Crowdsourced Feedback With Imagery Rather Than Text: Would Designers Use It?

Cognitive styles theories suggest that we divide into visual and verbal thinkers. In this paper we describe a method designed to encourage visual communication between designers and their audiences. This new visual feedback method is based on enabling fast intuitive selections by the crowd from image banks when responding to an idea. Visual summarization reduces the massed image choices to a small number of representative images. These summaries are then consumed at a glance by designers receiving the feedback leading to thoughtful reflection on their designs. We report an evaluation using two types of imagery for feedback. Twelve designers took part, receiving visual feedback in response to their designs. In semi-structured interviews they described their interpretation of the feedback, how it inspired them to change their designs and contrasted it with text feedback. Eleven of the twelve designers revealed that they would be enthusiastic users of a service providing this new mode of feedback.