Feedback capture grids are simple tools that help you collect, sort, and act on feedback from users and stakeholders, essential in UX (user experience) design. By organizing comments into clear categories like Likes, Criticisms, Questions, and Ideas, you can spot patterns quickly, prioritize improvements, and create better user experiences with confidence.
In this video, William Hudson, User Experience Strategist and Founder of Syntagm Ltd., explains how early-design methods like tree testing and first-click testing help you gather focused, quantitative feedback that complements tools such as Feedback Capture Grids.
Whenever you work on design solutions such as digital products and put them in front of others, feedback comes in fast. From proposed ideas about designs to early versions of apps and websites, you’ll get feedback from users, team members, and stakeholders and have the chance to harvest potentially rich and varied insights. However, without a clear system to do so, you may run into a problem; valuable insights often get lost in meeting notes, scattered stickies, or unread comment threads. Before you might start feeling disheartened, you’ve got a handy tool to rely on, as a feedback capture grid changes that.
The benefits of a feedback capture grid are that it gives you a structured way to collect and review feedback so you can:
You organize raw feedback into four clear categories, commonly used in a feedback capture grid:
Likes are what users or stakeholders appreciated or thought worked well.
Criticisms are what they disliked, found frustrating, or thought didn’t work.
Questions are what they found confusing or were unsure about.
Ideas are any suggestions for improvement, feature requests, or new approaches.
When you put feedback “items” into these categories, you’ll find it will help you chart all that feedback sensibly, balance positive and negative input, and focus on what matters most.
In a typical feedback-capturing grid, you’ll notice repeated issues and common suggestions at a glance, and here are some examples that might come up:
You may find consistent praise for a specific feature such as, “Everyone loved the drag-and-drop tool,” or repeated mention of smooth onboarding, such as, “Users found the sign-up flow easy and intuitive.” Visual design appreciation may appear, too, such as, “Multiple users commented on the clean layout or color scheme.”
It’s where recurring usability issues go, such as, “Several users struggled to find the search bar.” Frustration with navigation is another example for this quadrant, such as, “Confusion around where to go next after completing a task.” The same goes for bugs or performance issues, such as, “The app froze on the same screen for multiple testers.”
Queries regarding confusion about system behavior go in here, such as, “Why does the app log me out after 10 minutes?” Unclear language or terminology can feature, too, such as, “What does ‘workspace’ mean in this context?” Another area that tends to arise is uncertainty around data privacy or outcomes, such as, “What happens to my data after I submit this form?”
Creative aspects such as requests for customization go in this quadrant, like, “Could I rearrange the dashboard widgets?” Suggestions for new features can crop up, too, such as, “I’d love a dark mode option!” Look out for workflow improvement ideas, such as, “What if the system remembered my last filter settings?” too.
Sometimes feedback comes in a little mixed. For instance, a praised feature can still cause confusion, such as, “Users love the visual dashboard but ask a lot of questions about what the graphs mean.” Or you might have multiple ideas pointing to the same underlying need, such as, “Requests for filters, tagging, and folders all point to a need for better content organization.” Or there might be a mismatch between expectations and experience: such as, “Users expected autosave, but the system makes them save manually, which causes a lot of frustration.”
Spotting these kinds of patterns helps you prioritize improvements based on frequency, severity, and impact. It ensures you’re going after and solving real user problems, too, not just reacting to individual comments.
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You can move quickly from “what they said” to “what we’ll do” and make the most of effective user research. Although this tends to take careful judgment and collaboration, the capture grid for feedback offers a powerful benefit. It’s like having a clear “runway” to take off from as you launch at each problem with a strong sense of direction. Plus, it can help safeguard you and your design team from assumptions taking your design down the wrong avenues.
In this video, William Hudson explains how user research gives you the actionable insights you need to move from assumptions to evidence-based design decisions.
Feedback grids that capture excellent insights help everyone share the same view of what’s working and what needs fixing. When you set feedback out clearly, the grid becomes an excellent reference point and UX deliverable to show you know what you’re doing and what needs doing.
From a higher perspective, you’ll have proof where you can show that feedback leads to real change. That can become a powerful tool to present to stakeholders and (with clients’ and users’ consent) future employers.
The benefits extend in many directions, whether you’re running usability tests, gathering stakeholder input, or wrapping up a design sprint. The feedback capture grid helps you find important signals that might otherwise get lost in “feedback noise,” determine next steps, and take decisive action on design improvements or things to cut out. This layout works well in workshops, interviews, usability tests, and sprint reviews. It keeps feedback balanced and visible, and helps you make better decisions, faster. You can use it with sticky notes on a wall or digitally in tools.
In this video, Ann Blandford, Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at University College London, explains how semi-structured interviews reveal the reasons behind user behavior while highlighting why they cannot replace direct observation when you need reliable evidence for action.
The grid is flexible and lightweight, making it one of the most adaptable tools in your UX toolkit, and you can use a feedback capture grid at any stage of the UX design process where you need to capture input, review it, and act on it. Its common use cases include:
Usability testing, when you’re documenting user reactions, pain points, and suggestions in real time.
Stakeholder feedback, when you capture and clarify feedback after a design review.
In this video, Morgane Peng, Managing Director and Global Head of Product Design and AI Transformation at Societe Generale CIB, explains how common stakeholder comments reveal misunderstandings about design and why clear, structured feedback helps you refocus conversations on usability and real problems.
Retrospectives, when you reflect on what went well and what should improve next time.
Customer interviews, when you want to sort insights into actionable categories for follow-up.
Workshops and sprints, where you’ll want to organize group ideas quickly and democratically.
In this video, David Bill, Interaction Designer who led service design for five U.S. federal agencies at Booz Allen Hamilton before driving innovative design solutions as a Senior UX Designer at Amazon Web Services (AWS), explains how well-structured workshops help you gather diverse input quickly and turn group ideas into actionable direction.
Follow these steps to set up and use a feedback capture grid in your next session.
Before you begin, ask yourself, “What am I trying to learn or improve?” and “Who is giving feedback, and why?” For example: “I want to test whether users can complete checkout in under two minutes.” A clear goal helps you filter what’s relevant.
Depending on your setup, pick the format that works best. If it’s in-person, use a whiteboard and sticky notes. Remote calls for effective digital tools. In any case, you’ll want to create a simple 2x2 grid with each quadrant labeled: Likes, Criticisms, Questions, and Ideas.
As users interact with your product in usability testing sessions for, for example, prototypes or when stakeholders review your work:
Write one point per sticky note or card.
Be specific. Use direct quotes whenever possible.
Place each note in the appropriate quadrant.
So, instead of writing, “User liked the homepage and checkout process, but had issues with the cart icon and didn’t understand the shipping timeline,” you’d break it into individual points such as: “Liked the homepage design,” “Found checkout flow smooth,” “Cart icon was hard to find,” and “Shipping timeline wasn’t clear.”
However, whenever you can, put direct quotes into the grid, such as: “Why do I have to fill this out again? It feels redundant.” Reviewing feedback written in the first person promotes empathy. And insert the feedback in the appropriate section as soon as possible. So, if a user says, “It would be great if I could log in using Google,” you’d immediately place that note in the Ideas quadrant, not under Criticisms.
Encourage the team to participate, too; it’s a team tool, so everyone should feel invited to contribute.
In this video, Alan Dix, Author of the bestselling book “Human-Computer Interaction” and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University, explains how iterative prototyping helps you spot problems early so you can capture accurate feedback as users interact with your design.
After the session, look at the feedback in each quadrant. Group similar items together and watch out for these sorts of issues: “Are users struggling with the same feature?” or “Are multiple people asking the same question?”
Clustering feedback helps you see patterns and surface high-impact issues.
Once you’ve grouped feedback, it’s time to:
Identify what’s urgent or easy to fix.
Tag feedback by impact or feasibility.
Create action items and assign them to the right people.
For example, you might notice three users struggled to find the “Next” button on a mobile screen. That’s both frequent and easy to resolve with layout tweaks, so flag it for immediate action.
When you turn sticky notes into backlog items, Jira tickets, or design tasks, you’ve moved from collection to action.
Before you move on, write a brief summary of:
What were the top three insights? For example: “Users liked the visual design of the dashboard. The profile setup process confused 4 out of 6 users. Everyone suggested adding export options for reports.”
What decisions are you making based on them? For example, “We’ll simplify the profile setup flow by reducing required fields. We’ll add tooltips to explain dashboard metrics. We’ll make export functionality a priority in the next sprint.”
What are the next steps? For example, “Design revised profile flow (due Thursday). Write tooltip copy (due Friday). Add export feature to sprint planning doc for next week.”
Summaries make for handy sharing, so share this with your team and stakeholders so that everyone sees how feedback is driving progress towards a clear and common goal.
Use the feedback capture grid as part of an ongoing process. After implementing changes:
Re-test with users.
Run another grid session.
Compare new feedback to earlier themes.
For example, for Likes you might have: “Much easier now to apply promo codes.” For Criticisms, you might have: “Order summary still not visible until too late.”
Revisiting and repeating is vital as it keeps your design evolving and responsive to real user needs.
Here are a few simple practices to help make your feedback capture grid even more effective:
Be consistent: Use the same categories and format across projects.
Keep it simple: Four quadrants are usually enough; too many categories can slow things down.
Encourage specifics: Push for context and reasons; for example, “I didn’t like it!” isn’t as useful as “The menu was hard to find on mobile.”
Timebox your sessions: Limit collection and analysis time so your team stays focused; it’s a constraint that can help greatly.
Add context: Label your grid with the session date, version tested, and type of participants for easy reference later.
Act on what you collect: If feedback goes into the void, people stop sharing it. Always link feedback to visible decisions or actions; it’s a “living” document.
Using feedback capture grids regularly helps you build a stronger feedback culture. You show users and team members that their input is heard, respected, and acted upon, and that you’re a designer who’s pragmatic and focused.
Overall, a feedback capture grid or feedback capture table is a simple but powerful way for you to organize user and stakeholder feedback. It enables you to clearly view what works and what needs work, and gives you a treasure trove of actionable insights. The power of authentic feedback capture makes this a unique tool to help you align teams, communicate decisions, and design experiences grounded in real user needs.
You might be working on a new feature, reviewing a prototype, or planning a sprint; this tool helps you turn what people say into what your team knows is worth building, fixing, and refining. Try using a feedback capture grid in your next session and you may find, if you set a goal, listen closely, sort with care, and take action, you’ll take a fast-track on more solid ground towards designing with users, not just for them.
Explore how to develop excellent design ideas and funnel them to successful outcomes with our Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide course.
Enjoy our Master Class Demonstrate the ROI of Design Thinking and Win Stakeholder Support with Jeanne Liedtka, UTC Emeritus Professor at UVA’s Darden School of Business.
Discover additional angles of how to use feedback as a powerful ally, with our article Use Feedback as Your Superpower: Learn, Improve, Shine.
Find a wealth of helpful insights about how to get feedback and make it work for you, in our article Test Your Prototypes: How to Gather Feedback and Maximize Learning.
A feedback capture grid helps you and your design team gather, organize, and act on user feedback systematically. It transforms vague reactions into clear categories: what users liked, disliked, questions they had, and new ideas they suggested. This structure reduces bias and helps ensure teams spot patterns quickly.
Using this tool keeps feedback focused, promotes user-centered decisions, and drives continuous improvement. It fosters collaboration, too, since everyone who’s involved, designers, stakeholders, and users, can contribute to a shared understanding. The grid simplifies post-research analysis, saves time, and helps teams move from insight to action with clarity towards meeting (and exceeding) users’ needs.
Explore how to take user needs and build the best understanding of them so you can move towards the best design solutions.
Designers typically fill out the grid during or immediately after user interviews or testing sessions. However, involving stakeholders, such as product managers, researchers, or developers, adds value, as their perspectives often highlight strategic insights or technical constraints.
While users don’t directly use the grid, their raw feedback fuels it. Teams can gain the most when everyone observing a session contributes their notes into one collective grid. This avoids fragmented feedback and encourages alignment across roles.
Discover how to make the most of user interviews, with our article How to Conduct User Interviews.
The grid has four parts:
Positives (Likes): What users liked or found useful.
Negatives (Criticisms): What users disliked or struggled with.
Questions: Uncertainties users had or things they didn’t understand.
Ideas: Suggestions or spontaneous user comments about what could improve.
This simple structure helps you and your team categorize insights quickly without overthinking where each note belongs. For example, a user’s saying “I wish I could undo that” fits under “Ideas,” while “I didn’t know where to click” goes under “Criticisms.” Filled in well, a capture grid of feedback can tell a fascinating story about how users encounter your design.
In this video, William Hudson explains how persona stories replace generic user stories with research-based narratives that better reflect real user behaviors and needs.
Each grid entry should be short, clear, and specific. One sentence often suffices, and write in bullet form and avoid long quotes. Instead of “The user was confused by the navigation and clicked around a lot,” write, “User couldn’t find navigation menu, clicked four times before locating it.” Aim for clarity over completeness.
If you need to, link each note to more detailed documentation elsewhere, like session transcripts or recordings. Sometimes, such as when you’re testing prototypes, users may have more to say about how they liked a feature.
Discover how to make the most of prototyping, with our article Test Your Prototypes: How to Gather Feedback and Maximize Learning.
Introduce the grid as a shared tool for collecting structured feedback. Run a brief session to explain its purpose and sections. Show examples of past grids to illustrate how insights turn into action. Encourage each team member to observe sessions and contribute notes.
Emphasize that it’s fine to be brief; getting the feedback down quickly matters more than perfect wording. Use a collaborative digital tool so everyone can access and update the grid in real-time.
Harvest helpful insights about how to work better together, from our article Collaborating with Your Team for Research.
Group similar feedback to identify recurring issues. Then, rank items by frequency, user impact, and alignment with project goals. Use frameworks like the MoSCoW method (Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, Won’t-have) or an impact-effort matrix to help.
Focus first on “must-haves” that block usability or break core tasks. Use team discussions to validate what matters most. Avoid jumping on one-off suggestions unless they reveal a critical flaw you need to address.
Get right into the MoSCoW method to fine-tune your way to better designs.
Share the grid with diverse team members and ask them to highlight what stands out. Mix perspectives to reduce individual bias. Avoid cherry-picking feedback that confirms pre-existing assumptions, too. Instead, seek patterns across sessions and users.
Use verbatim quotes for transparency and back up each note with specific observations. Track surprises, moments that challenged expectations, and give them special attention in reviews.
Consider powerful ways to help overcome confirmation bias and get on the right design track.
Assign one grid per session and then compile summaries across all of them. Use consistent categories to compare across grids. Create a master grid or dashboard to highlight the top themes from all sessions.
Tag notes with metadata, such as session number, user type, and task scenario, to trace patterns. You can choose from some effective digital tools to help organize, filter, and visualize feedback at scale.
Expand your exploration of grid use with our article How to Create a Perspective Grid.
Even a great tool can go wrong if you don’t use it with intention, so watch out for these traps:
Vague categories: If people don’t know what belongs where, the grid becomes a mess. Define your quadrants clearly.
Analysis paralysis: Don’t get stuck trying to perfectly label or prioritize every note. Focus on action, not perfection.
Ignoring feedback: If you capture insights but fail to follow through, trust breaks down. Always close the loop.
Letting the grid go stale: Archive or clear your grid after each round. Fresh boards keep minds sharp.
Følstad, A. (2017). Users’ design feedback in usability evaluation: a literature review. Human-centric Computing and Information Sciences, 7, Article 19.
This article synthesizes 31 empirical studies investigating what the author terms “users’ design feedback,” feedback from users concerning an interactive system’s suitability, usability problems, and design suggestions. It distinguishes this from interaction data (e.g., logs) and examines how user reflections can complement traditional methodologies. The review highlights that structured capture of user feedback can produce qualitatively different insights and have substantial downstream impact on development. Because it’s open access and widely referenced, it provides a good foundation for understanding how to systematically capture and use user feedback in UX evaluations.
Perrig, S. A., Aeschbach, L. F., Scharowski, N., von Felten, N., Opwis, K., & Brühlmann, F. (2024). Measurement practices in user experience (UX) research: a systematic quantitative literature review. Frontiers in Computer Science, 6, Article 1368860.
This paper examines how UX research currently measures feedback from users, focusing on the prevalence and quality of survey scales and constructs. After reviewing 60 empirical studies (from ACM CHI 20192022), the authors found that many studies lacked rationale for the scales chosen, used single‐use constructs, and often failed to report scale quality. This has implications for how user feedback (especially subjective feedback) is captured, structured, and used to derive actionable insights. Because it focuses on measurement practices and feedback capture rigor, it is highly relevant for work on effectively capturing user feedback in UX research.
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Here's the entire UX literature on Feedback Capture Grids by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:
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