Article
How to give feedback your designer can use
Tell us what happened and why it matters, pin it to the frame, and leave the fixing to us.
Tomás Reis
Process
April 17, 2026
It’s Thursday, review day, and the shared Figma file has 46 new comments. Nine say some version of “not sure about this”, four contradict each other, and one is a single question mark on the logo.
None of that is the client’s fault. Nobody teaches people how to review design, and most reviewers are doing it between two other meetings with the file open on a laptop.
What a useful comment holds
The comments we can act on the same afternoon share four parts. They’re short, and they rarely suggest a fix:
Where. Pinned to the frame, not sent separately by email.
What happened. What you noticed, or what a customer actually did.
Why it matters. The goal or the person it gets in the way of.
How sure you are. A hunch, a test result or a hard rule.
The last part saves the most time. A hunch and a legal requirement can look identical in a comment, and we treat them very differently.
The same comment, rewritten
Most vague comments are a good observation with the useful half missing. Here are four we’ve heard this year, next to versions we could have worked from:
What we heard | What we could act on |
|---|---|
“Make it pop.” | “Phone buyers miss the price.” |
“Not sure about the blue.” | “Clashes with our partner’s blue.” |
“Can the logo be bigger?” | “Testers didn’t notice our name.” |
“It feels long.” | “Shoppers quit at step four.” |
The last row really happened. On Banca’s grocery site, that one line from their team told us more than a week of opinions, and the six-step checkout now fits on one screen.
How a review runs here
Every project has a weekly review in one shared file, with the same lead designer from the first call to launch. The rhythm is simple enough to keep for ten weeks.
Before the call
We post the new frames by Tuesday evening, with a note saying what we want judged this week: the layout, the words or the flow. If it’s the flow, colour comments can wait.
On the call
The lead designer walks through the work in about 30 minutes and records it, so anyone who missed it can watch at double speed. Developers and marketing are on the call from week one.
When you disagree with us
Say so in the file, in a sentence, and say why. We’d much rather argue about a reason in week three than find out about it in week nine.
After the call
The next day, comments get settled in three steps:
One person on your side gathers every comment in the file.
Your side settles contradictions before the next frames go up.
We answer each comment with done, changed or why not.
Bring one sentence to the next review
If you only change one habit, describe what happened instead of what to do about it. The fix is our job, and we’re faster at it when we know what went wrong.
“I’d take one comment saying a customer got lost over twenty saying they like it. Praise is lovely, but I can’t design from it.”
Helena Matos, Co-founder at Okapi
If you’re planning a project and want to see how our reviews look from the inside, tell us what you’re launching and we’ll walk you through a real one on the first call.
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