Listen to others, listen to yourself: Combining feedback review and reflection to improve iterative design

Feedback from diverse audiences can contain ambiguity and contradictions, making it difficult to interpret and act on. To promote deeper interpretation of feedback, we tested the effects of combining a reflection activity and reviewing external feedback for an iterative design task. Designers (N=90) created a design and revised it after a) performing a reflection activity before reviewing feedback, b) performing the reflection after reviewing feedback, c) performing the reflection only, or d) reviewing the feedback only. We measured design quality, depth of revision, perceived effort, and confidence; and categorized the content produced from the reflections. We found that performing reflection after feedback review led to the largest increase in perceived quality for the revised designs, and performing reflection and feedback review regardless of the order resulted in the most extensive revision. Our results also showed that performing the reflection alone yielded outcomes that were similar to when only reviewing feedback, and either activity led to better outcomes than the control condition (no feedback or reflection). Designers stated that the reflection helped them recall their goals, question their choices, and prioritize revisions. We argue that designers should perform a lightweight, explicit reflection to enhance their iterative process, and discuss implications for feedback platforms.