How to Take Design Feedback From Ignorant Clients

Some clients are amazing collaborators who’s feedback you value and respect. Unfortunately, as a graphic designer you’re also going to encounter a few clients who are arrogant assholes. You know the type right? They don’t value your skills – or profession – and they offer a constant stream of asinine, worst than useless design feedback that threatens to completely derail the project.

So how do you handle feedback from these utterly painful individuals? It might be tempting at times to completely lose your s**t and break a MacBook Pro over their head, but this will not do good things for your long term career prospects. All jokes aside, you’re a professional and they’re still paying you (hopefully) to get a job done. You need to find a way to work together effectively to achieve the goals and outcomes of the project.

In this article we’re going to take a look at some techniques you can use to handle design feedback in a professional and constructive way. For your entertainment / depression, we’ve also included a few prime examples of ridiculous things graphic designers hear from terrible clients.

How to take design feedback from ignorant clients

1. Stay calm and control your emotions

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t suffer fools gladly or you have a tendency to get angry or defensive, it’s critical to learn how to stay calm and in control when dealing with feedback from clients or coworkers.

Being seen as ‘difficult’ will do irreversible long term damage to your career. When you’re angry or frustrated you’re also unlikely to get any constructive feedback from the client that you can use to actually deliver them a great design solution.

There are lots of online resources you can check out if you struggle to control your emotions when you’re under pressure from demanding or idiotic clients.

2. Weaponize data

One of the best ways to combat ridiculous design feedback is to fight it with the sweet, ice cold logic of data. If you can find research or examples around why their suggestion will negatively impact their project and cost them money (or users, brand reputation etc), anyone who isn’t a total psycho will see reason pretty quickly.

3. Ask a lot of detailed questions on every point of feedback

You should be doing this with all design feedback you receive, but pushing for more detail on useless feedback can actually be kind of fun. As soon as you (respectfully) ask a client to justify or explain the rationale behind their opinion they will often quickly regret they ever asked for the widget to have more ‘wow factor’.

4. Don’t use industry jargon or acronyms they won’t understand

Domain expertise in anything comes with a lot of jargon, acronyms and specific language. It’s sometimes easy to forget that people outside your industry don’t speak that language. Clients hate feeling stupid and are much more likely to get combative or defensive if they feel like they don’t understand what you’re saying half the time. Always explain exactly what you mean in simple, plain language (without sounding patronizing).

5. Prioritize the feedback (privately) into ‘relevant’ and ‘safe to ignore’

Arrogant clients love the sound of their own voice and to feel important. Even though you’ll agonize over every minor detail, some of the feedback you get will be just noise and totally safe to ignore. The client will have forgotten they ever said it by the time it leaves their mouth. Just be sure that you don’t ignore anything they’re actually serious about.

6. Keep the discussion focused on the problem the client is trying to solve and the outcomes they expect

When discussing design feedback with clients, always tie their suggestions back to the design brief and the problem being solved. How does this suggestion impact the solution and will it help or hinder it?

It’s also good to point out that you can push back (respectfully) if you think their suggestion is a really, really bad idea. Use data (point 2 above) if possible to support your case. They’re paying you for a solution and a certain amount of trust is implied.

7. Make the client feel needed by involving them in the solution

Making your client feel useful and involved in coming up with the solution is a great way to get them on side. Always make sure you thank them for their input and suggestions whether you plan to use them or not.

The ultimate skill is the ability to subtly steer clients in the direction you want them to go without them really being aware. This is a learned skill that takes practise and experience.

8. Get design feedback early and often

The earlier in the process you can get feedback – especially stupid or useless feedback – the less pain you’ll have to suffer down the road when you’ve invested a lot of time in the project.

9. Keep design review meetings as small as possible

Design review meetings can be fun for clients. They get to look at a lot of pretty things and everyone is interested in their opinions. This often means that all kinds of randoms with no skin in the game have a habit of turning up to watch the show. Do whatever you can to keep these distractions out of your review meetings. They add no value and will dilute the constructive feedback.

Using SMART criteria to assess constructive design feedback

It may seem obvious to tell the difference between good and bad feedback but sometimes the line can be murky. Applying a variation of the SMART criteria to feedback is a great way to test its validity.

Specific

‘I don’t like it’ is useless feedback. It’s not specific in any way which means there is no way to move towards finding a solution that the client does like.

Measurable

Data is a powerful weapon for decision making. Think about whether the feedback could be tested in some way to assess how constructive it is  (e.g. via A/B testing, research etc).

Actionable

Can you take immediate action on the feedback to improve the design in some way? If not then it’s probably not constructive feedback.

Reasonable

Constructive feedback will sound measured and reasonable. It focuses on the problem being solved and how it will influence the project goals.

Timely

It is not constructive for a client to ask for massive design changes the day before handover. If everyone has been doing their job properly this should never be an issue.

Conclusion

Even when it’s not constructive and delivered by an asshole client, feedback and criticism is great motivation work on your communication skills. Most of the techniques we’ve outlined for dealing with useless feedback involve using communication skills to resolve the issue.

Apart from technical expertise and talent, being an effective communicator is the single best asset you can have to be successful in the design industry.