Learning to give and receive feedback is one of the skills that will make you and your team better and is an important part of communication. Effective communication is crucial, no matter the size of the team. The list of the distinctions between 'criticism' and 'criticism' in this article is particularly valuable.<p>Criticism passes judgement — Critique poses questions;
Criticism finds fault — Critique uncovers opportunity;
Criticism is personal — Critique is objective;
Criticism is vague — Critique is concrete;
Criticism tears down — Critique builds up;
Criticism is ego-centric — Critique is altruistic;
Criticism is adversarial — Critique is cooperative;
Criticism belittles the designer — Critique improves the design
It's vital to learn to see past emotion when receiving statements from critics.<p>I have heard lots of comments about my projects over the years and I have noticed some patterns:<p>- Negative feedback is usually all you get. You have to motivate yourself by imagining that most people are pretty happy based on downloads/client-count/whatever.<p>- People aren't good at communicating when they're frustrated but they usually turn into nice people once you've fixed the problem. Most people just have a job to do and a deadline to meet. Pay attention to what they say is wrong, and not their mood.<p>- Strangely, people will spend great amounts of time writing comments on random web sites or review pages about issues that they will <i>never even E-mail you about</i>, no matter how easy you make it for them to contact you. Therefore, if you <i>really</i> want to get some realistic critiques of your work, you may have to scour the web for them. I look at it this way: real, honest feedback is <i>rare</i> and <i>vital</i> to really understand what you may have overlooked. Even if you can't possibly contact the Random Web Commenter, find and fix their issues and you'll end up with a better product.
I don't think this is useful for startups in general. It sounds like it's good for gigantocorps like IBM and Facebook (and yes, I'm lumping them together, as they have more in common than they differ). For a lean startup, I don't think you're going to have the depth in your staff nor the time to put into these sorts of activities. It's all-hands-on-deck, and we don't have time to slow down and hand-hold each other through their own work. I'd be hiring people I trust to get their work done without me needing to tell them they are or are not doing a good job.<p>I mean, at a particularly early stage startup, establishing the "three roles" could be <i>the entire company</i>. In such a scenario, how do we not already know each other's intimate business?
Speaking of design critique, are young people able to read articles with hilarious animated gifs in them? Because I literally cannot; a pity because the first section seemed promising.