Crits: how we get feedback at the ODS Lab
Here at the Ontario Digital Service Lab, we’ve been trying new ways to get feedback on the work that we’re doing. One of the ways we’re trying is to hold a “crit” once a week. A crit is short for critique, and that’s what we do at them every week: we get together to critique work that has been done over the past week.
Our crits are a chance for us to show our work and get feedback on it from different perspectives. This helps us improve on our products and create better versions of them. For all you product management enthusiasts out there, the crit system also helps limit how much time we spend running in circles, getting conflicting feedback from different stakeholders; by inviting everyone to contribute at a set time, and through a set channel, we can avoid the pitfalls of “design by committee”.
The crits have a distinct process to them. We first upload all the documents we that will be discussed in the crit on Google Drive so that everything is in one place and easy to access. We use Zoom to host video conferences because they allow large groups to screenshare; this is important so that people don’t get lost as we are walking them through our products.
Before each crit, we make an agenda. We go through each piece of work on the agenda by first giving a brief run down on the problem to be solved, then the purpose behind the product, and then a walkthrough of the product so everyone has the necessary background. Following the introduction, anyone in the group is free to share their opinions or any concerns about the piece being discussed.
During the crit, we have an official note-taker capturing all the feedback in a shared document, which allows us to circulate the feedback after the crit, and comes in very handy when we need to iterate on the product. In some cases, we might iterate a product, and bring a revised version back to crit for further feedback; this helps us get to the cyclical, iterative nature of agile product development.
As a remote team based in Kitchener-Waterloo, we’re always looking for ways to bridge the gap and work closer with the home office in Toronto. (As our friends in Australia say, “If someone on your team is working remotely, you are working remotely”.)
When we first started our crits, we invited members of our immediate team at the Lab. Not only did this let us get feedback from the peers closest to us, it also let us test out the best way to structure our crits. Gradually, once we found a proof of concept on how to structure the crits, we opened them up to anyone from the Ontario Digital Service. Having “open crits” every Thursday helps us get even more feedback from a variety of perspectives.
Here’s what Laura (a co-op student at the Lab) says about how the crits are having an impact on our work:
“The work I had critiqued was the prototype of a digital inclusion scale. I learned that a lot more research should have been done prior to making the scale, as there were many factors relating to digital inclusion that I didn’t think to consider. The feedback I received at the crit gave me a new perspective on digital inclusion and allowed me to go back to the drawing board to do a lot more research. The feedback helped me get on the right track to producing a useful tool that can be used as a starting point in our generative user research.”
Portia’s (another co-op at the Lab) work on an ODS Lab infographic was the subject of another open crit:
“I learned from the crit that while it is important to get feedback from a variety of people, it is best done in this collaborative manner. Before we started doing our formal crits, I was getting all kinds of clashing feedback from multiple people. When comments were made about my work during the crit, they would be discussed and concluded. Therefore, the changes I proceeded to make were mutually agreed upon by everyone — making the iterative process a lot easier and shorter.”
Our crits so far have been very beneficial in helping us improve our work, as well as making the type of work we do here at the ODS Lab clearer to others. Along the way, we have iterated and refined our approach to get us to a model that works best for our team.
