What is a design critique?

Designers within an organization can be deployed on different parts of a product or even across multiple products on a platform. If you’ve never attended a design critique, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

A design critique is a session where designers come together to share their in-progress work to give and receive feedback from each other. There are many benefits of presenting your work during a design critique.

1. Gain constructive feedback from team members to improve your designs.
2. Gather fresh perspectives to help solve a problem you’re stuck on.
3. Leverage existing design patterns from other designers’ work to build a consistent experience across products.
4. Build trust and exposure amongst your team and foster a culture of collaboration and honest feedback.

How does a remote design critique work?

Years ago, it was normal for teams to gather in a meeting room or collaboration space and present work in front of their colleagues.

Nowadays, if you work in a remote-first company, your team probably uses a collaboration tool such as Miro, Figjam or Mural. These platforms are great for design critiques as they provide a digital whiteboard to ideate and present work as if you and your team are all in a room together. Best of all, here are some design critique templates to help your team get started.

Miro Design Critique Template

Figjam Design critique template by Johnatan Uribe

Mural Design Critique Template

Facilitating the design critique

The facilitator is responsible for ensuring the design critique runs smoothly. This means getting teammates signed up to present their work, providing an agenda for the session, as well as facilitating conversations and time-boxing so that each presenter gets an equal amount of time to receive feedback.

The facilitator should also record the design critique session so that you can reference it later on. Sometimes, I find myself struggling to digest all the feedback in real-time. By recording the session, I don’t have to worry about trying to remember everything all at once or even taking notes during the session. I can easily review what has been said and play back the recording multiple times after the critique is over.

Why present work during a design critique?

Design critiques are a great way for teammates to share and gain exposure to different areas of a product or across multiple products. They provide opportunities to reuse and align design patterns in order to create a consistent user experience.

I like to present my work during design critique sessions to gain fresh perspectives or opinions if I get stuck while solving a problem. Getting unfamiliar eyes on your work can remove bias in thinking and raise questions that you may not have thought of.

Here are some tips to help you effectively present your work and receive feedback during a design critique.

1. Provide context

Background

It’s important to get everyone on the same level of understanding before jumping into your design share. Here are some questions I ask myself when providing context.

• What are the user goals and business needs for this project?
• What technical knowledge does the audience need in order to understand the problem?
• What decisions have been made that influenced the current design?
• What are the constraints of the project?

Remember, your audience may not be familiar with your work or what discussions have been had around the problem.

Focus areas

Not all design critiques have to be centred around mockups and prototypes. They can help you gather feedback at any phase of the design process.

My team has adopted the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop, which is centred around establishing a continuous cycle of product development, gathering data and improving based on the results.

Depending on the phase you’re currently on, you might be exploring initial concepts or conducting user interviews. Design critiques present a great opportunity to get feedback on your interview script or research methods.

No matter where you are in the feedback loop, identify what you are looking to get feedback on so that participants can focus on the right areas.

2. Present your work

Using one of the design critique templates linked above, provide any designs, flows or other artifacts that you will be presenting so that your audience can leave targeted feedback. Share your screen so that they can follow along with you.

Tell a story with your designs. Perhaps provide multiple options of designs if you are still in the exploration phase. Explain the tradeoffs you made during your design process and how you got to the current design. Point out the areas that you are looking for feedback on.

Try to explain your decisions as best as you can while staying concise. The more explanation you give to your audience, the deeper understanding they will have of the intended outcome and where they might have made different decisions.

While you present, your audience can post their feedback on sticky notes in these areas that you can discuss after presenting.

3. Receive feedback

After you’re finished presenting, it’s time to hear what your audience has to say. Remember to have an open mind when accepting critique, as you may not agree with everyone.

You can review the sticky notes that your audience has left on your designs and discuss with whoever wrote them. Ask participants to expand on their thoughts and listen to their perspectives. You may be surprised at the ideas that come to the table.

You may be challenged by participants who disagree with your decisions. Keep in mind that good design is subjective. There is usually no right or wrong, so defend your decisions if you feel strongly about them, but don’t get too defensive.

A design critique should be a positive and safe space for everyone to articulate their thoughts and opinions. If you find yourself entering a heated debate, it’s best to accept the feedback and take some time to digest it, which leads me to my last point.

4. Follow-up conversations

A design critique doesn’t always end after you receive feedback. Feedback discussions can uncover topics that lead to follow-up conversations. Often times, a teammate might have worked on something similar that you can align with for consistency. You might even run out of time during the critique session and need to have another meeting to continue the discussion.

Design critiques can feel intimidating, especially if you are not a strong presenter. However, they can be a powerful tool to help improve your designs and share knowledge with one another.

The key to having a successful design critique session is being respectful, whether you are giving or receiving feedback. By fostering a community of positive feedback and collaboration, we can support one another to reach our common goal of designing great experiences.