Part 4: The Role of Design Critique In Decision-making
The Crit Playbook
The final part of this series will talk about the attitude and approach to take toward design critique within the larger context of your team and the impact it has on your day-to-day decision making.
Attitudes Toward Critique
As a designer, your team is trusting and relying on you to be a decision-maker for your project. You should not lean on Crit as a place where you get direction. Your team can’t make your decisions for you!
Conversely, a team should not expect the feedback from Crit to dictate the final solution. Even if the director of product is in attendance and providing input, in Crit everything is take-it-or-leave it feedback.
Crit Is Not An Approval Process
Crit shouldn’t feel like a committee of art directors reviewing and approving work. It’s meant to provide healthy discussion and outside points of view. Crit should not be where decisions are made, debated, or approved. Crit is a place for open-minded discussion.
Following a style guide or brand standards is likely a constraint of your work. Some teams may need an approval process to make sure designs comply with pre-set guidelines. These evaluations and approvals should happen in a dedicated meeting. The outcome of an approval meeting is similar to a pass or fail test while the outcome of Critique is take it or leave it feedback.
Crit Is Not For Strategy Pivots
The process of setting a strategy for an area of work involves many layers of decisions, multiple people, meetings, and discussions. Designers should be actively involved in helping shape the strategy for their area of work.
In Crit, it can be helpful to include details on how the work you’re presenting connects to the roadmap for your team or broader product vision. But the strategy has likely been through rounds of feedback before you began producing work. This makes it difficult to discuss changes in strategy without the right stakeholders in the room. But it’s possible for input on strategy to come up in Crit that needs consideration. In that situation, you could choose to:
- Take down a note about the feedback and ask to follow up in a separate meeting. This ensures the feedback is heard, provides a dedicated time for discussion with the right set of people, and keeps the rest of Crit on track.
- Timebox the conversation during Crit. Offer to take the next 5–10 minutes to discuss the feedback so the entire group is included in the conversation. Remember, you still need to use the rest of your time to get the feedback you specified. If the discussion goes beyond the timebox, the conversation probably merits a separate meeting.
Crit Is Not Show and Tell
Part of your responsibility as a designer is to keep your design team aware of your progress, and it’s tempting to use Crit as a way to socialize work. The whole design team is conveniently in the room, you can show your progress and let everyone know that you have in fact been busy working. It can feel easier than documenting your progress. However, this isn’t the best use of everyone’s time.
The purpose of Crit is to receive input. If you aren’t looking for input and just want to share, it’s best to publish your work to message boards or share your progress during meetings meant for status updates.
Keep Your PM In the Loop
It doesn’t happen often, but it’s possible that in a single Crit, the team has helped you realize you’ve been going about your solution all wrong. Maybe you’ve done too much! Or too little… or drifted from the original problem. You might be thinking, “My PM is gonna freak out if we change direction.” or “I’ve invested so much time in my current solution… I’ll slow down the team if I pivot now.”
PMs are great thought partners! If you feel you need to explore a new direction, discuss the points raised in Crit with your PM. Help them understand why you think making a significant change is important to the user experience and the goals your team has set. Ask for their input, and their help in figuring out how to execute on the ideal solution while managing the team’s timeline. Even if they’re not in Crit, they still need to be part of the conversation.
Get Feedback Outside of Crit
Most teams have a weekly Crit. Waiting until the next meeting to get feedback can slow down progress on your work. It’s helpful to have tools to get input throughout your process.
Asynchronous Feedback
Exploring button styles? Typography? Or specific visual design choices? Decisions that are more tactical or small in scope don’t require a meeting. Tools that enable asynchronous design feedback can help you get input from your team as they have time throughout their day.
In-person Meetings
Maybe you could use a second pair of eyes on a problem that’s a bit larger in scope or hard to explain if you’re not doing it in person. Set up one-on-one time with a teammate or ask if you can stop by their desk for their input. Ask another designer, a PM, an engineer, or anyone who you think might have a helpful point of view!
In Conclusion
Overall, design critique is meant to be a place where designers can come together and offer helpful input on each other’s work. Maybe more than other roles and professions, designers recognize that good design can’t be made in solitude. You’ll never get it exactly right on your own. The best work comes from creativity, open-mindedness, and scrutiny.
See Full Series: The Crit Playbook
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