Giving feedback to creatives

Giving feedback is a skill.  Anybody can give feedback, but it takes practice and a thoughtful approach to give feedback that will help creatives take their work to the next level.  I recently had the opportunity to work with IDEO and noticed that they effectively have feedback skills built into their core culture. It made me think about what I’ve learnt about giving and receiving creative feedback over the years.

The first rule of thumb is to not make it personal.  Don’t say ‘I want’, and don’t focus on the negative.  Talking about the design in those terms is guaranteed to create ill-will and resentment, if not a blow-up argument.  Is this about creating great work or just pleasing your whims?  Instead talk about constructive, positive changes and the reasons (from research, the project objectives, etc.) they will move the work forward.

Don’t suggest full solutions.  Figure out what’s missing or what problem exists, and give that to the creative to come up with a solution.  It’s OK to suggest some approaches but don’t say ‘you have to do this’ as (a) nobody likes being given diktats, particularly creatives, and (b) they may actually have a better idea than you, particularly if they’re subject matter experts.

Be respectful.  Ideally you have already fostered an atmosphere of trust and respect on your team. If you haven’t you should start working on it now, as giving and receiving feedback happens far more effectively when the people feel trusted to improve on existing solutions, respected in their abilities to do so, and appreciated for the work they put in.

Receiving feedback is also a skill, which is more about fortitude and discipline: criticism of work you’ve done is nearly always a little painful – and you have to develop a thick skin.  It also pays to put aside your ego and not be defensive of decisions and ideas you’ve provided.  As much as it feels in the moment, it’s really not about you and whether you got it right, it’s about the work being the best it can be.  Developing a thick skin and putting away your ego are very tough things to do and even the best creatives aspire to these things rather than achieving them 100% of the time.

 

Filed under: creative delivery, method , constructive, creatives, criticism, design, feedback, IDEO, positive, respect, skills

Finding the formula

I’m fascinated by the lifecycle of TV shows and what makes one survive over another. Ultimately it comes down to the advertising value and the ROI for the series, but it strikes me that the shows that live on tend to be the ones that hit on a good formula.  Get the right formula and the audiences keep showing up for more.

A show like Bones, which isn’t particularly innovative or fresh, has apparently struck a good formula of detective stories and quirky drama.  Most importantly, they have a good grip on what works about the show and keep delivering on the successful formula.  Contrast that with Heroes, which brought something fresh and new, but they don’t seem to know what exactly their winning formula was.

There’s a parallel with successful companies – dig back in the history of a lot of companies and you’ll find the story of a few people who hit on a good formula then built a business by repeating it and scaling it up.  Do you know the formula of your own company?  Does the company know it’s formula?  If you just had a great success, do you actually know what the formula to repeat it will be?

Filed under: method, user-centred , audience, bones, branding, companies, formula, heroes, simplify, strategy, success

Anyone can make a compelling promotion

I’ve settled on a simple formula for crafting a promotional message.   The approach is to engage the target audience on a basic emotional level plus a rational intentional level, then have a single obvious next step for them to take.  Granted, some promotions may be simpler or more complex, but for the vast majority fit this formula.  The benefit is that it really gets to the core of what not only captures a person’s attention, but then causes them to follow through and respond to the ad.

The first and most impactful aspect of the promotion should be an immediate emotional hook.  The best way to craft this is to get inside the head of the person and understand what are the emotional buttons for this subject matter, and aim for one directly (I’m talking about doing a little ethnography here).  Chances are the people you talk to will not consciously be aware of these emotive buttons and you’ll need to look deeper than their surface explanations.  This is the part that makes the person really genuinely want to engage.  For example lets say the promotion is for a phone – here’s where you provide an image of style, status, dating or suchlike.  There’s no rational argument, it’s just a raw emotional “I need that” pull.

The moment after you’ve caught their attention, the person’s conscious thought processes will catch up and they’ll be looking for a sound reason to back up their initial instinctive response (an ‘albi’ in Clotaire Rapaille’s lingo).  Here’s where you need to present the offer, argument or statement that will carry the person on to take action.  For the phone, this is probably a price point or new feature that makes rational sense as a cause to engage further.  This needs to be as simple as possible – one idea, one statement, not a laundry list of stuff. Simpler gets you more memorable and understandable.

Finally, now that you have their attention and engagement, give them one thing to do next.  In marketing jargon this is the call to action. Phone this number, go to this website.  Again, something simple and memorable.  You really want them to do this one thing after all, right?

The hard part in all this is translating the insight about the emotional hot-buttons into a relevant, appropriate design.  You can’t beat having a talented creative involved who understands the nuances and how to address them with design concepts.  The rest is just a matter of discipline and not cramming in unnecessary junk!

Filed under: creative delivery, method, user-centred , ads, formula, marketing, promotions

Google’s choice of utility over beauty

Bruce Temkin, whose blog I follow fervently, just commented on the design approach taken by Google.  He felt conflicted after reading insights into Google’s method and raised the question of whether good design needs a soul.  It’s a great question. Here’s the comment I made:

There’s no question in my mind that Google does indeed take the soul out of their design. They’re so good at speed and utility that they can get away with it, but if it were an even choice between Google and another search that worked just as well, that had a more delightful design, there wouldn’t be any contest.
That said there’s always a tension between beautiful design and practical utility, and more often it’s better to achieve one really well than make something halfway between which is half as good. That Google chose to take the utilitarian approach meant they could focus on doing their thing without distraction, and clearly it worked out well. It’s a very rare company that can achieve both utility and gorgeous design.

My response is largely based on witnessing attempts (including my own) to achieve both utility and beauty that end in a disappointing compromise.  Apple is the company that does both utility and beauty – and proves it is possible to have both – but it’s very difficult to achieve what they do.  It’s no mistake that few other companies also achieve it.

Filed under: creative delivery, method, style, user interface, user-centred , apple, beauty, compromise, delight, design, google, method, soul, utilitarian, utility

When to Use High Fidelity Wireframes

When I say ‘high fidelity’ for a wireframe, I mean it looks almost the same as the actual interface you are going to publish.  It most likely means there’s no design document (like a Photoshop design) based on the wireframe, and the wireframe is all you need to give to the UI developer.  The wireframe is proportionally accurate in terms of layout, spacing, font size and colours are very close to the actual thing.  Creating such a thing is actually quite easy using modern vector design software (Visio, OmniGraffle, InDesign, etc.).  It should cut a whole design step out of your process and speed up your specification-to-build cycle. However, you should not take this approach unless certain conditions exist:

This is a great approach when the visual design has been nailed down already.  That means there’s a styleguide with design rules and patterns already established and fixed.  Essentially you are dealing with Lego blocks – you have an array of modular features and the wireframe is just to show how you want to stack them together for a particular page or screen.  The best way to know that the modular pieces will fit well together and lay out well on the page is to make them as realistic as possible, and hence the high fidelity approach.  

The scenario when you absolutely should not use this approach is when the design is in flux.  As I’ve stated before, wireframes should never dictate design (nor vice versa). It’s also not the right approach when you’re breaking out of existing capabilities of the user interface, because that’s basically creating new design. This is an important realization if you’ve been in evolution mode for a long time – try to spot early on that you’re not re-using existing features and switch to a concepting and design mode instead.  The high fidelity wireframe is 100% evolution not revolution, and trying to apply it when you need to innovate will end in poor results.

Filed under: creative delivery, information architecture, method, user interface , concepting, design, evolution, high fidelity, indesign, information architecture, lego, method, omnigraffle, revolution, visio, wireframes