The Struggles of Online Design Review Session and How CICIL Took On It
In the process of giving user the best solution, product designers have to be collaborative, and that include sending and receiving design feedbacks.
At CICIL, as we were still proceeding with our work from anywhere policy, design review session was conducted remotely. We used Figma comment feature if we want to point out a design choice directly, Slack thread to ask general design question, and online meet session if a deeper discussion is needed. The process just happened naturally. It was unregulated, everyone could comment at any time.
But frankly, it could create some confusions.
For example, when you receive design feedbacks, you will get plenty of comments. Feedbacks will keep flooding in if you don’t put time restriction. It could get pretty overwhelming. The commenter will also have a difficult time to track other comments. Has this idea been said before? The commenter will have to open every comment thread.
Facing these problems, our product design team at CICIL gathered up to come up with a solution. And thus, we listed out every pain point we had experienced regarding design review session.
What should I review?
Have you ever been given a design solution to be reviewed, but you’re clueless on what to comment? You saw nice visuals, but you didn’t know exactly what the designer tried to solve?
Here’s what you should do: Tell information on what to review.
When you want your design to be evaluated, you have to provide them with context.
- What is your main goal? What are you trying to achieve?
- Why are you making these designs? What is the story?
When you tell the context in advance, your team will understand more about your decisions.
The feedback branched out
There are times when a feedback can go astray and deviate when it’s not limited within a scope. To prevent this, the designer should define the design scope beforehand.
- What kind of feedback are you looking for?
- What kind of feedback are you NOT looking for?
For example, you just finished designing the wireframes, so you don’t want someone to comment on style. You can state that you’re looking for feedback on flow and experience, and you want them to refrain making a comment on visual.
When can I work on revisions if the feedbacks keep coming in?
Without a review deadline, anyone can comment on your design at any time. You could have almost finished the design, but suddenly someone gave a major feedback, pushing your progress to be delayed.
To handle this, set a review duration so you can work on revisions accordingly, depending on the project needs and time constraint. If the project needs to be done fast, then 2 days of review duration should be enough. If the project is not urgent, 3 or 4 days are adequate.
Confusion when conducting a design review session via online meeting
At some point, you will have to communicate your design decision through online meeting. But if the meeting is unregulated, it could create some confusions.
Ever experienced a meeting that ended without a clear follow through? What was the conclusion of that meeting? Or when someone became fixated talking about one topic, so the duration got stretched out and other topics got forgotten.
In this setting, it is better if you prepare the meeting beforehand, by arranging an agenda and setting some rules.
- Tell the participants the background story and main goal of the design.
- Break down the design in parts, slide in a Q&A session by the end of each part. Participants can only ask questions after the design has been explained.
- If you collaborated with another designer, assign roles and turns. Who is talking and who is taking notes? Who explains this part or that part?
- At the end of the meeting, conclude the meeting summary and findings, and tell them your next action.
Designing a Design Review
Based on this retrospective, we made a new design review flow in the hope of improving our design feedback management.
Our Design Review in Action
Finally, we made this design review template and feedback summary to give wider context of our design. This way, all participants can view every feedback that has come in and whether we have worked on it or not.
Then, we tell the team to come check our design.
I hope this will help you too the same way this has helped mine. Feel free to try it!
