How to give good design feedback
Some handy tips for doing an effective design critique
A design critique refers to analyzing a design, and giving feedback on whether it meets its objectives. — nngroup.com
Every feature in a product solves a particular user need.
The goal of a team is to build features that solve the user need in the most effective and efficient manner.
To arrive at a good solution, solid collaboration is needed between product, design and engineering. Giving good feedback is a key component of any collaboration process.
During the design phase, quality Feedback is especially important. It can help the designers build a better and scalable solution. This feedback takes the form of a “design critique” which is given during the review process.
Over the past year, my experiences with design reviews has taught me some valuable lessons.
Often, design review meetings with a lot of disagreement, tend to descend into chaos. This happens because of the following reasons:
- Lack on clarity on the problem being focused on.
- Giving vague feedback which is not actionable.
- Reviews ending up becoming ego clashes.
Chaotic design reviews are a colossal waste of everyone’s time and energy.
In this article, I would like to share my learnings from participating in numerous design review meetings.
Hopefully, these will help you become a better design critique and facilitate better design review meetings.
Setting Context at the Start of the Review
Well begun is half done — Aristotle
A structured start can help you dramatically improve the quality of the design critique.
So, a design review meeting should never start without setting proper context for all the participants.
The designer should share the following information at the beginning:
- The Problem (what is the user problem being solved)
- The Goal (what do we intend to achieve by solving the problem)
- The success criteria (how will we measure whether we are successful or not)
This helps ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding the problem being solved. Often, the difference is not so much on the design as it is about the problem being solved. (Differences on this count must be resolved before the review process begins)
Best practices to follow as a reviewer
1. Listen before you speak
When you come to a design review, you might be expecting the designs to look a certain way.
If the designs are not as per expectations, you might be tempted to interrupt the designer while they are speaking.
My humble request is not to indulge in this behaviour. As this can derail the entire walkthrough and take the discussion in a different direction.
Solution: Wait for the designer to walk you through the designs. Understand their thought process, their articulation of the solution and make a mental note of what all you want to ask.
You should only speak when the designer pauses for comments/questions.
2. Focus on specific issues rather than passing judgement
It is very easy to trash someone’s work.
You just have to say — This looks really bad, this won’t work, you haven’t thought through the problem etc.
Instead of passing offhand remarks, try to be specific in your feedback.
If you didn’t like the overall design, there must be a reason why you came to that conclusion. The reason could be: the entry steps were not clear, the number of steps in the user journey are too many etc.
Whatever be the reason, Mention it explicitly. This will help the designer address your specific concern and explain their thought process.
3. Ask questions instead of prescribing solutions
While doing a design review, we have a tendency to suggest solutions.
For eg. if you feel that a button’s colour is not prominent, you might say — “Let’s make this button’s colour more bright.” This could potentially take the conversation to a different tangent.
Instead, you should describe the problem to the designer — The button’s colour might not be prominent enough to make it stand out on the screen. What do you think?
This highlights your concern explicitly and leads to a more productive discussion.
Thus, the golden rule is to ask questions that highlight the problem.
4. Think from the user’s perspective
While evaluating a workflow, try to imagine what would be going on in the user’s mind.
Carefully look at the details on the screen, the user interactions involved, the steps in the workflow. Based on your understanding of the customer, try to imagine what all things can go wrong.
This will help you do a much better job of highlighting problems.
For example, I always look at the messaging on the screen to see if — It is intuitive enough for the user. Does it inform them on the next steps?
Similarly, try to evaluate every aspect of the design by putting yourself in the user’s shoes.
Concluding a design review meeting
A design review is not done until the key decisions and action items are properly documented.
The responsibility of documentation falls upon the meeting organiser. This is either the designer or the product manager.
I prefer to take notes when I am part of a review meeting. This frees up the designer to focus on presenting the designs and answering questions.
Good notes capture the feedback and the design changes that are required.
This helps ensure that you don’t keep running in circles and revisit the same design problems. If designs are closed faster, the technical development can also start faster.
Conclusion
If done well, design reviews can be an effective tool for collaboration. They can help you weed out usability issues and simplify user interactions.
The quality of design reviews can improve dramatically if context is set at the start, reviewers lead with questions, focus on the problems and think from the user’s perspective.
So, the next time you go in for a design review, do try out the above tips and witness the magic of healthy collaboration unfold!
