  Crowdsourced design feedback systems are emerging resources for getting large
amounts of feedback in a short period of time. Traditionally, the feedback
comes in the form of a declarative statement, which often contains positive or
negative sentiment. Prior research has shown that overly negative or positive
sentiment can strongly influence the perceived usefulness and acceptance of
feedback and, subsequently, lead to ineffective design revisions. To enhance
the effectiveness of crowdsourced design feedback, we investigate a new
approach for mitigating the effects of negative or positive feedback by
combining open-ended and thought-provoking questions with declarative feedback
statements. We conducted two user studies to assess the effects of
question-based feedback on the sentiment and quality of design revisions in the
context of graphic design. We found that crowdsourced question-based feedback
contains more neutral sentiment than statement-based feedback. Moreover, we
provide evidence that presenting feedback as questions followed by statements
leads to better design revisions than question- or statement-based feedback
alone.
