Asking for Feedback

In this guide, we’ll outline how you should approach giving and receiving feedback. This should help you receive better feedback and get more meaningful interactions when you do so.

First, you should know exactly what you need feedback on before you post. If you give vague questions, you’ll get vague answers.

For example, suppose you posted in ⁠gd-chat and said “I want to make a modern block”. How much detail will your block have? What colors are you going to use? Have you tried to make anything? There’s a lot of guesswork for everyone else, and you won’t get many helpful responses. If you were more specific and said “I want to make a simple block which looks like a bookshelf”, then you’d get more relevant feedback that would help you more.

Here are some sample questions you could use to describe your work. The more specific you can be, the better.

• What are you trying to make or learn?

• Is your work a practice piece or something serious?

• What inspired you to make this?

• Do you like or dislike specific things about your work?

It can be really irritating to give someone feedback and receive a rude response or a list of excuses for everything you pointed out. With this in mind, be polite when you receive feedback. 

Try not to be defensive when someone points out issues in your work. If you see it as absolutely necessary, politely explain your intentions further.

Note that you don’t have to accept all the feedback you’re given. Sometimes you’ll get a suggestion that just doesn’t align with what you want, and it’s alright to let the other person know that. However, you should be polite when stating that; otherwise, nobody will want to give you feedback.

Finally, let’s move to the step of using the feedback you receive. The steps below provide an outline for how to best use feedback. 

1. Make a list of suggestions and issues you’ve been given.

2. Evaluate how each suggestion or issue would change your work. 

3. Choose the changes you want to make, and change your work accordingly. 

Remember that feedback is a process of improving your work. If you’ve made changes to your work and would like more feedback, contact the people whom you spoke to before and get their thoughts! You’re only going to improve as a result. 

Ultimately, feedback should give you a lot of ideas and suggestions for what to add or improve in your work. Ideas are the first step of our creative process, meaning you’re back at the start. You get a bunch of ideas that you can use to make a plan, execute it, and get opinions accordingly. In this way, the creating process is a loop that gets easier once you start it.