8 tips for presenting designs in a crit
Get your designs better, faster with these tips for getting great feedback from every crit
In an earlier post, we talked about how our Getty Images Product Design team gets more out of our structured design crits by ensuring all participants follow 7 simple tips for providing feedback in a crit.
But we’ve found that it’s just as important that the designer presenting their work in a critique follows certain guidelines. That’s why we’re sharing another set of tips, this time focused on getting better feedback when sharing your work in a crit. These 8 tips will help you get the most out of your time presenting designs.
1. Get focused feedback by providing context
Presenters should let participants know where they are in the design process and set clear expectations for the type of feedback they want from the crit. The feedback that’s helpful for early explorations is very different from what you’d be looking for when sharing more refined designs. In either case, we should be sure to also call out the guardrails we’re working within — are we unable to explore certain directions or solutions? If so, let your participants know so they aren’t giving feedback that conflicts with your constraints. The more context you provide, the more powerful their feedback will be.
2. Share strong, distinct options
We know how many iterations it takes to explore and refine a design. But crits aren’t math tests and we don’t need to see your work. We want to see the results of your work — strong, distinct designs that show a range of solutions that best solve the problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re sharing a rough concept alongside a polished design, as long as you can speak to the pros and cons of each and why you think they do the best job of addressing the problem you’re trying to solve.
3. Share your point of view
Closely related to sharing strong, distinct options is coming to the crit with a perspective on the work that you’re sharing. It’s your job as a presenter to help the participants understand the problem space you’re working in and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the solutions you’re sharing. Help us understand how each option best solves the problem at hand, as well as any issues you’re having with them. This perspective will help participants focus on what’s most important to you and give them a framework for sharing relevant, actionable feedback.
4. Don’t wait for a weekly crit
With our Product Design team supporting multiple websites, apps and tools, there’s always lots to discuss in our weekly crits. But that isn’t the only place where critiques should happen. We have a “crits on demand” Slack channel that lets any designer reach out to the wider team whenever they’re stuck or need to talk through a problem. Even when work is in very early or rough stages, a critique can be a catalyst for ideation, propelling a project forward. Many projects that never get the official “crit” treatment in our weekly meeting still benefit from the alignment and shared understanding we get from sharing work in a focused way with our peers.
5. Frame your decisions with “we”
“We” is one of the most powerful words in our design vocabulary. Regardless of if we’re speaking within product design or with cross-functional team members and stakeholders, we find that taking “I” out of the equation when we’re sharing our work changes the conversation. Using “we” reinforces that design is a team sport — the work we do builds off of that of our peers and is shaped by cross-functional collaboration. It also helps create a shared sense of ownership and alignment around our design decisions — shared decisions will always garner more support than individual ones.
6. Embrace the opportunity to present
Presenting is a learned skill. We all benefit from the ongoing practice of presenting — the more we present, the better we get at it. As a presenter in a crit, articulating how we’ve solved a problem helps us build confidence in our decisions and gain clarity around the choices we’ve made. It also allows us to “sell” our designs to the design team in a supportive environment. Once we’ve gained the support of the team in the context of the crit, it’s easier to stand behind our decisions when sharing our proposed design direction with broader cross-functional groups.
7. Don’t ignore feedback
It can be tempting in a crit to speak to every tension and piece of feedback as they’re shared. But that’s not what a crit is designed for. As a presenter, your job is to ensure your participants’ feedback is captured (since our design team embraces pair designing, the other half of our pair acts as a dedicated notetaker) so that it can receive the thoughtful attention it deserves. The tension that seems impossible to address in the moment can often spur new ideas and push you in directions you didn’t expect. Sometimes, after taking the feedback away and exploring potential solutions, we realize that we’ll be unable to address a given tension in our designs. In these cases, we should clearly articulate the reasons we can’t address the feedback and share our rationale (and wherever possible the design exploration that led you to it) with the presenter who flagged it. Regardless of if the feedback is addressed in our designs or outside of it, we want everyone who participates in a crit to know that their feedback is taken seriously.
8. Let go of ego
The purpose of a critique isn’t to offer criticism of a final solution — it’s to gather perspectives on how well a potential solution addresses a given problem. It’s only natural that we as designers feel a sense of ownership over the solutions we’re sharing — but in the context of a crit, we must recognize that our collective expertise outweighs our individual contributions. When you’re too attached to “your” designs, you create a barrier between yourselves and the rest of the team. This ego barrier makes it hard to accept insights, perspectives, and expertise, hindering us from pushing our designs forward. No single person can expect to have all of the answers. Our colleagues, peers, users, and customers can give us great insights. It’s up to us to accept these insights and allow them to shape our work.
But these are just the tips of the iceberg (pardon the pun). What steps do you take to get the best possible feedback when sharing work in a crit? Share in the comments below.
