Jelena Racković · · 3 min read · Teams & delivery
Strict but fair: how I give design feedback
People who have worked with me will probably tell you I am strict. I hope they will also tell you I am fair. Over fifteen years of reviewing work, from interns’ first layouts to senior designers’ complex systems, I have come to believe that good feedback needs both. Strictness without fairness hurts people. Fairness without strictness lets the work down.
Strict about the work
I don’t soften feedback until it means nothing. If a layout doesn’t work, I say so. If the hierarchy is muddled, the spacing inconsistent or the solution misses the problem, the designer deserves to hear it clearly, because vague feedback wastes their time and leaves them guessing. Saying it looks nice when it doesn’t is not kindness. It is postponing a harder conversation to a worse moment, usually in front of a client.
Being strict also means holding the line on the fundamentals. Alignment, rhythm, contrast and typography are not matters of taste. I learnt them as a graphic designer long before I touched an interface, and I still treat them as the floor that every piece of work has to stand on.
Fair to the person
Strict feedback is only useful if the person can take it in. So I am careful to separate the work from whoever made it. I talk about the screen, never about the designer. I acknowledge what is genuinely good, not as a sweetener before the criticism, but because people need to know what to keep doing. And I adjust the depth to the person: a junior needs more explanation and fewer points at once, while a senior can take a blunt list and run with it.
Specific enough to act on
The test of good feedback is simple: can the designer do something with it tomorrow morning? “This doesn’t feel right” is not feedback; it is a mood. “The primary action competes with three other elements of the same weight” is feedback. Whenever I can, I point to the exact place, explain why it fails and suggest a direction without dictating the solution. The designer should leave with a clear next step and room to find their own answer.
Tied to the problem, not to taste
The most important rule I follow is that feedback has to refer back to the problem we are solving. Not to what I would have done, not to my favourite style, but to the user, the goal and the constraints. If I can’t explain how a change makes the product better for the people using it, I keep my opinion to myself. This keeps reviews from becoming contests of taste, and it teaches designers to ask the same question of their own work long after the review is over.
Why it is worth the effort
Giving feedback this way takes more time than a quick thumbs up or a sharp comment in passing. It requires attention, preparation and a certain amount of patience. But it pays back many times over. Designers grow faster when they know exactly where they stand. Teams trust a lead whose standards are high and consistent. And the work that reaches the client is better, not because I corrected it, but because the people who made it understood why it needed to change.
Strict but fair is not a style I chose for effect. It is simply what I wished for when I was the one being reviewed.
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