5 things we learned running distributed design critiques
I recently explained how we organise distributed design critiques to give our designers the critical perspective needed to counter bias.
While it’s not been easy — our design team is spread across different countries, sectors and clients — its been hugely beneficial and we’ve learned a lot.
The top 5 things we have learned so far
1. Adding more people doesn’t lead to better sessions
Ideally, you want no more than 4–5 people in a remote critique. Any more than 5 and it becomes increasingly difficult to ask questions without interrupting each other.
While “Sorry, no after you — No, after you” dialogue can be mitigated by facilitation techniques such as “round robin”, I wouldn’t recommend enforcing a structured dialogue as natural discussion leads to far richer insight.
Ultimately, when a critique is going well it should feel like a friendly conversation between people with the same goals trying to explore and surface good thinking.
2. Constrain scope…
…and then constrain it some more.
I struggled with a recent design critique. It was a relatively complex user journey that incorporated geo-location, mapping, drawing tools, and several screens of form input. All of which was neatly wrapped up in a complex business domain.
To be honest, “struggled” is an understatement — It completely fried my brain.
The problem was there were far too many interactions to digest, understand and analyse in 45 minutes. The scope was too broad.
Rather than exploring a user journey in its entirety we find sessions are more productive when they focus on a specific component, interaction or approach. It’s the designer’s responsibility to define the scope of the discussion at the beginning of a session. Depending on the designer’s goals for the critique the scope could be high-level (eg. a flow’s alignment with mental model) or low-level (eg. accessibility considerations). Just don’t try and tackle both at the same time.
3. Make sure everyone understands a design’s context and goals before exploring the solution
While I’ve mentioned this before, I think it warrants repeating:
It’s crucial to have a distinct separation between discussing “what is this design is trying to achieve?” from “does this design achieve it?”
Occasionally we‘ve found ourselves exploring a design solution when a (seemingly innocent) question causes a seismic shift in the audience’s understanding of the design context. When this happens it completely derails the discussion.
The impact of circling back to context is so great that we’re currently trialling the addition of a 30 second pause to allow the audience to reflect on context and formulate questions before seeing the solution. The idea being, that it gives the audience an opportunity to process what’s been told to them before having to confirm they understand.
4. Provide plenty of supporting artefacts in advance
When it comes to sharing the collateral gathered to inform design decisions there’s no such thing as too much.
It’s far better to have personas/wire-flows/experience maps/blueprints attached to a “Critique context” Trello card than buried somewhere in google drive (or was it dropbox?).
We’re on a schedule here people — get with the programme 😜
5. Use the term ‘audience‘ not ‘critics’
Making this small semantic tweak can have a big impact on design critiques for two reasons:
- Anything you can do to distance the process from the word “criticism” will reduce a presenter’s anxiety and a less anxious presenter results in a more open discussion.
- In many cases, an audience member will learn as much as they contribute.
Based on these, “audience” just feels better.
Kainos is committed to developing a world-class experience design community. We’re always on the lookout for talented UX/IxD/service/content designers, and researchers. If you’re passionate about solving complex problems and designing life-changing digital services get in touch.
