[ This is an article I wrote for my design students, but is just as applicable to the professional world. ]

As part of any design related activity, you are expected to contribute and participate in design discussions by offering constructive feedback to your peers.  It is important to not only be able to design your own work, but contribute to others’ designs.  In the professional world, you will be expected to offer constructive feedback to your team members and clients. Learning to offer feedback, and to offer it (as well as receive it) in a constructive manner is an important skill to master and will ensure that your feedback will not be received a just junk.

Your goal with feedback is not to embarrass your peers by pointing out their flaws, but to give them ways to improve in a positive tone.  Remember that you are trying to help, not hurt. Therefore the way you communicate your message is important.  When communicating negative feedback, you must do so in a constructive fashion.

The main way to do this is to avoid coloring your feedback with emotion.  For example, instead of saying “Your work is terrible”, you should say “The readability of your site could be improved by using a larger font”. This provides a constructive solution, not just pointing out the problem.

The same goes for positive feedback.  Just saying “Your work is great” does not help anyone improve.  While it may feel good in the short term, we are all looking to learn and no one can learn if this is all the feedback you provide. Instead, explain WHY their work is great, such as “Your work is great because your site’s navigation makes it really easy to get around.”  Providing this type of feedback not only makes your peer feel good, but it provides them insight as to what they’ve done right so they can continue to do so in the future.

It is also important to be able to learn to accept feedback as well. And keep in mind that not all your peers (and usually your boss) will have read this article. Not all feedback you receive will be presented this nicely. In these cases, you should learn to strip away the emotion and just get at the constructive portion.  If a peer presents you with feedback that is too “emotional”, learn to ask them “Why” so you can get at the root of the problem.

Tips:

- Avoid emotions: Avoid coloring your feedback with your feelings. Don’t just rant, but explain why.
- Soften the blow: When presenting negative feedback, always include some positive feedback to help soften the blow. Don’t make things up or “sugar coat” things unnecessarily, but show your peer that you recognize the positive things they’ve done as well.
- Double Check: Re-read your feedback and before submitting, ask yourself how you would feel if you received this same feedback.

Questions?

Well, I’ve been playing with my iPhone for about a week now, and am impressed overall. Its great as a phone and simple PDA, but the rest of the “productivity” functionality is way behind the times. Most of the issues I’ve found result from the core functional design that cannot be changed (or can only by partially solved) by third party applications.

Granted, its a phone first, and computer second, but my last phone (Palm Treo 700p) seemed to do the job just fine. Despite the smaller screen and less glamour, I felt the Treo was more capable in two big areas (for me):

• Data Storage: Both the Treo, as well as all previous iPods, had the capability of being mounted as a hard drive over USB (and SD Reader). This saved me from having to carry an extra USB/Flash/Thumb Drive. While that’s only a few ounces, the bigger result here is that this problem trickles through all the iPhone applications. This means that (except as read-only) there are no email attachments, web downloads/uploads, and any third party app that would need access to documents (such as an eBook reader) must provide its own proprietary uploader (or web storage). Granted, there are a few third party apps that try to solve this by either mounting over WiFi (DataCase), Web (SugarSync, MiGhtyDocs), or a proprietary uploader (FileMagnet). My testing of all of these solutions shows them as very slow and fairly buggy. Enough to where I would not trust using these as the primary store for a few gigs of documents. Not to mention that they don’t solve the root problem here because the documents are only available in the restricted sandbox of that single application. While Apple has not commented on the reasons behind disabling this functionality, my gut tells me that resource priorities and security concerns have taken precedence over usability. Hopefully over time Apple can provide a solution.

• Office Suite: A sibling to the above problem is that the iPhone does not have an Office Suite. There is no mobile version of Office/iWork/etc. The iPhone does have the capability (and plenty of sandboxed Apps) to display these documents when found in web pages or the third party apps listed above, but cannot edit them. Granted, you would probably not do your main editing on the small screen, but I definitely used my Treo often for touch-up work while on the road. I’ve used the Treo to make last minute changes to Powerpoint presentations, my resume, or Word Doc proposals, etc. This deficiency is visible in both native iPhone Apps and Safari, neither of which support even basic rich text editing (I take lots of notes as RTF’s in TextEdit). Again, I’m guessing that the cost outweighs the benefits for Apple here, but for me this is a big thing.

These issues hit me pretty hard today because I’m off on a quick 1 day business trip this afternoon, and although I won’t need my laptop during my meetings, I’m forced to lug it around just to review a few PDF’s, DOC’s, CHM’s, as well as review and update my RTF notes. I can probably find a combination of various iPhone apps to handle my needs (if i convert my notes to plain text), but I don’t have the time and have come to expect Apple technology to “just work” and not require all these “band-aid” solutions. (And I shouldn’t have to buy yet another device or mini laptop to do this.)

I’ve been shopping for a new iPhone, and headed over to the AT&T site to check out my options. I was surprised at how many basic Usability mistakes I found in just a few minutes of surfing around. Obviously they’ve spent some money (or at least time) on design, as the graphics are nice, and they have some helpful features (such as inline filtering of phone listings by style/manufacturer/etc). And given that the iPhone is the only AT&T product (that I’m aware of) that is only sold in stores, I’m not surprised that the website may not have been designed to handle this case.

Poor Messaging

So, first I headed over to att.com to check out the deals. Because the initial page is intended for you to choose whether you want to shop for Wireless, Home, or other types of services, I was happy to see an ad for the iPhone listed somewhat prominently at the bottom of the page. So I clicked on the iPhone ad, and was taken to an informational page about the iPhone. After reading lots of good information, I clicked on the big “find yours today” button to try to buy one. I was confused because this took me to a “store finder”, rather than allowing me to buy online. Now I know you can’t buy one online, but there was no messaging regarding this on any of the pages I visited so far. So I decided I should switch to the “shop” section of the site to try to price the iPhone there.

In the “shop” section you’ve got the option to start shopping by either plan, phone, services, accessories, etc. Each of these options leads to a nice “wizard” style walkthrough of the remaining options related to your initial choice.

So I clicked on Phones to start with to see what the iPhone costs. A nice listing is provided, although it is very slow to load even when showing only 25 phones at a time. I appreciated the style/manufacturing filtering on the left side, however this was also slow to load and didn’t finish until all 25 phones were loaded. I headed over to the filter to find Apple, and was surprised that it was missing from the manufacturers list. Well, maybe the iPhone was considered rebranded as “AT&T” so I chose that, and still didn’t find any iPhone. At this point, i realized (or remembered) that iPhones weren’t sold online. I’d probably read this months ago, but I wasn’t really thinking about this since I’m a heavy internet shopper (and pricer) and usually expect to find everything I need online. And I’m sure there’s many people who didn’t keep up with iPhone news who could have benefited from some messaging here.

My suggestion for this case would be for AT&T to provide clear messaging stating that iPhones are only available in stores. (Just out of curiosity, I checked out Apple.com and as expected, Apple’s messaging was much cleaner, clearly stating that iPhones were only available in Apple/AT&T stores.) In addition, I would have still listed the product in the phone listings, with a link (and similar messaging) to the Store Finder. I would even include the price since many people like myself do shopping research online before heading into the store. In addition, I’d probably allow customers to choose the iPhone and continue through the wizard (with the proper messaging) up until checkout so they can price the related plans. Especially because the plans are tied to the phones (ie: you have to buy a specific iPhone data plan) and I wanted to price the hold package without having to drive to a store.

User Preferences and Passive Defaults

So at this point, I headed over to the plans section to try to price one out. I remembered by the end that iPhone has its own special data plans, but I didn’t remember at the time. So I clicked on “Plans”, chose “Individual Plans” and was asked for my zip code. I’m not 100% convinced that your zip code has any effect on the price, but I will give AT&T a bit of leeway on this one. The following page presented me with a list of plans, and a prominent box near the top for the “Coverage Viewer” to see the map of coverage near you. Surprisingly, this box asked for my zip code again! Didn’t I just enter it? Couldn’t they just give me a link to the Coverage Map for the zip code I just entered? That would clearly be the obvious default choice, and if the customer wanted to look at another zip code you could give them a “Choose another location” option. Granted, I was here to look at prices, but the prominent zip code box hit my eyes first.

Anyway, I shopped around a bit more, comparing family plans and individual plans, and after realizing I couldn’t get my iPhone or data plan pricing, I gave up. I’ve also got some issues with the “Shopping Cart” that constantly pops up in front of the site as you progress (which has some logic problems and confusing error messaging) but that’s a story for another article.

We ended up having to call in to AT&T to get our plans/phones upgraded, and this turned into a 4 hour ordeal with AT&T Customer Service after getting disconnected and having to restart the process many times. I guess we should’ve called from non AT&T phones!

Usability Lessons Learned

• Clear Error/Exception Messaging: When your users do something wrong, or when a component of your site works differently that the rest, make sure you provide clear messaging. This messaging should be in simple terms from the customer’s viewpoint (rather than a technical error message). Do some research with your users to determine what they expect, and if your business requirements can’t meet those expectations at least provide messaging explaining why.

• User Preferences and Passive Defaults: Remember any preference (such as their zip code) that your user provides, and don’t make them enter it more than once. Use this preference to determine “passive defaults” (such as automatically centering the Coverage Map on the previously entered zip code), and give the user to option to override any default you’ve chosen for them.