Dickson Fong

I don’t come from a traditional graphic design background. Neither do many other web professionals. 

Some consider this the profession’s greatest strength, believing that it draws talented people from multiple disciplines into a melting pot of user experience design. Meanwhile, others consider it the profession’s greatest weakness, believing that its accessibility makes it too easy for unskilled, untalented hacks to pass their work as professional-grade.

This discussion has been debated into the ground by numerous people before me, and I really have no interest in rehashing this topic myself. But let me say this: regardless of whether a person has a formal design education or not, he or she must be able to properly critique other people’s work, while also being receptive to having his or her own work critiqued. It’s an essential social tool that can be used to improve one’s skills, and, in the grand scheme of life, a tool of enlightenment.

‘That’ person

I think many of us have met these people before—they’re rude when being critical of others people work, and are simply immature and arrogant when being critiqued themselves. They probably just crossed their arms and huffed up in anger when you questioned their work, and instead of providing an intelligent response, they probably just said something stupid that reveals their insecurity as a professional. 

While this subject of poor critique skills has been discussed before, most people have suggested it’s really the fault of either a) the design education system or b) the lack of a formal design education.

I disagree. I think it’s about immaturity.

It’s not personal

Critiques aren’t personal—they’re not by nature, and the topic shouldn’t be personal to begin with. It’s about a particular piece of work. If someone disagrees with a design decision made on a particular project, it’s simply an objective/subjective opinion about the final product, not a judgement of personality. And even if it is, so what? Dust your shoulders off and move on.

School can’t make you mature. You make yourself mature.

In response to those who think proper critique skills come with a proper education, I suggest that it’s really not the job of the education system to do so. Let me clarify and elaborate.

Yes, schools should teach students how to properly critique projects. There are ways to approach a critique that aren’t apparent to the uninitiated.

But, no matter how much a school focuses on critique etiquette, there’s no way a school can teach a person how to deal with it. What can an instructor or peer really say? “Remember, don’t let critical comments about your work hurt your feelings.”

Please. A person is going to either let it hurt their feelings or not. It’s not a response that can be conditioned through the textbook educational system. It’s a response that’s adopted with maturity. Regardless of whether this maturity is reached at age 16 or 60, it doesn’t matter. Until it’s reached, the inability to accept constructive criticism is a personality flaw.

If a person can’t take critique of their work, they’re probably not receptive to critique elsewhere in life. It’s an understanding that only life itself can teach, of which school is only a very small part of.

End

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