Criticism- Ahh

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/

The above article got me thinking about feedback, criticism and and assessment in different fields. As a teacher, feedback is easy- you know you're not doing a good job because your students react to it. As a primary teacher, it's not hard to know a lesson isn't going well. Children let it all show- the body language is clear, the behavour is clear. And as a teacher, you can respond to it. Adults are harder- much more controlled in their reactions. You can't necessarily read an adult and gauge how they are reacting. They won't tell you the whole truth unless they want to. And adults can be embarassed about giving (much needed) negative feedback. In my experience, most adults will avoid giving criticism unless they can absolutely help it. Which makes it hard if we want to grow, learn and develop. The web is even worse for this. You develop a site, it goes live. You don't see your user, you don't exactly know how they're using the site, you don't know what they think of the content. Of course you can do some formal research, but we rely on informal feedback most in our daily lives. I run online training sometimes from my office. I hate it, because I have no idea how it's going because I can't see my audience or share their experience.
I'm really looking forward to taking this course because I want to learn, develop and grow as a designer. I don't enjoy getting negative feedback, but I'm looking forward to being a better designer. The article was a good reminder to me about how to take criticism, to put it all in perspective and also how to be a better judge of my own work. I plan to come back to these guidelines and read them again as I'm working so I've got some more objective tools from which I can judge my own work. It's very easy to focus on the look of the site and forget the usability and content. Particularly in a field where response is not so easy to gauge, it's good to have some tools and guidelines to try to work out whether something works or not.