How do you handle feedback and criticism on your content design work?

When non-content people criticize content design work, it's often not because the work is bad, it's because they had a different picture in their head beforehand and your design doesn't match it. Figure out what that picture is and why yours is better if you want to win.

Feedback is always important if you want to reach a higher level in your field. No matter how many people criticize your content design work or ideas, listen to them, analyze, and apply the strategies needed to perfect your content.

Even though you’ve the final word on the final content, it’s very important considering feedbacks. Inviting other people to collaborate means giving them a little bit of response on your final work. And your work can be a lot more meaningful when you have more perspectives than only yours. Working with UX isn’t a solitary task (thankfully).

Why do you need feedback? Simple—to get a view, an opinion, a perspective, or a suggestion. What does it do? It helps you create better content that enhances user experience, helps you understand scenarios you might not have considered, and encourages you to think outside the box. As a content designer, I take all the feedback that comes my way. Afterward, I evaluate and categorize it into different buckets. For me, having that discussion with my team is super important and one of the main reasons I present my work in most of our content critiques.

Failing early means having more time to adjusting things and making right and better. That’s why it’s so important seeking feedback early and often.

Seek feedback when you have your first draft ready. By then, you will have your research, strategy, and everything in place to help others understand your thought process before they provide feedback. Never wait until the end of your content creation cycle to ask for feedback. While seeking feedback early is important, I’m not convinced about taking feedback too often. One comprehensive feedback session that includes your stakeholders and close team should be sufficient.

Receiving a feedback requires maturity. Know that the critics aren’t about you or your job, you’re all together in the task of building the best user experience. It’s a growth opportunity.

It is very important to be open and receptive to feedback because you are not creating content for yourself but for an audience. Different opinions, feedback, and suggestions only help you do better. At some point, while creating content, we can become biased and lean towards certain ideas. Feedback helps you counteract that bias and provides a more holistic view of what could be improved. The key is to receive all feedback, then go back to the drawing board, evaluate it, and incorporate what you think adds the most value and can take your content from 0 to 1.

It’s also about learning and sharing, and sharing and learning. The more you share and engage in meaningful conversations and discussions, the more you will grow as a content designer. Personally, my learning has not come from books or courses; most of what I have learned is from the people around me. So, I make it a point to be a part of all meetings, put forth my opinions when I have them, or just be a fly on the wall when needed. Giving feedback is as important as receiving it. When you provide feedback, be constructive, specific, and respectful. Focus on the content, not the person.

The idea of getting into a feedback cycle is to learn, explore, and create something better. Sometimes there are missing pieces that might not be visible to you but could be easily pointed out by someone else. That’s how it works. Criticism can be hard to take, and the first instinct after receiving it is often to push back or debate. But sometimes, it’s okay to absorb the criticism, go back, work on it, and come back with something better. Or, if you feel you were right, come back with data supporting your hypothesis. The goal is to use feedback and criticism to enhance your content design work continually.

You can give a direction on what and how you need the feedbacks to be. For example: when presenting a work, you can say that it’s a work in progress, which copies you need people to analyze, if they can give some tips about the whole flow or just a part, etc.

Hardly anyone involved in the approval process for a piece of content will know you well enough personally for any of their feedback or criticism to be related to your personally. So don't take it that way. It's not about you and it's vanity when you think that it is.