why "make it feel more premium" is terrible design feedback

"Make it feel more premium" is probably the worst design feedback.

I've heard it more times than I can count. A designer presents a screen and someone says it needs to feel "more premium". Everyone nods, the designer goes back to Figma, and the guessing begins.

Should there be more whitespace? Should the typography be larger? Should the colours be darker? Should the interface have more animation? Maybe it needs a different font.

The problem isn't the word "premium". The problem is that it's describing a feeling instead of the problem.

The same word points in five directions

"Premium" can mean a lot of different things depending on the product. It could mean sophisticated, exclusive, trustworthy, expensive, refined, minimal or simply polished. Each interpretation leads to a completely different design direction.

Imagine you're designing a fintech product where someone is about to invest ₹50,000. When a stakeholder says, "make it feel more premium", what they might actually mean is, "this doesn't feel trustworthy enough for someone to put their money here."

That's a much better design problem.

Now you can think about hierarchy, clarity, credibility, information density, visual restraint and how the product communicates confidence. You're no longer randomly changing the UI until someone says it feels better.

Placeholders for something unsaid

This happens with design feedback all the time.

"Make it cleaner."

"Make it pop."

"Make it modern."

"Make it more engaging."

"Make it feel premium."

These sound like directions, but they're often just placeholders for something someone hasn't articulated yet.

And that's where a designer's job becomes more interesting.

A good designer shouldn't just take the feedback literally. They should try to understand what is underneath it.

If someone says a screen doesn't feel premium, ask what feels wrong. Is it the visual hierarchy? Does the product look unreliable? Does it feel too generic? Does the experience feel complicated? Does it look inconsistent with the brand?

The answer is usually somewhere underneath the original feedback.

Why critiques go in circles

This is also why design critiques can become frustrating. Two people can look at exactly the same screen and have completely different opinions about whether it looks "premium". One person might prefer more whitespace while another thinks the interface feels empty. One might want more visual detail while another thinks that makes it feel cheap.

There's no useful conversation until you agree on what you're trying to achieve.

Good feedback should reduce ambiguity.

Bad feedback creates more of it.

Translating feelings into problems

The more senior you become as a designer, the less you should rely on subjective words and the more you should learn to translate them into specific problems.

Instead of "make this more premium", you might say:

"Make this feel more trustworthy for someone about to spend ₹50,000."

Instead of "make this cleaner", define what feels cluttered and what information should have priority.

Instead of "make it pop", decide what the user should notice first and why.

That shift seems small, but it changes the entire design process.

Design isn't about guessing what someone means when they say something looks wrong.

It's about understanding what they're actually trying to solve.

"Make it feel more premium" isn't really design feedback.

It's a request for clarification.