“Thanks, I Hate it!”: Reframing Negative Feedback
“Thanks, I Hate it!”: Reframing Negative Feedback
September 5, 2024 by Taylor Studios
The nightmare: you’re standing in front of a room full of people, presenting something you’ve worked hard on. Maybe it’s art, or a report, or even a performance. Everyone’s response? “I hate it!” You run away, hurt and upset, making the decision then and there to never do art/writing/acting again.
Maybe you’ve lived this situation, or maybe it haunts you in the occasional anxiety dream. Either way, it’s time to flip it on its head. Instead of running away or waking in a cold sweat, I want to suggest an alternate ending. When everyone says “I hate it,” know you’ve done your job well and say “thank you.”
The key reason for presenting anything to a group is to get feedback. Unless you’re a professional giving a concert, acting in a play, or opening a gallery, showing your work to people is a step in the growth process. No artistic pursuit is honed in a vacuum; without outside input and inspiration, art is a stagnant, uninspired thing. Why, then, is it so hurtful to be told something you’ve created isn’t the work of genius you thought it was?
So, how can you take these feelings and transmute them into a place of gratitude? By remembering that “I hate it” is much, much more useful than most other feedback you can receive. Hate is as strong as love but comes equipped with action items. When someone is asked to explain the reason for their hate, the answer is rarely, if ever, “I don’t know.” Love can be a generalized feeling but luckily, hate is always directed.
“I hate the color scheme, it’s so jarring!”
“I hate all the angles, they’re so sharp!”
“I hate how cluttered it looks, it makes me claustrophobic!”
As opposed to: “I love it, it’s so pretty!”
You take my point. Hate tells you how to fix it, love tells you nothing. As designers, we are driven by action items. Hate provides those.
I often say that all feedback is positive feedback, including negative feedback. The one caveat I feel obligated to mention at this point is that the only thing about this job that I hate is hearing the words “I like it/it’s fine.” If love is unhelpful and hate is useful, the overt apathy of like and fine are nails in the coffin of creativity. The inherent apathy of these lukewarm sentiments gives you nothing – no passion, no strong feelings, not even a sense of whether revision is necessary. Honestly, when someone tells me something is fine, I lose any drive to revise or improve it; if they can’t be bothered to have a strong feeling, I won’t spend my time making it into something I’m proud of. Give me hate over apathy any day.
When all is said and done, the point of feedback, especially from client to design team, is to improve the product. Feedback fuels revision and makes the end product something the team is proud of and the client is happy to have. While a client’s hate is never personal, the excitement they feel about a carefully revised, customized, and unique design is the best compliment I can receive. Stewarding a design from hate to joy can’t exist without direct, often hard to hear feedback. In turn, this feedback leads to growth, passion, and art.
So truly and honestly, when someone tells you they hate it, smile and tell them thanks.