Study Task - Dealing with Feedback

Dealing with feedback is an essential part of being a designer, and learning to evaluate the feedback you receive to learn what you need to develop and change. The two categories of feedback are informal and formal feedback. Some examples of informal feedback consist of:

• Crits
• General conversation
• Asking for opinions on social media

Informal feedback is useful because it gives you a quick idea of what other people think of your work. You can also get input from multiple people to address trends in the feedback you get very quickly. Simply asking your class what they think of your work can gather a lot of data.

Formal feedback on the other hand consists of:

• End of module feedback
• Written feedback
• Summative feedback

This feedback takes into account that your work is finished, and gives you feedback based on that idea. The feedback is in formal language and usually gives a more in-depth view at what you did well and what you could improve on. The feedback is not there to improve your current work as such, but improve your work you create in the future.

Below are some examples of work I have received summative feedback on, and how it was useful to me progressing as a designer.

I found this feedback very useful because it reinforced an opinion I held of myself that I could easily improve on and fix. I often thought that I did not research analytically and this was the case with my Design Principles module. I have since attempted to analyse all of my research this year, and I hope this will improve my design decisions in the future. I also was told that my design process was not clear within my brief which I would also agree with. I have had difficulties with tunnelling mentally on a single design as soon as I begin researching, and I now realise that coming up with multiple designs is the best way of incorporating the best elements of each design into a single piece of work instead of going with a narrow-minded approach like previously.

This feedback was also very helpful as I could see what my strengths were in the brief as well as what I should be trying to improve on. I believe my strengths lie in my ability to reflect on my experiences and what I have done well and what I should pay attention to in the way of improvement. However, I learnt from the feedback that I need to develop a higher level of awareness of the creative industry and become more aware of leading design studios in order to stay up-to-date with current trends and this will teach me what is currently successful in the way of advertising and etc.