“I want to be open to critique but to be honest I feel it is hurtful and I don’t know how to respond… …I do feel defensive and attacked and not trusted and I don’t know what to do.” That quote comes from a long-time friend in the design community…

“We help organizations improve their design and innovation capabilities.” “We help organizations be more collaborative and human-centric.” “We help organizations learn how to utilize their talent and execute on their creative and innovative ideas.” These are just a few of the lead lines used in the various pitches and introductions…

Asking for feedback is a universal part of the design process regardless of organization, industry or maturity. At some point in the process of making something you turn to others and either explicitly or implicitly open the doors to collecting their thoughts on what you’ve constructed. It could be that…

Like many others I know, I’m using the beginning of this year to attempt to make some adjustments to my life. I’m trying not to be fanatical or even all that strict about it. I didn’t start work on a bunch of new habits and behaviors and life changes immediately…

What to do when the client sends you their own design instead of feedback on yours. — Most of us have been in situations where, instead of getting what we’d consider to be useful feedback on our designs, we get a list of changes to make to it. And often this list doesn’t include a clear indication of why the changes should be made. …

In the time that Aaron and I have been sharing our thoughts on critique, we’ve had a lot of opportunities to speak with designers, developers, project managers, etc. about their organizations and how they’ve incorporated critique (or haven’t) as a part of their process. In those conversations, the topic of…

People have a tendency to jump to a solution before they fully articulate the problem that they’ve found. Design Researchers see this all the time in usability studies, interviews, etc. Participants frequently make statements that begin with phrases along the lines of “It should do…”, “I wish it did…” or…

In a recent post Aaron talked about the importance of intent in the success of critique. Without the right intent on both sides critiques can go nowhere. Or worse, they can hurt the design, the designer and the relationship between the designer and the critics. But now lets say that…