Why (and when) it’s okay to ignore feedback

Here’s me basically giving the tl;dr version of this post as part of the Hot Cakes Podcast (along with many other fun and helpful hot takes)!

Story A. A while back, one of my tech editing clients asked for my help. She was in the test knitting stage of a sweater pattern I’d done the initial tech edit on, and one of her test knitters was giving her feedback she wasn’t sure about.  To protect the anonymity of both my client and her test knitter I won’t name the exact issue, but it involved using a specific technique to make the final seaming neater.  There was just one problem, which I confirmed with a little research – the test knitter’s feedback was incorrect.  Although common in some sweater constructions, for the construction my client’s pattern used it would actually make the seams look lumpy and warped.

Story B. I was working on a pattern for a new client and I thought the way she set up her row repeats could be streamlined a bit. There was nothing technically wrong with the way she was writing it, but it did take a little more space to do it her way and was structured a little differently than the standard repeats most knitters would be familiar with. So I adjusted a couple of sections to demonstrate an alternate way to write it. After she thought it over, she said that while she appreciated my feedback she preferred to stick to her original style of repeats.

These are two examples of how feedback, while always good to collect, is not always something you can or want to act on.  In the first example, the feedback was just flat out incorrect; in the second example, the feedback was more of a stylistic suggestion and the designer made the choice to stick with her original style.

The tricky part is that even when the feedback is correct, sometimes our human nature gets the better of us and we feel defensive about any changes someone advises, whether they are good points or not.  So how do you take a bunch of comments from your test knitters, tech editors, or even customers who knit your published pattern and separate the good, actionable feedback from the stuff you can safely ignore?

Look for a pattern in the feedback. If you are collecting feedback from multiple people, and more than one have similar comments, it’s probably something you need to take a serious look at. I have a little rule of thumb for myself whenever I produce something that gets a lot of feedback:

• 1 comment on a specific issue - check it out, but if you don’t think it’s a problem, it’s probably fine

• 2-3 comments on the same specific issue - probably some edit is needed (in these cases it’s often that a particular instruction can be interpreted in multiple ways and some clarification is needed to make sure people are following the intended interpretation)

• More than 3 comments – something has really gone wrong and you need to fix it before moving forward

Consider where the feedback might be coming from. If someone gives you feedback that you don’t really understand, taking a moment to try to figure out how they got to that opinion can sometimes help you determine whether there might be a misunderstanding. In Story A, the technique the test knitter was recommending, while incorrect for the construction in that pattern, would have been correct in a different type of construction.  It was highly likely that when the test knitter learned that technique, they misunderstood it as something that *always* was used, rather than only in specific situations. While the test knitter was obviously trying to be helpful, that particular comment was coming from a misunderstanding on the test knitter’s part and it could be set aside. 

Side note: my favorite “questionable feedback” story comes from my time doing publication layout. I was working with a company whose colors were brown, orange, and gold so we tried to stick to that palette in their print magazine. One day I showed my boss the layout for a particular story and she asked me if I could make the lead photo “less blue.”  It was a photo taken underwater in the Mediterranean Ocean! In that case my boss was so focused on our usual branding concerns that she missed the actual context of the photo and gave me feedback that didn’t actually work for that specific situation. 

Ask “If I don’t implement this feedback, what’s the worst that will happen?” This is a great question to ask yourself if you are not sure whether someone’s feedback is more about their own personal preferences than fixing something that’s incorrect or confusing. If someone is telling you their stitch counts are off when they follow your pattern instructions and you don’t at least check into that, you may wind up with a pattern that has some severe math issues and is difficult for anyone to complete correctly.  If someone is telling you they really prefer that each K and P in a pattern is capitalized and you decide you’d rather stick with lowercase k and p, it’s still possible for someone to knit the pattern even if it doesn’t match their preference. 

In Story B, my client told me she’d asked around to a few knitting friends and got a split response – some agreed with my suggestion and some preferred the way she wrote it. That was enough data for her to determine that it was truly a matter of preference and wasn’t going to wreck her pattern if she stuck to her original format, so that’s how we proceeded.

I can tell you that among tech editors, we often check in with each other for a reality check on whether an edit we’re about to suggest on a pattern is truly needed or is us imposing our own preferences on the designer.  We try to avoid the latter, but we’re all human, and an outside perspective is often really helpful. Once my client told me she wanted to keep her format, I proceeded with subsequent edits leaving her preferred format in place and only checking for typos or math errors within that format.

Feedback can be a wonderful thing that can really help you improve your work, but knowing how to assess which feedback to take and which you can ignore will increase the value you get out of asking for feedback in the first place.

Have you received feedback you decided wasn’t useful? How did you handle it?