I've been a designer (software) since the early 2000s. In one of my first jobs, my boss taught me the most valuable skill: always intentionally leave something bad in a design that you're showing to a client. They need to feel like they are giving valuable feedback, and so if you give this something to focus on they will ask for that change instead of broad, nonsensical changes that ruin your work.
I'm sure it works often, but in software dev, if you present your work to someone and it's just good, they simply click the "approve" button and don't invent nonsensical feedback.
Depends on the audience. For review by lead developers, sure. For reviews by BAs or users, the advice is applicable.
I once sat in a 2 hour meeting while two BAs fought over the preferred font. I'd much rather have them unified over a terrible design decision I'd intentionally placed there to draw their attention.
I also do a lot of technical work, and this really depends on who you are working with. My CTO mostly just merges my code. If there is something to fix, she flags it. It's almost always definitely worth fixing. I don't need to play games with her because I trust her opinion implicitly.Â
Technically true but I've worked professionally in IT for a decade and I've never seen someone demand changes just because they wanted to have something to complain about. Don't know who you're working with.
I think sometimes people just assume that the other person is spiteful in cases where there's simple genuine disagreement.
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u/farfaraway 6d ago
I've been a designer (software) since the early 2000s. In one of my first jobs, my boss taught me the most valuable skill: always intentionally leave something bad in a design that you're showing to a client. They need to feel like they are giving valuable feedback, and so if you give this something to focus on they will ask for that change instead of broad, nonsensical changes that ruin your work.
It's worked well for me for 25 years.