Meta is also expanding ‘Why Am I Seeing This?’ feature in Instagram and Facebook Reels.

When you are done with playing the critic’s role, evolve to that of a coach

Disney+ Hotstar introduces pause ads for a seamless ad experience on Connected TV, leading the way in innovative advertising

None of us will ever be able to read all the articles and blog posts we had like to, and RSS feeds can be an incredible source of information overload. WebWorkerDaily highlights tools and tricks that can help make RSS more relevant.

We have waxed lyrical about Yahoo! Pipes before and how Pipes can create a master feed, fetching all your news feeds and filtering them, but the topic is well worth a revisit.

With a particular emphasis on making the flow of information more manageable and more relevant to you, GigaOms collaboration blog WebWorkerDaily singles out Yahoo! Pipes for its robust filtering by various criteria and PostRank, a service that gets the top posts (by engagement score) from a particular feed. You can use PostRank and Yahoo! Pipes together to find only the most popular posts from your favorite blogs and then filter them by your keywords.

IUf you are a hard-core Slack user, you might find yourself spending more time within the confines of that collaboration tool than any other. If that is the case, why not get your news there as well? Sound like something you might want or need? If so, it is a good thing Slack allows the addition of RSS feeds.

With this feature, you can always be up to date on your favorite topic-specific RSS feed from within your favorite Slack workspace. It is a one-two punch of efficiency. If that sounds like something you might want, let's see how it's done.

It was back in 1999 that RSS feeds originated as a way of getting an overview of new articles and blog posts. They are still around today and can still be useful if you want to tailor and streamline your reading content.

RSS feeds can be used to bundle news from any number of websites within a program, browser extension or app. The only requirement is that the pages must support the.rss or.xml file extensions.

The advantage of RSS feeds and readers is that not only are they often free of charge, they also reduce your data use, as only a section of the article is loaded, Neuhetzki says.

In addition, the user does not have to provide personal information such as an email address or register in order to use a feed.

When you want to subscribe to a podcast, it is usually as easy as clicking a link—often a link labeled Add to Apple Podcasts or to another popular podcast app, like Castro, Overcast, and Pocket Casts.

However, I increasingly find that a benefit of membership to editorial sites, many kinds of creators’ patronage campaigns, and subscription podcast networks includes a custom podcast feed tailored to you or only available to members. In order to prevent this feed from becoming widely distributed, it is sometimes made not quite as easy to add through a single click.

Get the Podcast URL
The plainest form of the URL, and the one that typically works reliably across all apps and services, starts with http:// or https:// and often ends with .rss. Custom feeds may instead end with a long code. For custom, paid, or membership feeds, the feed may be the only link or may be labeled as Subscribe via RSS.

Fiery Feeds is better prepared to meet the needs of that kind of user thanks to a pair of important additions: full-text search and saved searches. Throw in optimized iPad pointer support, plus a new native article rendering option, and the latest Fiery Feeds update is a compelling one.

RSS Feeds are a simple way to keep yourself updated of the latest articles from your favorite sites. Some prefer desktop programs like QuiteRSS, while others prefer a web-based service.

A good browser extension can offer the best of both worlds, that is what Drop Feeds does.

The extension supports RSS and Atom feeds. Once you have installed the extension, click on its button on the toolbar. Drop Feeds has a three-pane sidebar, and a reader pane taking up the rest of the space.

Today, we have several modes and tools for consuming news. Browsers such as Opera, Chrome, and Microsoft Edge offer news integration right on their respective home screens. News providers are reaching more readers via social channels, which can get overwhelming at times. If you are an RSS feeds lover, like many others on the GT team, there are a few worthy RSS Feed reader apps for iPhone. Feedly and Reeder 4, which was launched last year, are two of the best RSS readers on iOS.

The extension supports RSS and Atom feeds. Once you have installed the extension, click on its button on the toolbar. Drop Feeds has a three-pane sidebar, and a reader pane taking up the rest of the space.

It was back in 1999 that RSS feeds originated as a way of getting an overview of new articles and blog posts. They are still around today and can still be useful if you want to tailor and streamline your reading content.

RSS feeds can be used to bundle news from any number of websites within a program, browser extension or app. The only requirement is that the pages must support the.rss or.xml file extensions.

For example, if you just want to read headlines on the go, there are smartphone apps such as Feedly, Newsblur, Inoreader, and Feeder.

These applications have modernised the classic RSS service and offer, for example, the synchronisation of the RSS feed between smartphones, desktop computers and laptops.

The modern type of RSS feed reader also offers other advantages. Providers like Feedly also make suggestions about possible feeds based on keywords or interests, Neuhetzki says.

Smart RSS Reader is a feed reader extension for Firefox and Chrome.

Install the add-on and click its toolbar icon to open a new tab with the extension's RSS reader. It has three panes, each of which has a toolbar at the top. The left pane is the feeds pane and lists all RSS feeds that you are subscribed too. Selecting a feed displays the title of the articles published by the site in the center pane. It also displays the author's name and the date when the article went live.

Google Podcasts is finally getting a feature that’s already standard across most listening apps: private RSS feed support. The head of product for Google Podcasts, Zack Reneau-Wedeen, made the announcement on Twitter today and shouted out some networks that are especially reliant on private feeds, including Patreon, Slate, RedCircle, and Supercast.

To access the feature, tap over to the activity tab in the bottom right-hand corner and slide over to the Subscriptions tab, then tap the plus symbol.

It is reported today in Hong Kong that more RSS apps are disappearing from Apples App Store in China in a new crackdown on feed readers. Apple removed two additional apps that pull content from RSS feeds, allowing Chinese users to access articles that might normally be blocked by the countrys Great Firewall.

Fiery Feeds and Reeder both acknowledged on Twitter that their iOS apps had been removed in the country. They cited a 2017 tweet by Inoreader, another popular RSS service, which posted a letter from Apple saying its app was removed in China because it included content that is illegal in the country. Inoreader said the entire service was blocked in April this year.

Imagine how useful it would be if you could set up a Google Alert for a keyword but only be notified if that word or phrase were mentioned in a news story that had more than 50 shares on social media. And would you find it even more useful if you were notified not by email but within an RSS reader?

Consider a tool that could tell you when a news story mentioning a particular word had more than 500 Facebook likes or 100 Twitter shares.

New functionality in free tool Ping.it does just that. And it lets you to determine the number of shares, Facebook likes, Twitter mentions or comments a story has before it is flagged up.

RSS feeds are great for getting alerted to new articles on your favorite sites. But your personal time should not be taken up with reading work articles. Split your professional and personal subscriptions by adding work feeds to Microsoft Outlook instead.

Managing feeds in Outlook is super easy, although it can only be done in the desktop Outlook client.

Slack is a great communication app, but it can do much more than just hold a back-and-forth conversation between you and your colleagues. Here’s how to keep up with your favorite websites by adding RSS feeds to Slack.

Despite social media feeds and mobile apps, RSS feeds are still one of the easiest and simplest ways to consume the output of a website.

Like SMS and email, RSS feeds are robust, simple, and supported just about everywhere, which is why—like SMS and email—they are likely to be around for a very long time. So if you want to keep an eye on whats published by a website or blog, then RSS feeds are the best way to do it.

Slack allows you to connect as many RSS feeds to whatever channels you like as you want. The first thing you’ll need to do is install the free RSS app from the Slack directory.

Feedback, in whichever form it takes, and whatever it may be called, is one of the most effective soft skills that we have at our disposal to collaboratively get our designs to a better place while growing our own skills and perspectives.

Feedback is also one of the most underestimated tools, and often by assuming that we’re already good at it, we settle, forgetting that it’s a skill that can be trained, grown, and improved. Poor feedback can create confusion in projects, bring down morale, and affect trust and team collaboration over the long term. Quality feedback can be a transformative force. 

Practicing our skills is surely a good way to improve, but the learning gets even faster when it’s paired with a good foundation that channels and focuses the practice. What are some foundational aspects of giving good feedback? And how can feedback be adjusted for remote and distributed work environments? 

On the web, we can identify a long tradition of asynchronous feedback: from the early days of open source, code was shared and discussed on mailing lists. Today, developers engage on pull requests, designers comment in their favorite design tools, project managers and scrum masters exchange ideas on tickets, and so on.

Design critique is often the name used for a type of feedback that’s provided to make our work better, collaboratively. So it shares a lot of the principles with feedback in general, but it also has some differences.

The content

The foundation of every good critique is the feedback’s content, so that’s where we need to start. There are many models that you can use to shape your content. The one that I personally like best—because it’s clear and actionable—is this one from Lara Hogan.

While this equation is generally used to give feedback to people, it also fits really well in a design critique because it ultimately answers some of the core questions that we work on: What? Where? Why? How? Imagine that you’re giving some feedback about some design work that spans multiple screens, like an onboarding flow: there are some pages shown, a flow blueprint, and an outline of the decisions made. You spot something that could be improved. If you keep the three elements of the equation in mind, you’ll have a mental model that can help you be more precise and effective.

Here is a comment that could be given as a part of some feedback, and it might look reasonable at a first glance: it seems to superficially fulfill the elements in the equation. But does it?

Not sure about the buttons’ styles and hierarchy—it feels off. Can you change them?

Observation for design feedback doesn’t just mean pointing out which part of the interface your feedback refers to, but it also refers to offering a perspective that’s as specific as possible. Are you providing the user’s perspective? Your expert perspective? A business perspective? The project manager’s perspective? A first-time user’s perspective?

When I see these two buttons, I expect one to go forward and one to go back.

Impact is about the why. Just pointing out a UI element might sometimes be enough if the issue may be obvious, but more often than not, you should add an explanation of what you’re pointing out.

When I see these two buttons, I expect one to go forward and one to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow.

The question approach is meant to provide open guidance by eliciting the critical thinking in the designer receiving the feedback. Notably, in Lara’s equation she provides a second approach: request, which instead provides guidance toward a specific solution. While that’s a viable option for feedback in general, for design critiques, in my experience, defaulting to the question approach usually reaches the best solutions because designers are generally more comfortable in being given an open space to explore.

The difference between the two can be exemplified with, for the question approach:

When I see these two buttons, I expect one to go forward and one to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Would it make sense to unify them?

Or, for the request approach:

When I see these two buttons, I expect one to go forward and one to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same pair of forward and back buttons.

At this point in some situations, it might be useful to integrate with an extra why: why you consider the given suggestion to be better.

When I see these two buttons, I expect one to go forward and one to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.

Choosing the question approach or the request approach can also at times be a matter of personal preference. A while ago, I was putting a lot of effort into improving my feedback: I did rounds of anonymous feedback, and I reviewed feedback with other people. After a few rounds of this work and a year later, I got a positive response: my feedback came across as effective and grounded. Until I changed teams. To my shock, my next round of feedback from one specific person wasn’t that great. The reason is that I had previously tried not to be prescriptive in my advice—because the people who I was previously working with preferred the open-ended question format over the request style of suggestions. But now in this other team, there was one person who instead preferred specific guidance. So I adapted my feedback for them to include requests.

One comment that I heard come up a few times is that this kind of feedback is quite long, and it doesn’t seem very efficient. No… but also yes. Let’s explore both sides.

No, this style of feedback is actually efficient because the length here is a byproduct of clarity, and spending time giving this kind of feedback can provide exactly enough information for a good fix. Also if we zoom out, it can reduce future back-and-forth conversations and misunderstandings, improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of collaboration beyond the single comment. Imagine that in the example above the feedback were instead just, “Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons.” The designer receiving this feedback wouldn’t have much to go by, so they might just apply the change. In later iterations, the interface might change or they might introduce new features—and maybe that change might not make sense anymore. Without the why, the designer might imagine that the change is about consistency… but what if it wasn’t? So there could now be an underlying concern that changing the buttons would be perceived as a regression.

Yes, this style of feedback is not always efficient because the points in some comments don’t always need to be exhaustive, sometimes because certain changes may be obvious (“The font used doesn’t follow our guidelines”) and sometimes because the team may have a lot of internal knowledge such that some of the whys may be implied.

So the equation above isn’t meant to suggest a strict template for feedback but a mnemonic to reflect and improve the practice. Even after years of active work on my critiques, I still from time to time go back to this formula and reflect on whether what I just wrote is effective.

The tone

Well-grounded content is the foundation of feedback, but that’s not really enough. The soft skills of the person who’s providing the critique can multiply the likelihood that the feedback will be well received and understood. Tone alone can make the difference between content that’s rejected or welcomed, and it’s been demonstrated that only positive feedback creates sustained change in people.

Since our goal is to be understood and to have a positive working environment, tone is essential to work on. Over the years, I’ve tried to summarize the required soft skills in a formula that mirrors the one for content: the receptivity equation.

Respectful feedback comes across as grounded, solid, and constructive. It’s the kind of feedback that, whether it’s positive or negative, is perceived as useful and fair.

Timing refers to when the feedback happens. To-the-point feedback doesn’t have much hope of being well received if it’s given at the wrong time. Questioning the entire high-level information architecture of a new feature when it’s about to ship might still be relevant if that questioning highlights a major blocker that nobody saw, but it’s way more likely that those concerns will have to wait for a later rework. So in general, attune your feedback to the stage of the project. Early iteration? Late iteration? Polishing work in progress? These all have different needs. The right timing will make it more likely that your feedback will be well received.

Attitude is the equivalent of intent, and in the context of person-to-person feedback, it can be referred to as radical candor. That means checking before we write to see whether what we have in mind will truly help the person and make the project better overall. This might be a hard reflection at times because maybe we don’t want to admit that we don’t really appreciate that person. Hopefully that’s not the case, but that can happen, and that’s okay. Acknowledging and owning that can help you make up for that: how would I write if I really cared about them? How can I avoid being passive aggressive? How can I be more constructive?

Form is relevant especially in a diverse and cross-cultural work environments because having great content, perfect timing, and the right attitude might not come across if the way that we write creates misunderstandings. There might be many reasons for this: sometimes certain words might trigger specific reactions; sometimes nonnative speakers might not understand all the nuances of some sentences; sometimes our brains might just be different and we might perceive the world differently—neurodiversity must be taken into consideration. Whatever the reason, it’s important to review not just what we write but how.

A few years back, I was asking for some feedback on how I give feedback. I received some good advice but also a comment that surprised me. They pointed out that when I wrote “Oh, […],” I made them feel stupid. That wasn’t my intent! I felt really bad, and I just realized that I provided feedback to them for months, and every time I might have made them feel stupid. I was horrified… but also thankful. I made a quick fix: I added “oh” in my list of replaced words (your choice between: macOS’s text replacement, aText, TextExpander, or others) so that when I typed “oh,” it was instantly deleted. 

Something to highlight because it’s quite frequent—especially in teams that have a strong group spirit—is that people tend to beat around the bush. It’s important to remember here that a positive attitude doesn’t mean going light on the feedback—it just means that even when you provide hard, difficult, or challenging feedback, you do so in a way that’s respectful and constructive. The nicest thing that you can do for someone is to help them grow.

We have a great advantage in giving feedback in written form: it can be reviewed by another person who isn’t directly involved, which can help to reduce or remove any bias that might be there. I found that the best, most insightful moments for me have happened when I’ve shared a comment and I’ve asked someone who I highly trusted, “How does this sound?,” “How can I do it better,” and even “How would you have written it?”—and I’ve learned a lot by seeing the two versions side by side.

The format

Asynchronous feedback also has a major inherent advantage: we can take more time to refine what we’ve written to make sure that it fulfills two main goals: the clarity of communication and the actionability of the suggestions.

Let’s imagine that someone shared a design iteration for a project. You are reviewing it and leaving a comment. There are many ways to do this, and of course context matters, but let’s try to think about some elements that may be useful to consider.

In terms of clarity, start by grounding the critique that you’re about to give by providing context. Specifically, this means describing where you’re coming from: do you have a deep knowledge of the project, or is this the first time that you’re seeing it? Are you coming from a high-level perspective, or are you figuring out the details? Are there regressions? Which user’s perspective are you taking when providing your feedback? Is the design iteration at a point where it would be okay to ship this, or are there major things that need to be addressed first?

Providing context is helpful even if you’re sharing feedback within a team that already has some information on the project. And context is absolutely essential when giving cross-team feedback. If I were to review a design that might be indirectly related to my work, and if I had no knowledge about how the project arrived at that point, I would say so, highlighting my take as external.

We often focus on the negatives, trying to outline all the things that could be done better. That’s of course important, but it’s just as important—if not more—to focus on the positives, especially if you saw progress from the previous iteration. This might seem superfluous, but it’s important to keep in mind that design is a discipline where there are hundreds of possible solutions for every problem. So pointing out that the design solution that was chosen is good and explaining why it’s good has two major benefits: it confirms that the approach taken was solid, and it helps to ground your negative feedback. In the longer term, sharing positive feedback can help prevent regressions on things that are going well because those things will have been highlighted as important. As a bonus, positive feedback can also help reduce impostor syndrome.

There’s one powerful approach that combines both context and a focus on the positives: frame how the design is better than the status quo (compared to a previous iteration, competitors, or benchmarks) and why, and then on that foundation, you can add what could be improved. This is powerful because there’s a big difference between a critique that’s for a design that’s already in good shape and a critique that’s for a design that isn’t quite there yet.

Another way that you can improve your feedback is to depersonalize the feedback: the comments should always be about the work, never about the person who made it. It’s “This button isn’t well aligned” versus “You haven’t aligned this button well.” This is very easy to change in your writing by reviewing it just before sending.

In terms of actionability, one of the best approaches to help the designer who’s reading through your feedback is to split it into bullet points or paragraphs, which are easier to review and analyze one by one. For longer pieces of feedback, you might also consider splitting it into sections or even across multiple comments. Of course, adding screenshots or signifying markers of the specific part of the interface you’re referring to can also be especially useful.

One approach that I’ve personally used effectively in some contexts is to enhance the bullet points with four markers using emojis. So a red square ???? means that it’s something that I consider blocking; a yellow diamond ???? is something that I can be convinced otherwise, but it seems to me that it should be changed; and a green circle ???? is a detailed, positive confirmation. I also use a blue spiral ???? for either something that I’m not sure about, an exploration, an open alternative, or just a note. But I’d use this approach only on teams where I’ve already established a good level of trust because if it happens that I have to deliver a lot of red squares, the impact could be quite demoralizing, and I’d reframe how I’d communicate that a bit.

Let’s see how this would work by reusing the example that we used earlier as the first bullet point in this list:

• ???? Navigation—When I see these two buttons, I expect one to go forward and one to go back. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.
• ???? Overall—I think the page is solid, and this is good enough to be our release candidate for a version 1.0.
• ???? Metrics—Good improvement in the buttons on the metrics area; the improved contrast and new focus style make them more accessible.
•  ????  Button Style—Using the green accent in this context creates the impression that it’s a positive action because green is usually perceived as a confirmation color. Do we need to explore a different color?
• ????Tiles—Given the number of items on the page, and the overall page hierarchy, it seems to me that the tiles shouldn’t be using the Subtitle 1 style but the Subtitle 2 style. This will keep the visual hierarchy more consistent.
• ???? Background—Using a light texture works well, but I wonder whether it adds too much noise in this kind of page. What is the thinking in using that?

What about giving feedback directly in Figma or another design tool that allows in-place feedback? In general, I find these difficult to use because they hide discussions and they’re harder to track, but in the right context, they can be very effective. Just make sure that each of the comments is separate so that it’s easier to match each discussion to a single task, similar to the idea of splitting mentioned above.

One final note: say the obvious. Sometimes we might feel that something is obviously good or obviously wrong, and so we don’t say it. Or sometimes we might have a doubt that we don’t express because the question might sound stupid. Say it—that’s okay. You might have to reword it a little bit to make the reader feel more comfortable, but don’t hold it back. Good feedback is transparent, even when it may be obvious.

There’s another advantage of asynchronous feedback: written feedback automatically tracks decisions. Especially in large projects, “Why did we do this?” could be a question that pops up from time to time, and there’s nothing better than open, transparent discussions that can be reviewed at any time. For this reason, I recommend using software that saves these discussions, without hiding them once they are resolved. 

Content, tone, and format. Each one of these subjects provides a useful model, but working to improve eight areas—observation, impact, question, timing, attitude, form, clarity, and actionability—is a lot of work to put in all at once. One effective approach is to take them one by one: first identify the area that you lack the most (either from your perspective or from feedback from others) and start there. Then the second, then the third, and so on. At first you’ll have to put in extra time for every piece of feedback that you give, but after a while, it’ll become second nature, and your impact on the work will multiply.

Thanks to Brie Anne Demkiw and Mike Shelton for reviewing the first draft of this article.

“Any comment?” is probably one of the worst ways to ask for feedback. It’s vague and open ended, and it doesn’t provide any indication of what we’re looking for. Getting good feedback starts earlier than we might expect: it starts with the request. 

It might seem counterintuitive to start the process of receiving feedback with a question, but that makes sense if we realize that getting feedback can be thought of as a form of design research. In the same way that we wouldn’t do any research without the right questions to get the insights that we need, the best way to ask for feedback is also to craft sharp questions.

Design critique is not a one-shot process. Sure, any good feedback workflow continues until the project is finished, but this is particularly true for design because design work continues iteration after iteration, from a high level to the finest details. Each level needs its own set of questions.

And finally, as with any good research, we need to review what we got back, get to the core of its insights, and take action. Question, iteration, and review. Let’s look at each of those.

The question

Being open to feedback is essential, but we need to be precise about what we’re looking for. Just saying “Any comment?”, “What do you think?”, or “I’d love to get your opinion” at the end of a presentation—whether it’s in person, over video, or through a written post—is likely to get a number of varied opinions or, even worse, get everyone to follow the direction of the first person who speaks up. And then... we get frustrated because vague questions like those can turn a high-level flows review into people instead commenting on the borders of buttons. Which might be a hearty topic, so it might be hard at that point to redirect the team to the subject that you had wanted to focus on.

But how do we get into this situation? It’s a mix of factors. One is that we don’t usually consider asking as a part of the feedback process. Another is how natural it is to just leave the question implied, expecting the others to be on the same page. Another is that in nonprofessional discussions, there’s often no need to be that precise. In short, we tend to underestimate the importance of the questions, so we don’t work on improving them.

The act of asking good questions guides and focuses the critique. It’s also a form of consent: it makes it clear that you’re open to comments and what kind of comments you’d like to get. It puts people in the right mental state, especially in situations when they weren’t expecting to give feedback.

There isn’t a single best way to ask for feedback. It just needs to be specific, and specificity can take many shapes. A model for design critique that I’ve found particularly useful in my coaching is the one of stage versus depth.

“Stage” refers to each of the steps of the process—in our case, the design process. In progressing from user research to the final design, the kind of feedback evolves. But within a single step, one might still review whether some assumptions are correct and whether there’s been a proper translation of the amassed feedback into updated designs as the project has evolved. A starting point for potential questions could derive from the layers of user experience. What do you want to know: Project objectives? User needs? Functionality? Content? Interaction design? Information architecture? UI design? Navigation design? Visual design? Branding?

Here’re a few example questions that are precise and to the point that refer to different layers:

• Functionality: Is automating account creation desirable?
• Interaction design: Take a look through the updated flow and let me know whether you see any steps or error states that I might’ve missed.
• Information architecture: We have two competing bits of information on this page. Is the structure effective in communicating them both?
• UI design: What are your thoughts on the error counter at the top of the page that makes sure that you see the next error, even if the error is out of the viewport? 
• Navigation design: From research, we identified these second-level navigation items, but once you’re on the page, the list feels too long and hard to navigate. Are there any suggestions to address this?
• Visual design: Are the sticky notifications in the bottom-right corner visible enough?

The other axis of specificity is about how deep you’d like to go on what’s being presented. For example, we might have introduced a new end-to-end flow, but there was a specific view that you found particularly challenging and you’d like a detailed review of that. This can be especially useful from one iteration to the next where it’s important to highlight the parts that have changed.

There are other things that we can consider when we want to achieve more specific—and more effective—questions.

A simple trick is to remove generic qualifiers from your questions like “good,” “well,” “nice,” “bad,” “okay,” and “cool.” For example, asking, “When the block opens and the buttons appear, is this interaction good?” might look specific, but you can spot the “good” qualifier, and convert it to an even better question: “When the block opens and the buttons appear, is it clear what the next action is?”

Sometimes we actually do want broad feedback. That’s rare, but it can happen. In that sense, you might still make it explicit that you’re looking for a wide range of opinions, whether at a high level or with details. Or maybe just say, “At first glance, what do you think?” so that it’s clear that what you’re asking is open ended but focused on someone’s impression after their first five seconds of looking at it.

Sometimes the project is particularly expansive, and some areas may have already been explored in detail. In these situations, it might be useful to explicitly say that some parts are already locked in and aren’t open to feedback. It’s not something that I’d recommend in general, but I’ve found it useful to avoid falling again into rabbit holes of the sort that might lead to further refinement but aren’t what’s most important right now.

Asking specific questions can completely change the quality of the feedback that you receive. People with less refined critique skills will now be able to offer more actionable feedback, and even expert designers will welcome the clarity and efficiency that comes from focusing only on what’s needed. It can save a lot of time and frustration.

The iteration

Design iterations are probably the most visible part of the design work, and they provide a natural checkpoint for feedback. Yet a lot of design tools with inline commenting tend to show changes as a single fluid stream in the same file, and those types of design tools make conversations disappear once they’re resolved, update shared UI components automatically, and compel designs to always show the latest version—unless these would-be helpful features were to be manually turned off. The implied goal that these design tools seem to have is to arrive at just one final copy with all discussions closed, probably because they inherited patterns from how written documents are collaboratively edited. That’s probably not the best way to approach design critiques, but even if I don’t want to be too prescriptive here: that could work for some teams.

The asynchronous design-critique approach that I find most effective is to create explicit checkpoints for discussion. I’m going to use the term iteration post for this. It refers to a write-up or presentation of the design iteration followed by a discussion thread of some kind. Any platform that can accommodate this structure can use this. By the way, when I refer to a “write-up or presentation,” I’m including video recordings or other media too: as long as it’s asynchronous, it works.

Using iteration posts has many advantages:

• It creates a rhythm in the design work so that the designer can review feedback from each iteration and prepare for the next.
• It makes decisions visible for future review, and conversations are likewise always available.
• It creates a record of how the design changed over time.
• Depending on the tool, it might also make it easier to collect feedback and act on it.

These posts of course don’t mean that no other feedback approach should be used, just that iteration posts could be the primary rhythm for a remote design team to use. And other feedback approaches (such as live critique, pair designing, or inline comments) can build from there.

I don’t think there’s a standard format for iteration posts. But there are a few high-level elements that make sense to include as a baseline:

1. The goal
2. The design
3. The list of changes
4. The questions

Each project is likely to have a goal, and hopefully it’s something that’s already been summarized in a single sentence somewhere else, such as the client brief, the product manager’s outline, or the project owner’s request. So this is something that I’d repeat in every iteration post—literally copy and pasting it. The idea is to provide context and to repeat what’s essential to make each iteration post complete so that there’s no need to find information spread across multiple posts. If I want to know about the latest design, the latest iteration post will have all that I need.

This copy-and-paste part introduces another relevant concept: alignment comes from repetition. So having posts that repeat information is actually very effective toward making sure that everyone is on the same page.

The design is then the actual series of information-architecture outlines, diagrams, flows, maps, wireframes, screens, visuals, and any other kind of design work that’s been done. In short, it’s any design artifact. For the final stages of work, I prefer the term blueprint to emphasize that I’ll be showing full flows instead of individual screens to make it easier to understand the bigger picture. 

It can also be useful to label the artifacts with clear titles because that can make it easier to refer to them. Write the post in a way that helps people understand the work. It’s not too different from organizing a good live presentation. 

For an efficient discussion, you should also include a bullet list of the changes from the previous iteration to let people focus on what’s new, which can be especially useful for larger pieces of work where keeping track, iteration after iteration, could become a challenge.

And finally, as noted earlier, it’s essential that you include a list of the questions to drive the design critique in the direction you want. Doing this as a numbered list can also help make it easier to refer to each question by its number.

Not all iterations are the same. Earlier iterations don’t need to be as tightly focused—they can be more exploratory and experimental, maybe even breaking some of the design-language guidelines to see what’s possible. Then later, the iterations start settling on a solution and refining it until the design process reaches its end and the feature ships.

I want to highlight that even if these iteration posts are written and conceived as checkpoints, by no means do they need to be exhaustive. A post might be a draft—just a concept to get a conversation going—or it could be a cumulative list of each feature that was added over the course of each iteration until the full picture is done.

Over time, I also started using specific labels for incremental iterations: i1, i2, i3, and so on. This might look like a minor labelling tip, but it can help in multiple ways:

• Unique—It’s a clear unique marker. Within each project, one can easily say, “This was discussed in i4,” and everyone knows where they can go to review things.
• Unassuming—It works like versions (such as v1, v2, and v3) but in contrast, versions create the impression of something that’s big, exhaustive, and complete. Iterations must be able to be exploratory, incomplete, partial.
• Future proof—It resolves the “final” naming problem that you can run into with versions. No more files named “final final complete no-really-its-done.” Within each project, the largest number always represents the latest iteration.

To mark when a design is complete enough to be worked on, even if there might be some bits still in need of attention and in turn more iterations needed, the wording release candidate (RC) could be used to describe it: “with i8, we reached RC” or “i12 is an RC.”

The review

What usually happens during a design critique is an open discussion, with a back and forth between people that can be very productive. This approach is particularly effective during live, synchronous feedback. But when we work asynchronously, it’s more effective to use a different approach: we can shift to a user-research mindset. Written feedback from teammates, stakeholders, or others can be treated as if it were the result of user interviews and surveys, and we can analyze it accordingly.

This shift has some major benefits that make asynchronous feedback particularly effective, especially around these friction points:

1. It removes the pressure to reply to everyone.
2. It reduces the frustration from swoop-by comments.
3. It lessens our personal stake.

The first friction point is feeling a pressure to reply to every single comment. Sometimes we write the iteration post, and we get replies from our team. It’s just a few of them, it’s easy, and it doesn’t feel like a problem. But other times, some solutions might require more in-depth discussions, and the amount of replies can quickly increase, which can create a tension between trying to be a good team player by replying to everyone and doing the next design iteration. This might be especially true if the person who’s replying is a stakeholder or someone directly involved in the project who we feel that we need to listen to. We need to accept that this pressure is absolutely normal, and it’s human nature to try to accommodate people who we care about. Sometimes replying to all comments can be effective, but if we treat a design critique more like user research, we realize that we don’t have to reply to every comment, and in asynchronous spaces, there are alternatives:

• One is to let the next iteration speak for itself. When the design evolves and we post a follow-up iteration, that’s the reply. You might tag all the people who were involved in the previous discussion, but even that’s a choice, not a requirement. 
• Another is to briefly reply to acknowledge each comment, such as “Understood. Thank you,” “Good points—I’ll review,” or “Thanks. I’ll include these in the next iteration.” In some cases, this could also be just a single top-level comment along the lines of “Thanks for all the feedback everyone—the next iteration is coming soon!”
• Another is to provide a quick summary of the comments before moving on. Depending on your workflow, this can be particularly useful as it can provide a simplified checklist that you can then use for the next iteration.

The second friction point is the swoop-by comment, which is the kind of feedback that comes from someone outside the project or team who might not be aware of the context, restrictions, decisions, or requirements—or of the previous iterations’ discussions. On their side, there’s something that one can hope that they might learn: they could start to acknowledge that they’re doing this and they could be more conscious in outlining where they’re coming from. Swoop-by comments often trigger the simple thought “We’ve already discussed this…”, and it can be frustrating to have to repeat the same reply over and over.

Let’s begin by acknowledging again that there’s no need to reply to every comment. If, however, replying to a previously litigated point might be useful, a short reply with a link to the previous discussion for extra details is usually enough. Remember, alignment comes from repetition, so it’s okay to repeat things sometimes!

Swoop-by commenting can still be useful for two reasons: they might point out something that still isn’t clear, and they also have the potential to stand in for the point of view of a user who’s seeing the design for the first time. Sure, you’ll still be frustrated, but that might at least help in dealing with it.

The third friction point is the personal stake we could have with the design, which could make us feel defensive if the review were to feel more like a discussion. Treating feedback as user research helps us create a healthy distance between the people giving us feedback and our ego (because yes, even if we don’t want to admit it, it’s there). And ultimately, treating everything in aggregated form allows us to better prioritize our work.

Always remember that while you need to listen to stakeholders, project owners, and specific advice, you don’t have to accept every piece of feedback. You have to analyze it and make a decision that you can justify, but sometimes “no” is the right answer. 

As the designer leading the project, you’re in charge of that decision. Ultimately, everyone has their specialty, and as the designer, you’re the one who has the most knowledge and the most context to make the right decision. And by listening to the feedback that you’ve received, you’re making sure that it’s also the best and most balanced decision.

Thanks to Brie Anne Demkiw and Mike Shelton for reviewing the first draft of this article.

CMFRI transferred the technology to Amala Ecoclean, a start-up focusing on sustainable waste management and environmental solutions, for large-scale commercial production

Top official sources say that the Prime Minister’s Office is keen to see the use of sweet sorghum as an additional feedstock for ethanol amid the issue with availability of sugarcane, rice and maize in some years

Getting feedback for what you're building or writing, RSS feed reminiscing, Arc browser thoughts, products that didn't make that should have.

Ben Ubois is the founder of Feedbin, the RSS reader of choice for Dave and Chris. What influenced the creation of Feedbin, the state of RSS in 2023, curating your RSS feed, and subscribing to newsletters in Feedbin.

Doc told me to travel but there's COVID on the planes, Dave's got a 2x life update, how often do you manage or prune your RSS feed subscriptions, checking in on Code Hike and their fine grained Markdown approach, JavaScript decorators use case, and using Cloudflare R2 for image storage.

A new FAO report blames “unsustainable business-as-usual practices” for escalating human and environmental costs of producing food.

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The Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation wants the creation of Frontier Nagaland Territory comprising six districts of the northeastern State bordering Myanmar

When I first discovered that you could get into Yahoo’s RSS Feed directory so quickly, I started making a lot of observations about their site. The first thing I noticed is that they made some subtle changes to their search page. That same day, I noticed that certain sites have more information in their listings than others.

Now, where you would normally type a URL, type your keyword, or if you know a site has a feed but don't know the address, type in the home page. Advanced users can also click on the Import feature to import feeds through their .OPML file. You can display up to 50 feeds per page, but there does not appear to be a limitation on how many feeds you can include in Yahoo.

It seems like everyone is talking about RSS Feeds. They’ve been around for years but the buzz is up about them as the technology continues to go mainstream. Some people are reportedly abandoning their browsers and viewing the web through their readers - but they hardly represent the general public yet.

RSS is just another language of the web, but you can actually completely ignore the code itself, just like you can ignore the source code behind web pages that you visit - you are only interested in the end product that the code is designed to produce for you, the end user.

Why Should I care about RSS Feeds SPAM and viruses have wreaked havoc with a communication medium and reduced its value. Users have become admittedly paranoid about privacy issues and have begun "tuning out" and mentally filtering mail. What this means is that vendors really ought to begin exploring alternatives means of communciation in order to be heard. One of these alternatives is RSS or Really Simple Syndication.

Everyday more and more websites, news services and blogs are adding RSS content. RSS is a method of syndicating content.The concept of aggregating content in one central location or repository is very appealing. Consumers have become tired of push technology, RSS allows users the flexibility to regain control of their content. RSS feed creators provide content without forcing it on consumers. In fact with RSS consumers are able to choose the content they wish to view.

Do I Need an RSS Feed?
RSS has been around for more than 10 years but has only recently become popular. RSS provides headlines and summaries of information in a concise and standardized way.

The big benefit to RSS is that individuals opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.

RSS Benefits Article

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is commonly known, is a technology that gives webmasters the ability to easily distribute and publish syndicated content on the Internet. It seems like all Internet businesses now have RSS feeds available; at least your competitors do. You have finally made the decision that you have to have one. Where do you start?

Complete Article - Steps to Create RSS

RSS gets 100% of your content delivered, but it’s no good if no one subscribes to your feeds.

So your first order of business after planning and creating your feeds has to be promoting them to your visitors.

The only problem is that most internet users still don’t know what RSS is, so you do have your work cut out for. But using the system outlined below you shouldn’t have any problems. Actually, after implementing this system, you should be achieving better results than the majority of publishers out there.

Complete Article - 7 Steps to Promoting RSS Feeds

First it was banner ads, then Google AdSense and now, the latest way to make money on your web site could very well be RSS feeds. Say what? I said: RSS is hot and you should be using it to drive eyeballs to your site. Here's how it works:

Depending upon who you ask, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary". Regardless of what you call it, RSS is a way to automatically publish (syndicate) someone else's content on your web site. Now don't worry, that's not the same as stealing someone else's content. There is nothing illegal about using RSS feeds. In fact, the publisher of the content wants you to have it show up on your site and that's why he or she makes it available as an RSS feed to begin with.

Complete Article - Making Money with RSS Feeds

RSS, also known as Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, has been used for years by online visitors. However, it has only recently begun to gain popularity among webmasters as a means of providing visitors with constantly refreshed content. These feeds were originally developed to deliver updated news more quickly, but they have since evolved to allow for nearly instantaneous updates of many types of information.

more on Content Syndication Through RSS Feeds

RSS feeds seem to be the breakout technology for the year. With more users turning to them for driving traffic to their site, it’s no wonder that a trail of RSS feed spam is following in the wake. A careful editing of your RSS feed could make the difference between being classified as genuine content or RSS spam.


RSS search engines are just beginning to pick up steam. As more RSS feeds become searchable, the number of visitors will increase and spam is sure to follow. It is an unfortunate side effect of free communication. While RSS users can typically unsubscribe to feeds they deem as spam, browsing with keywords in an RSS search engine is where the problem arises.

Complete Article - RSS Feed Spam

Daily more and more realtors are turning to RSS as a tool to market homes for sale. The growing RSS phenomenon in the realty market makes perfect sense. Unlike email RSS feeds have a 100% delivery rate. In addition the costs involved in creating and managing an RSS feed are insignificant when compared to the print advertising Realtors spend on each week. Imagine the amount spent each week to promote various properties in circulars and weekly newspapers, compared to the costs associated with updating and managing an RSS feed.

Realtors Employ RSS

Publishers are evaluating options and determining how they can profit from RSS feeds. The two obvious contenders that publishers are considering to profit from their RSS feeds are: subscription RSS feeds and RSS feed advertisements.

Subscriptions.
Subscription feeds are designed so that subscription fees are charged for unique quality content. Publisher include teaser copy in the RSS feed and readers have to purchase a subscription to see the content in its entirety. The New York Times was the first to introduce the subscription model. Initially the NY Times faced some resentment from users who had become accustom to free RSS based content, but ultimately consumers realize that businesses must achieve profits in order to continue.

Profiting from RSS Feeds

In order to reap the benefits of an RSS feed, it is important the feed be properly publicized. Taking simple steps to promote an RSS feed will go a long way in ensuring a feeds adoption.

Promoting RSS Feeds