Part 2: Presenting Your Work
The Crit Playbook
Part 1 of this series covered why critique is important and how to decide when you’re ready for feedback. Part 2 offers guidance on how to present your work once you’ve decided you’re ready for feedback from a group.
Presenting
Even in Crit, people can suffer from information overload or get easily distracted. When you’re presenting, you can do a lot to make your work easy to follow. This will help everyone be able to participate and makes sure you get the most benefit out of everyone’s time.
Set Context
When you’re presenting, always start by giving a little background on your work. This should only take 2–3 minutes. To being concise when you’re setting context, it helps to know what type feedback you need. Then ask yourself, what is the minimum context necessary to enable others to provide feedback? Try presenting only that context. Leaving more time for others to talk means you’ll get more feedback or more specific questions on what type of context they might find helpful.
If you think it will take longer than 2–3 minutes to set the context, you might be sharing too much at once. The full context of your work is not needed in order to get input. Focusing on a specific portion of your work will help you get actionable feedback.
Here are some details that are usually helpful to include for any project:
- The problem you’re trying to solve
- The outcome you’re hoping to achieve for the user
- Constraints you’re designing within (such as timelines, scope, resources, technical limitations, etc.)
Show. Don’t Tell!
Our brains process images faster than text. Less effort is required of an audience when pictures support a message. A good rule of thumb for any presentation is to ask the audience to read OR listen, but not both. Use visuals (like sketches, wireframes, mockups, screenshots, etc.) to illustrate your points while you talk.
Things you can say without showing it:
- The problem you’re solving
- The type of feedback you need
- Constraints (e.g. deadlines, resources)
- Goals, hopeful outcomes, metrics for success
Things you can show through visuals:
- Complex details that help illustrate context
- What the current solution looks like (assuming you’re improving an existing feature)
- Ideas you previously tried that you already ruled out
- The specific part of the design that needs feedback
It’s important for your visuals to be easy to digest. Avoid putting a bunch of words on the screen. People will naturally try to read and listen at the same time, which distracts from actually processing the information.
Avoid small labels or arrows through flows that can’t be quickly understood. A better approach for feedback on flows is to show a before and after visual. This makes it more clear how your work is different from what currently exists, and where you need feedback.
People see and interpret almost everything through contrast and comparison. The contrast between before and after helps separate your work from what currently exists, and highlights the differences where you need input.
Facilitate The Conversation
As the presenter, it is your job to facilitate the conversation you want to have. To do that, you need to be solid on two things:
- The goals of your project
- The type of feedback you need
It is your responsibility to keep the conversation focused on the feedback you need. If someone is giving feedback that is off topic or out of scope for the conversation you want to have, it’s your job to point this out. It can be as simple as letting them know, “I see what you’re saying. Right now, I could use more feedback on [reiterate what you need feedback on] first before we have that conversation.”
It only takes one person to break the seal for off-topic feedback to change the conversation for the whole group. It’s important to keep the conversation on track. In the end, you’re responsible for making sure you get the feedback you need.
Talk Less And Listen More
Remember, you came to Crit to hear from others! If you find yourself doing most of the talking during your time allotment, you should switch gears and offer the floor to the group.
Coming Up Next
Part 3 of this series will dive in to the conversations during design critique; how to give feedback and how to receive it.
Want to be part of our product design team? We’re hiring! Reach out to learn more. carolann.merchant@bleacherreport.com
