Design Critiques: Solved

A meeting to enjoy rather than fear

Let’s admit it, critique is tough. It’s perhaps one of the hardest things to deal with as a designer. It’s not easy to seek open feedback from your peers on work you’ve put so much of your time and effort into. Even though it’s essential for the collaborative UX process, design critiques can still bring a sense of uneasiness and tension.

The design community worldwide swears by this form of constructive criticism. Some of the most innovative and successful companies have implemented regular design critique sessions within their working dynamic. All in all, critiques should leave you feeling inspired. They should help you unleash the superpowers of your design team and establish a positive culture for improving products. After all, receiving feedback is a natural part of the design process. Then why can design critiques feel so intimidating? How can we turn things around and transform critique sessions into meetings to enjoy rather than fear?

It all starts with the mindset

Have you wasted so much energy stressing or being anxious about a meeting or a presentation just to realize the tension you’ve created interferes with your ability to perform well? Sometimes having the wrong mindset may backfire and put us in a self-sabotaging mode.

Successful design critique sessions require the right mentality. Setting the right expectations in advance would help you face the sessions squarely. After all, critique is about analysis and not judgment. As designers, we should be looking to analyze what is or what is not working with a specific solution, not focusing on the individual behind that solution. We have to acknowledge the fact that giving and receiving feedback is not an easy task. It requires bravery to speak your mind openly in a professional setting and self-control to practice active listening to feedback, which might not feel so pleasant. For both tasks, a certain dose of mental preparation is necessary.

On the other hand, let’s not be too harsh on ourselves. Feeling emotional is a natural reaction to criticism, constructive or not. It’s essential to want to defend your creation after all the hours you’ve put into hard work. But it’s up to us to decide what we are going to make out of the shared feedback and how to handle it. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received on the matter comes from the Stoic wisdom and it’s composure. Seneca once said, “It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it.” Facing and providing feedback is an integral part of being a designer. This is why learning how to provide constructive feedback as well as receive and act on it is a game-changing skill every design professional must master.

Here are some tips on how to get in the right headspace for a successful design critique session:

• Channel the right energy. Positive thoughts result in positive outcomes. Put your pink sunglasses on and focus on the positive aspects of such a workshop. Approaching the meeting with negativity will only make you more anxious.
• Create a safe space and encourage open communication. You can start by having an introductory meeting about design critique to set the right expectations in your design team about what critique is about and what is not. People will be more accepting of the idea when there is no ambiguity.
• Be prepared. Practice gives an advantage over the unexpected. Whether you are having a dry run of your critique presentation or trying to master how to handle feedback properly with regular practice, you are familiarizing yourself and becoming comfortable with discomfort. Familiarizing yourself with any supplied session materials would help you provide better feedback.
• Listen, acknowledge, analyze, and act. First, listen to the feedback, then accept the fact that you may feel emotional and defensive inside due to that feedback, but don’t let it show on the outside. Then it’s important to calm down and revisit what has been said with a clear head in order to draw realistic conclusions to act upon.
• Defend the design to the tactful limit. Admit your fault if you have one. Don’t fight unnecessarily. Remember, critique is not about pointing out flaws it’s about analysis.
• When critiquing with fellow designers, keep in mind it is up to you whether you take the advice or feedback. You know your product best. Sometimes great things are considered unpopular when they are first proposed.
• A design is never finished or perfect, so keep on improving as much as possible.

Running an effective design critique

Along the way of my professional path, I’ve participated in and facilitated a good amount of design critique sessions. What I’ve realized was that critiques are about improving the team as much as they are about improving the given designs. If you are thinking of giving critique sessions a try it’s good to have a healthy team dynamic first. Try addressing any obstacles that you might be undergoing before partaking in a design critique session. Advocate for a safe environment where honesty is encouraged and trust is valued. People won’t take guidance or professional opinion from someone they are uncomfortable with. This is why working on psychological safety before figuring out the session formalities is vital to the success of your sessions. This would definitely improve your team’s dynamic and make design critiques more enjoyable.

Like every new initiative, you will need some adjustment time. Give yourself and your team a testing period where you can try out different approaches and critique formats. Feel free to experiment and iterate. Just as design is never done, you should treat the critique design processes the same way. Asses what is and what is not working for you and your fellow teammates. It’s important to set some goals too. Consider why you want to partake in critique sessions and what you aim to accomplish with them. To move forward and ensure your meetings are actually serving their purpose, highlight the main goals you want to achieve as a group.

Think about establishing some ground rules - format and presentation-wise. Rules are needed to provide structure and guidance to your sessions. Here are some things to consider before running a design critique:

• Session length: I find 45 min to 1-hour meetings work best since you have enough time to present your case, receive feedback and discuss possible solutions. Plus, it’s not too long to leave participants exhausted.
• Session goal: Your meeting needs to have a specific goal they need to tackle. Think about what questions or concerns you are attempting to resolve and share them with the critique participants. Sooner the better. If you are working on a complex product/solution or a new domain that requires explanation to your fellow critiques it’s better to share a solution brief ( I set it up in Miro) beforehand so that your team may get familiar with the intricacies. That way you minimize the chance of getting superficial feedback and eliminate the burden of investing too much time in learning about a product you won’t be working on.

Solution Brief: Fill in before the workshop and share it with the participants in advance for them to get familiar with your case.

• Activity timing: Like any good workshop activity, it’s good to set time limits on different activity components to ensure you are not carried away with the less important stuff. Timeboxing is a wonderful way to keep the momentum of your team going and get them to generate ideas and feedback. Aim for shorter time chunks to avoid creativity block and keep things moving forward. You can always add extra time to your timebox at the end if you're not quite finished or satisfied with the result of the activity.
• Providing feedback: Think about how you would like your peers to provide feedback. Are you a fan of silent meetings, or do you fancy group discussions? Is feedback going to be provided in a specific order? I really enjoy the format of the Tactical Design Critique. Last but not least, give the whole team, not just senior members, a chance to contribute. Some participants may be less forward to speaking up than others, but their feedback is also valuable.
• Feedback quality: It is very important to clarify the difference between bad and good feedback. Meaningful feedback is crucial for helping designers move forward with the design problems they are facing. Always link your feedback to the customer and business goals. Keep it objective and focus on how the presented design meets or deviates from the main objectives. Remember to be specific and straightforward with your feedback to provide value and avoid vagueness. Try to stay away from your personal preferences as much as possible and trust the designer to explore new solutions and make their own call. To avoid shallow feedback you can also lean on heuristic rules of thumb when measuring the quality of the presented design. You can also share your interactive prototype or screens for review in advance and let the critique participants explore your solutions before the session.
• Roles: Decide who will be responsible for what. Ensure all participants understand their roles and what is expected from them in advance. Like in any project, things can quickly become messy and confusing if the roles and responsibilities are not clearly established. Assigning roles will not only help by having a more efficient critique session but also encourage engaged participation. Besides the classic roles of presenter, critiques, and notetaker, I like to have 2 people who act as meeting owners and their responsibility is to shape and evolve the critique as well as help presenters prepare and organize their sessions. They also act as critique facilitators and are responsible for the regular execution of the meetings and sending the pre and post-meeting follow-up materials. Having 2 critique owners is great because the work is equally divided and it’s easier to have creative discussions when you have an equal to talk to. It is important to say that roles may overlap with critiquers. If your design team is small (3–4 people), you may have your meeting owner act as a notetaker or critiquer at the same time for example. Part of making design critiques more enjoyable is to take out the burden of the additional work that is needed for the session execution. Delegating tasks to your team members makes things easier for all participants and by that, you are increasing your chance of making critiques a regular activity. Don’t forget to always adjust existing models to what makes you think will be suitable for you and your team. You can also read more on roles here.
• Freedom and creativity: Even the best-considered critique formats cannot be treated as one-size-fits-all when it comes to providing help. Feel comfortable shaking things up when needed. Give each presenter the opportunity to tailor the critique meeting to their preference and match the method to the specifics of their problem.
• Action items: At the end of the day we all want to produce better products. In case you need to redesign some aspects of your original idea make sure to work on some next steps to follow up on after the critique is over. This would elevate the quality of your work and keep a record of the evolution of your design decisions.
• Design Critique Template: Having a trusty, ready-to-go template for your sessions can optimize your process and save you time. You can try out the Strategic Design Critique Template. It’s a great way to start your collaborative journey.

Summary

Design critiques are a unique exercise that, if done well, can help you and your team polish their hard and soft skills. It promotes learning by exploring and testing new ideas. By providing a safe space for exploration and feedback, design critique can establish team trust and a sense of belonging. We shouldn’t forget how inspiring it feels to be surrounded by collaborative and talented peers. This practice also develops your team’s design culture, which is vital to maturing your team. In other words, practicing positive criticism can help elevate your products and team at the same time.

Just as with any other initiative, you will need some time to adjust and polish this new step in the collaborative design process. The first session might be overwhelming but critique gets easier with time and there are so many benefits you and your team can leverage in the long run. Test and experiment until you find the right format that works well for your environment. After all, practice makes perfect so why not make design critique a consistent ritual for your team?