Unit 9 Overview: Offering and Receiving Design Feedback
Welcome to our unit on offering and receiving design feedback! In this unit, you will be providing feedback on the scenarios of other students. Figuring out the best way to give feedback can be difficult. Some people appreciate extensive feedback and are comfortable with comments that might sound harsh to others. Other people are more sensitive about their work and may become offended or take critiques personally. As the design process can be quite personal, it’s entirely understandable when designers react to feedback with sensitivity. Therefore, our goal when giving design feedback should be finding ways to frame our comments in such a way that the other person can best receive it.
One approach is to focus first on the positive aspects of the work, including what we enjoyed, found interesting, or learned from it. Such a framing can help the other person feel comfortable. Then, framing so-called negative critiques as areas for improvement is much more constructive. All of us have areas in which we can improve. If you are able to establish trust with the other person, then they are more likely to take your recommendations on board. Remember that the goal of feedback is not to judge the other person’s work as “good” or “bad,” but rather to help them make the work the best it can be.
From this perspective, learning how to receive feedback is also a skill. We may blow a comment out of proportion or read negativity between the lines that was not intended by the reviewer. If such reactions happen, we recommend stepping aside and not responding right away, returning to the comments when in a more calm and receptive state of mind. From the perspective of transformative learning, sometimes we realize in retrospect that the more difficult comments can be the ones that help us grow the most.
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Required materials:
- Bowman, Sarah Lynne, Elektra Diakolambrianou, Josephine Baird, Angie Bandhoesingh, and Josefin Westborg. 2024. “Chapter 5: Safety and Community Container Setting.” In Transformative Role-playing Game Design, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman, Elektra Diakolambrianou, and Simon Brind, 147-185. Transformative Play Research Series. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala University Press.