This, That and Hat

When we were given feedback on our first project briefs from other students, feedback was given in a very particular way. Rachel introduced to us to Edward De Bono’s ‘thinking hat’ system of feedback, which proved to be quite challenging for me.

To summarise the hats:

• Yellow = Something good about the project, something you liked’
• Red = Gut feelings, which tend to be the most honest in first impressions and most valuable
• Green = A creative choice that could have been made to better present an idea or focus
• Black = Something you didn’t like, that could be done better, that needs to be focused on more or changed

There are two other hats that we did not use, Blue and White. Blue is related to management of tasks, whereas white is focused purely on information and what is being presented.

Looking at those, it’s pretty clear which ones I would have trouble with. I’m still not quite in tune with my green or black hats when giving feedback on other peoples projects. Unfortunately, I was assigned the black hat for the class. I found it difficult trying to present different ideas or to say something was not presented well when I did not have a full understand of what the person was trying to present. It is something I can (and constantly) do with my own projects, but I found it very confronting meeting a person for the first time and then telling them what I didn’t like about something they very may well have worked very hard on.

Over the weeks that followed, I got more comfortable with working with the hats. I think this had to do with me feeling more comfortable around certain people I worked with in class. I have found the hat system does provide me with some useful feedback, and in particular I enjoy getting green hat feedback. I do not have much practical experience and have enjoyed hearing from the students who have a wide range of skills or very unique thoughts, as this is all stuff I can take in for future projects.