If you’re a designer, receiving and giving design feedback is inevitable. I’ve always found it easy to interpret positive feedback.

Example 1:

Feedback: “That background you drew of a prancing unicorn pooping rainbows in fluffy clouds is awesome!”

Me: “Yay! I’m amazing!”

Another Example:

Feedback: “I really like the design treatment in the main navigation, it’s so creative!”

Me: “Yay! I’m amazing!”

But then, when it comes to the things that need to be revised or change, I find that negative feedback can be interpreted in all sorts of crazy ways.

Feedback: The body copy font should be larger.

I might interpret this as:

A. FU, my font size is perfect. SUPER SMALL FONT FOREVER!!!

B. Oh, the font size is a little too small but that’s personal preference. I’m going to leave it.

C. The person was on the fence about the font size and was just bringing it up. I will leave it at the current size.

D. In addition to making it larger, I’m going to take it one step further and bold, underline and italicize everything!

E. *CRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY* WHY DO THEY HATE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

To help with this, I was majorly inspired by Hyperbole and a Half’s super funny take on the pain scale and started to use *Doot doo dooooo!* the Bother Scale! Sometimes when receiving feedback, there might be a change or two that I disagree with. To get a better idea of how they are feeling, I will ask them to rate how much they are bothered by that particular issue on a scale of 1-10. If they say a 2-3, and I feel very strongly about keeping what I have, I might pass on their feedback. If it’s in the 6-10 range, I will consider it more. If I’m having a hard time deciding whether I should or shouldn’t make a change, I use a formula that takes into consideration the bother scale number, importance/role of the person giving me feedback, how much this will effect my employment status and of course, how I feel. But I guess your formula is will be different :)

So the next time I give you feedback and tell you it is a 10 on the bother scale. You better change it!!! :)

This is dedicated to my good designer buddy friend Erin. Thanks for understanding me when I give/ask for Bother Scale Numbers <3