All right, Monica, what is your guilty pleasure snack? That one's harder. I've gotten really into Twizzlers again recently. I'm in a Twizzler Renaissance in my life.
I forgot they existed and now they came back. Do you use them as a straw for your caffeine-free diet coke? No, I don't go that far, but I do. I'm a big texture person, so I like the consistency of how to eat.
Welcome back to Stacking Girls' Nacks. I'm Steph Krenyola, and today we are talking about building a creative design strategy. I am here with Monica Beasting, lead designer at Refine Labs, and today we are talking about feedback editing and the revision process. Monica, I am very excited, especially for this, because I always want to learn how to give better feedback instead of saying, make it more, or can you make it better?
That's helpful. You're already leaps and bounds ahead of a lot of people for the consideration of actionable feedback. Perfect. Well, we're going to get everyone on the same page today.
So those of you who have hired an agency, you're working through revision, this is going to be really great tactical advice to help you format your feedback, so that you don't have to do 700 rounds of revisions. You have a little bit more clarity on how to work with designers to get the right fit in fewer revisions. So let's just start there. How should people approach feedback?
And what's the most helpful and effective way to reach the best collaborative final draft? So I think the most important part in giving feedback to remember is that you hired these people for a reason. They're experts in something that you might not be an expert in. And so to trust their expertise is a really important part of getting something great out of it.
If you're imposing maybe your own personal preferences, you're going to end up with a product that you could have maybe made yourself. So one big thing when I was in school for graphic design was that every decision we made had to have a purpose behind it. If at the drop of a hat the professor was like, why did you choose this? We had a reason.
And that's still true in everything I make. So sometimes I think being open to either pushing back on the client or if you're the client being open to some conversation, some live feedback, maybe it's your personal preference that you don't like a specific image. But if I can tell you I chose that element for one, two, and three, now how do you feel about it? We can still, it's an open dialogue if you still don't feel like that's the correct choice.
We can move from there. But sometimes being willing to accept that someone might have maybe thought it through more than your gut reaction. Yeah, knowing that there's a reason for everything. And I think shifting your perspective to get that purposeful design element or the purpose behind the design element is really helpful to see the bigger picture as a whole.
And when you're talking about having scroll stopping elements, you know what will, you're the expert in what will stop that scroll. So I think having trust in your designer is really important. If there's something that I don't like or if there's something that I just can't put my finger on, what's the best way to approach defining that mindset? So I am a big proponent of live feedback.
I think a lot gets lost in communication of messaging back and forth. So usually if there's anything related to an overhaul of an ad, I want to get on a call, something minor like change this word, I move that item. That can be done async. But I think in the larger picture, especially if you don't know what it is, exactly that's not resonating, we can work through solutions a lot more efficiently.
So I can kind of brainstorm during a call, well, would you like it more if the image showed this? What would you think of and propose solutions rather than taking a shot in the dark? And I didn't change the item that was bothering you. So I think it's a better use of everyone's time and creates a better product in the end to kind of talk through what issue someone might have with an ad.
Having that face to face meeting to really see things change in real time, because there might be some things that you move just a little bit and it unlocks a whole different picture. Right. Or sometimes it's as simple as changing a word and that someone was fixated on the word. And you're like, well, what if we make it less of a controversial word?
And that solves the whole problem for them. I will say on the client side, sometimes people do tend to get fixated on one item, rather than looking at the whole picture and saying a small revision could save this. And they might not even realize it. Right.
They might not know that that's what they're, they just might be like some things off. And once you pinpoint that. So in that process, if we're in a live feedback session, do you point out each element and get yes or no's on color, yes or no's online, yes or no's on image to find where that disagreement might live? Yeah, I think whatever their initial feedback might be definitely gives us a good jumping off point.
So I don't have to go into every design element kind of some of the language they're using sometimes indicates what they're feeling. Maybe it's a little too modern for them. And I can likely decipher that it's going to be something in the imagery. If it's too loud, that might be something color related.
If they're saying it's too crowded, that might just mean I need to scale down the type. And so those are kind of on the like call suggestions I might make. And always phrasing them as, do you think you would like it more if this were to change? Some people just don't have that mental picture in their head and that's okay too.
But at least if they're open to seeing those particular revisions, you can maybe work to make the ad better rather than throwing it away. I'm a huge supporter of never throw anything away. Like at worst, I'm putting it in my pocket for later. I think building on ads is what makes them better.
And in terms of client feedback too, I don't want to discount it all. Sometimes it's really helpful to make the ad communicate their product better, their idea better, or take my own personal preference out of it as well. I think the biggest bit for feedback is to take your own ego out of it. Because if someone has a complaint, it's not against you, it's against the image in the ad.
How many people do you suggest are involved in a round of feedback? I think it's really important to have at least one person that's filtering the feedback. I do think obviously the more cooks in the kitchen, the less gets done, again, back to that idea of what is a personal preference versus a constructive criticism. So when you tend to have more people, you get a lot more comments that kind of muddle the goal because it's just a personal preference.
And one person might like it and one person might not, but that's true in the feed as well. Everyone's personal preference is valid, but it's impossible to cater to every personal preference in the world. So having one person that you can kind of go to after and on a baseline say, I don't know that we need to pursue that change because we're getting conflicting thoughts even within our own feedback group and having someone that can say the final go ahead. I think running around in circles is where a lot of people get stuck.
Monica, this has been super helpful. Thank you so much for all of this information. Where can people find and follow some of your work? Definitely check out the vault redesign.
If you haven't, we're very proud of the work we've done to improve the user experience over there, including kind of expanding our own brand a bit. It's great to use ourselves to take what we say to harden experiment on ourselves as well. And if you are listening to this on Apple Podcast or Spotify, go and take a little peek at the episode art because that was a redesign led by Monica as well. So some really great stuff coming out.
Thank you so much for being here and chatting with us and we'll see you all next time.