Paragon: An Online Gallery for Enhancing Design Feedback with Visual Examples

Examples provide a source of inspiration for creating designs, but can they help improve the feedback process? Supplementing design feedback with examples could help recipients see issues clearly, identify concrete steps for improvement, and integrate novel ideas. Two online studies investigated how to support novices providing feedback on visual poster designs in an online context. Study One found that feedback providers select poster examples that complement their feedback and align with a provided rubric. Study Two shows that feedback providers give more specific, actionable, and novel input when using an example-centric approach, as opposed to text alone. To support this, we designed Paragon, an interface to efficiently browse examples using metadata. Finally, we discuss implications for collecting examples from the Web and structuring the design feedback process.