into this in the first place. With a sigh, you descend again with the honest belief that with enough effort and skill you will escape the cave of terrors.

You won't escape the cave of terrors

Design is a deeply taste driven pursuit. You will never create something that is universally liked by your team. And even if you do, the result may be something that is ultimately worse than what you started with. Playing whack a mole with feedback will cause you to lose your mind. I'm sure I don't need to say this to any of you.

The situation is made even worse when feedback is vague, grounded in bad taste, and backed up by managerial authority. So what can we do about this frighteningly common derangement?

We need to clarify decision rights, help people give us better feedback, and make people feel heard without abdicating our agency.

Clarify decision rights

Who needs to be convinced in order to ship this design? Who can simply be informed of the decisions we've made?

The worst teams I've been on have been run by committee. When everyone needs to get aligned to ship product you'll ship something bland at best and ship nothing at worst.

The best teams I've been on get feedback from a wide range of people, but leave decision rights in the hands of a very small group. Typically this group includes your engineering lead, design lead, and product manager. That's it.

And even within that group it's worth clarifying decision rights further. Outside of usability or feasibility concerns, after hearing everyone's feedback, you should ask for the freedom to make aesthetic decisions as you see fit.

The way I frame this is as follows:

If you're a bit of a people pleaser, your inclination may be to incorporate whatever feedback you get as is. Remember that your first obligation is to help the company succeed. That's what you're paid to do. Your (close) second obligation is to build relationships and treat your team with compassion.

Soliciting expertise doesn't always feel good. Sometimes it means your tattoo artist says 'no' or the doctor tells you to eat more veggies. So deliver your message with kindness and make sure people feel listened to. And whenever possible you should let things go. If your PM has an idea that is solid but yours is better, you should go with their idea so when it really counts you can cash in your chips and prevent disaster.

Of course, your design expertise does not make you right by default, nor does it give you the right to categorically exclude the input of others. Expertise is not a cudgel to shut down conversation. It's a lens through which you should parse and interpret wide-ranging input.

But what if people give you super vague, negative feedback that drives you insane?

Teach people to give better feedback

Now that you have clarified decision rights, you want to get the highest quality input possible to inform your design work.

To do that, you need to help others turn vague, negative feedback into something actionable, detailed, and goal-oriented.

Next week, we'll talk about how you can teach others to give you better, more actionable feedback.

A short corollary for entrepreneurs

If you're an early stage entrepreneur, you may not have a team of people giving you feedback on your product. You might mostly be getting feedback directly from customers.

This still applies to you. It's okay to say no to customers. In fact, the essence of product management is saying no to most things so you can say yes to the things that really count.

Let's say I go to a barber and part way through my haircut I feel that things aren't looking right. So I grab the clippers and try to fix things myself. After trimming my hair a bit, I notice it's looking even worse. So I make more changes. And a few more.

All I'll be left with is bitterness and recriminations.

You're like that barber. You're pursuing a vision based on your mental model of the domain and the gestalt of all your customer input. Always hear them out, but never let them grab the clippers.