In this course you will be providing supportive, constructive feedback to help your fellow students improve their communication design skills. Providing helpful feedback is an important skill and one that you will use throughout your career.

Tips

  • Read and reread the project guidelines before commenting.
  • When you critique another designer’s work, your job is to understand the designer’s goals and provide feedback to help them to achieve those goals.
  • Based on the project guidelines, think about what the work is communicating vs what the work should be communicating.
  • Using design vocabulary, explain what is successful (positive feedback) and what is unsuccessful (constructive feedback) about the work presented.
  • Comments such as “I like it.” or “Needs improvement” are not helpful unless they are expanded to clarify WHY you like it or WHAT needs improvement.

Comment Template

  1. Start with a greeting. “Hello…”
  2. Restate the design goal. “The goal of this project is to…” or “The project guidelines indicate…”
  3. Positive Feedback. Based on the project guidelines, explain what is successful about the work presented. ie: Which parts of the project were completed effectively.
  4. Constructive Feedback. Based on the project guidelines, explain what is unsuccessful. ie: Which parts of the project are missing or need improvement.
  5. Add Value.
    • Offer suggestions. ie: How could the work be improved to meet the project goals.
    • Ask a question. ie: Was there something that you didn’t fully understand?
    • Provide a helpful resource. ie: Include a relevant link or image that might provide inspiration or reinforce your suggestions.

Adding a Written Comment

Regularly provide written feedback on your peers’ blog posts on the course site. In fact, part of each project grade is based on the feedback that you provide to others.

  1. Make sure you are logged into OpenLab and click on the comment link found below or above a blog post. Sometimes it’s called “Comment”, “Reply”, or similar. For more information, visit OpenLab Help> Commenting on a Site
  2. Your comment should be constructive and clear. Follow the tips mentioned above when writing a comment.
  3. Include links to resources, images or other resources to support your ideas.
  4. NOTE: It make a take some time for your comment to appear, especially if the post author needs to approve it first.

Approving Comments

  1. When someone comments on your post, you may need to approve it before it is visible to others.
  2. OpenLab will notify you via email when someone comments on your post. You can simply click on the link to approve the comment in your Dashboard.