Criticism is an integral part of the work of every UX/UI designer. Regardless of whether you are a beginner junior or an experienced senior, criticism will accompany you at every step. The key is to learn how to handle it and transform it into constructive feedback that will help you develop your skills and create better designs. In this article, we will look at how different designers can cope with criticism at various stages of their careers.

Criticism at the Beginning of Your Career - Junior UX/UI Designer

As a beginner designer, criticism may seem omnipresent. Everyone has their comments, and you may feel overwhelmed. Even clients, who often have their plans and visions, may be right. You might lack arguments, and their experience may outweigh yours.

How to Handle It:

• Practice: Don’t be afraid to talk to clients and ask why. Confront these insights by reading books and taking courses.
• Conversations with Other Designers: You can always benefit from consultations and ask various people, not limiting yourself to one perspective.
• Expand Your Toolkit: Even if you don’t have to, plan the next projects for your portfolio. Practice regularly.
• Consider Courses and Books: Think about which courses or books might help you better understand criticism and develop your skills. Consider consulting an experienced person if you feel you need support.

As you gain more experience, you start giving recommendations to clients based on research, audits, and competitive reviews. However, clients do not always agree with your proposals. The key here is to increase your distance from the project and understand that it is not your property.

How to Handle It:

• Documenting Decisions: Note who decided on specific changes and how it impacts the project.
• Additional Research: If the client questions your recommendations, do additional research to find a solution.
• User Observation: After implementing the project, observe how users handle it to draw conclusions for the future.

Take notes on decisions and observe how users handle the project. Document everything to have a solid basis for future actions.

Criticism at the Senior Level - Senior UX/UI Designer

As a senior, you often provide recommendations based on research and audits. Sometimes clients question your proposals, which can lead to frustration. However, it is important to understand that your role is to defend the user and simultaneously support the business.

How to Handle It:

• Understanding the Decision-Making Process: Learn the client's point of view and ask questions to better understand their perspective.
• Feedback from Users: The most valuable feedback comes from end-users. Learn how to conduct interviews and analyze data from tools like heatmaps or Google Analytics.
• Develop Soft Skills: Join Toastmasters or a similar club to learn how to speak and feel comfortable in difficult situations.

Sign up for courses that help you develop soft skills and learn to communicate better with the team and clients.

My Experiences

One client bluntly told me that my opinion didn’t matter and only the developers and testers' opinions counted because they created the concept from the beginning. There’s no proper reaction or response to this. It’s a shame that designers aren’t part of the team, aren’t involved, and don’t participate in many important meetings. They are often sidelined while developers, who have no clue about sales, market, and people who will pay for it, attend the meetings. You have no contact with the user. Your role is to create nice drawings. The result is that you deliver great mockups, but they won’t implement them, hiding behind a bunch of excuses. Later, they wonder why they can’t sell it but blame the designer.

Instead of getting frustrated by such or similar situations, ask about the decision-making process. Try to understand the client’s point of view, ask questions, present your version. Make sure you understand everything correctly. As a UX/UI designer, you stand in defense of the user, the one who pays, but you also cannot forget about the business. Complicated task? No. After many meetings, you will be able to combine everything into a whole. The end user, for me, is the person who uses the product in daily work. Therefore, neither the designer, programmer, nor tester. The feedback from them is the most valuable. Learn to conduct interviews to find out if someone is lying. There may also be a situation where people are unwilling to cooperate for any reason or dismiss you with only praise. Here, you can also track behavior through heatmaps, mouse tracking, or Google Analytics (it’s not true that they steal site data). Then you start designing user behavior. Here, no one will be able to accuse you of manipulating data because you can give access to various users.

Criticism can be painful, but it is an essential part of professional development. We learn all our lives, which means you will make mistakes more than once. It is important to draw conclusions from mistakes and not be afraid to make them.

Do you now, after showing you my approach to feedback, think differently about criticism and assessment? Do you think it will hurt more? Work with feedback, find out if the client is wrong or if it’s worth delving into the topic. We learn all our lives, which means you will make mistakes more than once. Don’t be afraid of it, because I often looked at the consequences of decision-makers’ wrong decisions. Did they lose their job because of it? No. They had to fix it. If you had to fire an employee for every mistake, they would have to change the entire staff every year. When you make a mistake, fix it, draw conclusions. If someone encounters this, it’s probably because they have been looking for a reason to fire them for a long time. Not necessarily because that person is incompetent.

Regularly take courses, read books to broaden your horizons. You will learn to differentiate the quality of knowledge. You will know what to choose as the next topic to learn. This will give you confidence. Discuss, ask questions. Develop soft skills. Join Toastmasters or a similar club to learn how to speak and feel comfortable in such situations. Then you will be better at talking with the team or negotiating with the client. Write a blog to build authority of knowledge. Write with sense. Don’t copy-paste what AI generates. Browse other designers' sites. All this will make you feel competent, and few will be able to question it. In the end, few will be able to hurt you because you will take most criticism in stride.

I hope my tips help you better handle criticism in your work as a UX/UI designer. Remember that we all go through it, and every experience, even the difficult ones, is a step towards becoming a better specialist.