How to run an effective design critique

“A design critique refers to analyzing a design and giving feedback on whether it meets its objectives. A design critique usually manifests as a group conversation with the ultimate goal of improving a design. It does not mean simply judging a design.” – NNG

Why do we do it?

Critiques are really valuable if you’re running them at regular intervals and inviting people to share work at all stages of the design process of the product lifecycle. The feedback and iteration loop in a design critique helps you avoid getting attached to your design and focus on what is best for the business, users, and stakeholders. Within a critique, the discussion is moved away from the way you feel about it and focused more on the effectiveness of the design and actionable items.

Ultimately, running critiques maintains quality and consistency in the different features or improvements the design team is developing. Not only by gathering feedback and making your designs better but also by improving communication skills — both in communicating your design and providing feedback and building team culture by meeting up and talking!

What kinds of design critiques can you run?

Depending on the session’s goal, typically, there are two ways to run a critique, one is usually open to the wider organization, stakeholders, and clients (if you are agency side) and the other is usually a design-team-only ritual. There’s value in both, but I would argue that they are two different rituals (but more on that later).

Design Team Rituals

These meetings occur only within design and product teams. They tend to be more informal since the team works together and has a consistent communication cadence. In an ideal situation, if a team member is stuck on a problem, asking for feedback on the fly from several team members would be easier, because they usually have the product knowledge and context already, compared to colleagues outside of the team. This eliminates the need to create a formal meeting to present designs and explain the context to new people, ultimately saving time and quickly progressing design.

To invite stakeholders or not to invite stakeholders?

Inviting stakeholders to your critique may feel like a way to kill two birds with one stone. You can give them visibility of your projects, provide critique within the design team and get feedback from the people who matter. However, it doesn’t always work like that. To begin with, you are inviting an uneven power dynamic within the group that is almost impossible to get around. Unless stakeholders are coming to a critique willing to follow the critique charter, the value will likely be very low. It’s often best to split up the stakeholder feedback sessions and critiques into two separate rituals.

Planning a Design Critique

How you plan your critique depends entirely on how you’re running them. If, as mentioned before, these are regular critiques that are almost exclusively for your design team, keeping them informal can be best. People can present their work without preparing a presentation and dial-up or down the level of context depending on the familiarity of the project with the rest of the team. However, if you’re presenting the work to stakeholders or senior leadership, the best thing to do is create a short presentation that includes a high-level overview of the research and or conclusions drawn that led to the design (here’s a template we’ve created). This way, you can explain the context, making it easier for the participants to understand how and why you came up with the design. It eliminates questions and guides the discussion based on which goals you want to achieve in the session.

Either way, the most important thing is that when inviting critique, you are providing the right context and being specific about the type of feedback you are seeking.

What you should consider:

• Whom are you presenting to?
• What are the outcomes you want out of this session?
• What information do they need to know?
• How do you tell the story?

How to present in a critique

Whether you create a presentation or not, here is a list of things you could cover off in your critique:

• Short introduction with a project brief (if you have one).
• Give the audience the context of the work and restate the project goals.
• Explain who the solution is for (keep the user at the center).
• Tell them the stage at which the work is done (i.e., this is an early stage mid-fidelity design showcasing X).
• Communicate the session’s goals. You could even write them down on a board or in the presentation. This helps to keep the discussion focused on what you want to get out of it.
• Include some brief research conclusions that helped support the design decisions.
• Showcase the design without explaining everything. You want the participants to make their own judgments without your input. Let the participants observe the designs based on the objectives you have shared.
• Allow time for feedback and discussion.

Give time for the design review

It should go without saying, but always allow time for others to review the designs and digest them. Also, be aware of who is in the room with you. If you are the most senior person in the room, allow others to go first; otherwise, you risk drowning out other people’s opinions because you are the one who has the most power. Similarly, make sure you’re encouraging diverse voices in critiques. It’s easy to fall into a trap of the privileged few having the loudest voices. Having diverse opinions in your design team will make sure that your end solutions are as inclusive as possible and have a much broader impact.

Before the critique, remember:

• Take notes or have someone else dedicated to taking them.
• Ask questions to clarify something if you are unsure of it.
• Giving and receiving feedback takes work, time, and practice.
• Through design critique each session, you’ll be on both ends of the spectrum: giving feedback to your team and receiving it for your own work.
• Try not to let your emotions get in the way or take it personally. The goal is to improve the design; it is not an insult to the work that is being shown.
• Before the session, it is important to release any emotional attachment to your work.
• Listen. Don’t just wait for others to stop talking, really listen. You’re more likely to be listened to if you’ve listened well yourself.
• Try not to argue, defend yourself against the feedback or bring hostility into the conversation. Design critiques are usually filled with negative and positive feedback. The environment is created to encourage constructive criticism.
• Practice gratitude, be grateful that someone is taking the time to review, and provide a different perspective from your own.

The difference between Criticism vs Critique

A lot of people don’t understand that there’s a difference between critique and criticism. This is especially common if you’ve invited stakeholders or non-design folks into the room. It’s always worth writing your own ‘critique charter’ that outlines the rules of engagement and any important design principles before starting any form of regular critique and sharing it with all the parties who are getting involved.

Indicators of Critiques

• Focuses on the structure of the design or product. How it works to solve a problem or get the message across, figure out what makes sense, what is working, and what isn’t.
• Asks for clarification about the intentions of the design. They are trying to understand what the designer was attempting to create.
• The message is delivered with a positive outlook that creates a space for encouragement and pragmatism for moving forward.
• The feedback is concrete and specific, so the team understands what direction they need to go next.
• Asking questions is often a better approach than making statement judgments. This invites response and clarification instead of providing closed feedback.

Examples could be:

“I wonder if the placement of the title going to could be confusing to users?”

“Is this solving the original problem we are addressing?”

“Will this interaction have any knock-on affect the usability of this feature?”

“Are we ok with this design causing the user more friction?”

Indicators of Criticism

• People look for faults within the design rather than focusing on the objectives.
• It condemns what it does not understand, which could cause a feeling of culpability or stress.
• Feedback can be vague and sometimes too general, which could delay the project if the team is confused about which direction to go.
• Criticism focuses on what is lacking in the design instead of what the current design is solving.

Examples could be:

“I don’t like the shape of the button.”

“This doesn’t feel like it’s the right color.”

“Why are we doing this?”

“I don’t think it looks good enough.”

Setting the tone

Some product and design teams have a set of principles they like to stick to help guide the discussion and prevent negative energy throughout the session.

Tips for a good design critique

Finally, here are some unstructured tips that may help you in our next critique:

Descriptive and constructive: Talk about the actual design and avoid generalizations.

Make it about the design: Be objective and focus on the work.

They are Actionable: Offer ideas (if you have them), but don’t be prescriptive.

Do not make it about yourself: It’s not about being right or showing off — it’s about helping your teammates get better and pushing their designs along. It’s better to understand and have empathy than to be right.

Do not design during the session: Do not design or redesign during the critique session. This may put pressure on you and the team and does not allow for time to analyze and absorb the feedback.

Strong opinions weakly held: Having strong opinions is great. It shows conviction and knowledge. Being belligerent and unmoving with those opinions is not great. Remember, your perspective is just one perspective.

What happens in critique stays in critique: If you are running critiques as a design team-only ritual, try and instigate a ‘Chatham house rules’ style approach, where you leave the disagreements in critique in the room. Similarly, when a decision has been made, except that the decision has been made and move on. We’re all hired by our companies for a reason and need to trust in our teams.

Leave the room with actions: Documenting your discussions and decisions is the only way you’ll actually make changes, and more importantly, documenting the actions that are needed as a result of your discussions and decisions

Design Critique: Rules of Engagement

As you prepare for this session, a great tool to use is a design critique template. This helps focus the discussion and fosters achieving your goals objectives. Check out the template to help you with framing your design critiques.

Design Critique helps improve product design processes

Running Design Critique often can significantly improve the quality you’re outputting, and speed up the design process. With critiques, you also benefit from having a regular (or semi-regular) ritual within your design team where you encourage people to share their work early, provide each other feedback and peer review, and generally build an accepting, open culture within your design team. If you keep your critique structured and focused, everyone will feel better about the outcome. Taking the critique seriously shows that you are taking design seriously. That reflects well on you, your design team and will ultimately be good for the product!

Resources:

I could not have written this article without a few resources. I used my experience (and my colleagues’ experiences) with some informative articles to help me to write this: Sarah Gibbons Design Critiques: Encourage a Positive Culture to Improve Products Jake Knapp 9 Rules For Running A Productive Design Critique and Scott Berkun How To Run a Design Critique. If you’re looking for more tips and materials on the subjects, there’s a lot of resources there. Good luck!