Three tips for useful design reviews
As UXers we are encouraged to solicit feedback as much as possible during the design process. Sometimes this doesn’t go down well. Loads of great designs go down the drain because we don’t structure our sessions thoughtfully enough.
You’ve booked a design review and everyone is on the call. You’re keen to share your design and get feedback. You share your screen, show the interface and you ask what people think, and hear:
- ‘Make the CTA bigger!’
- ‘Can we use a different shade of blue?’
- *Awkward silence*…‘Yeah, it looks nice’.
This isn’t useful.
A lot of colleagues misunderstand what we do. Designers are historically seen as a way to make interfaces look professional. Colleagues think they need to tell us what we should be doing, meetings derail, and teams end up focusing on trivial things (see bike-shedding).
This is all avoidable. I’ll be sharing three tips that have made my design reviews more useful.
Remind colleagues of the project’s goals
The way we strive for our interfaces to be efficient, effective and delightful, we need to do the same with our design reviews. You might spend days or weeks designing, but for your stakeholders, sponsor and colleagues, this is one of the many projects they’re part of. You need to reduce their cognitive load — remind people what’s going on!
Before you show the proposed interface, start with your project’s goal(s). For example: ‘We want to reduce the drop-off rate on our checkout cart’. Always put this at the beginning of your Figma File, Miro board, Mural or whatever you use to show your interface so it’s prominent.
Make colleagues understand we are focusing on solving an agreed problem and want their input based on achieving specific goals. This helps feedback stay focused and productive.
Better represent the user by showing your journey
In layman’s terms, show your thinking and talk about how you came to your proposed solution. This is where we show our value as Designers and advocate a good end-user experience. Talk about how other ideas didn’t work. For example, an idea may invite pain points as it received poor feedback or promoted poor usability.
This will give your proposed interface more justification. This helps colleagues understand another level of what Designers focus on. In my experience, this helps show we care about what affects the people using the interface and that our role is to represent them.
Listen to your colleagues
Now that you have talked about how the interface helps achieve business goals and provides a good user experience. You need to let go of control, the interface isn’t yours. The Product Team owns the interface and in most cases, the business approves it. There is no need to ‘defend’ anything. Embrace positive intent. Collaboration is key to success.
Subject Matter Experts, Product Managers and Product Owners are proxy users. Other team members may also know things that you don’t. There may be feedback that makes the project jump to success. Listen to any feedback and make notes to help understand what is being said. Understand the feedback and articulate your point of view again if need be, and then come to an agreement to move forward.
Summary
Design reviews can be a lot more useful when you:
- show the proposed interface is solving a business problem by stating the design goal(s)
- show your alternative ideas to help the end-user
- have an open mind and listen to your colleagues for a win-win scenario.
Want to learn more? Further reading
I found these books useful when learning about how I can improve my design reviews:
- Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever
- 97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know edited by Dan Berlin, pages 70–71: Remember the Four Questions of Critique.
- Human Powered: Supercharge your digital product teams with emotional intelligence by Trenton Moss.
I love connecting with and learning from others, if you found this useful drop a comment. Let me know how you’ve overcome design review challenges or if this resonated with you. Let’s connect — you can add me on LinkedIn.
