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Comment by bmmayer1 | Hacker News Reader

A better way to approach this situation: "That's great! Love it! Out of curiosity, what inspired you to choose those colors and fonts?" Then, they still have ownership, but they also are given the chance to justify their choice and it starts a conversation that could lead to improvements, if necessary.

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Unless you're genuinely curious, that would likely come across as passive-aggressive undermining.

Even if you are genuinely curious, such inquiries from a boss/"authority figure" can easily come off as threatening, so tread very carefully with advice like that.

Indeed - it only takes two or three easy questions like that to become a pattern, at which point every question is code for "guess what you did wrong", which is toxic.

Try instead: I like it. How did you come up with that?

Still passive aggressive. Any person with a brain would see right through that question. If you need to address something, it's better to be direct than to beat around the bush.

I don't think that is passive aggressive at all. In fact, I say stuff like that all the time, and mean it, because I do like what people come up with and want to know how they did it. How else would you express that?

It has good intentions, but it might make someone ask themselves if the boss thinks that their use of colors needs to be changed. If it was a good choice, then why bring it up, they might ask themselves.

uugh .. that would be terrible.

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