The Challenges of Handling Feedback

Feedback helps you and your designs get better, but it's not always easy to hear. 0:00 There are three main challenges. 0:06 Handling your emotional response, navigating unfair feedback, 0:09 and preventing miscommunications. 0:14 Handling your emotional response to feedback can be the most difficult. 0:18 We can all remember a time when we were criticized and it didn't feel good. 0:22 As humans we crave approval because it confirms our sense of worthiness. 0:28 And we naturally fear rejection because criticism questions our safety and 0:33 worthiness. 0:38 Let me break down this emotional response. 0:38 Worth is the sense of self respect and confidence. 0:42 When feedback threatens our worth, we feel shame for emotions such as 0:45 negative self talk, self doubt, sadness, embarrassment, and hurt. 0:50 Safety is our perceived physical, social, or material security. 0:56 When feedback threatens our safety, 1:01 it's usually displayed as a secondary emotion, such as judgement, 1:04 blame, anger, violence, betrayal, withdrawal, or denial. 1:09 Those reactions are rooted in fear based emotions, such as anxiety and worry. 1:14 As well as sadness based emotions such as loss, disappointment, and discouragement. 1:19 Another common reaction is to emotionally disconnect from the situation. 1:25 This amounts to feeling numb or shocked. 1:31 It's important to know that for those with past trauma, criticism can trigger 1:34 memories of past abuse and the emotions can compound in intensity. 1:39 I'll be teaching you techniques to handle your emotional response to criticism 1:43 later in this workshop, but please be assured you are not your design. 1:49 And a criticism of your work is not a criticism of you. 1:54 Believe it or not, the more you practice receiving feedback the more of it you'll 1:57 want and the better you'll become as a designer. 2:01 The second challenge relates to the quality of the feedback. 2:04 Later on I'll speak about the spectrum of feedback, all the good and the bad. 2:08 Some of this is uncontrollable, 2:14 but if you can get ahead of the feedback you can prevent miscommunications. 2:16 When you present a design, there may be confusion around the context, 2:20 constraints, and goals. 2:25 People with different perspective, non-design backgrounds, or 2:27 new collaborators may not be aware of your process. 2:31 There may also be a lack of awareness regarding technical, time, 2:35 or resource constraints. 2:39 Providing those details up front allows everyone to get aligned. 2:41 The third challenge refers to their feedback direction. 2:47 As a UX designer, you're tasked with merging several ideas and 2:50 perspectives into a clear cohesive vision. 2:54 Distilling disparate comments and moving in a clear direction is difficult. 2:58 And you may feel like you're being sent in multiple directions. 3:02 How do you know what to do with the feedback you receive? 3:07 That covers the challenges. 3:10 In the next video I'll discuss the different types of feedback. 3:13