How to elevate your design critiques
A three-step framework to constructively get the best out of everyone, instead of cutting people down to size.
When I first got into design, I was taught that the more aggressive your design critique was, the better. You tear people down and move on. Better to have your leader + peers slam your work before the CEO does.
I carried that ethos to every company I worked at, thinking it was the only way. And then one day, I walked Leslie Witt, now CDO at Headspace, through my design work and everything changed.
She was supportive, kind, compassionate, eloquent beyond words.
I was puzzled.
Why did I feel better after this design critique, and yet, still informed? How do I instil that?
I started to experiment with hundreds of design critiques, using them as loops to get better: more inclusive, more helpful without sacrificing the rigour of critical conversations and the immediacy of timely feedback.
It’s been distilled into this process and it works a treat.
Gone are the days of “That button should say submit” or “I don’t like that tagline”. Now we have constructive, warm feedback sessions filled with candour and laughter.
Best of all, when we invite our non-design peers to our critique at Shippit, they immediately understand the process and fit right into our ways of working. We just hand them one of these cards and we all elevate together.
We have one rule: You can’t really say “I have nothing to show this week”, unless you’ve had time off.
Whether it’s a half thought out idea in a notebook, or a well-structured user flow, if you’re a designer, you share your thinking for that week so that we can build on top of each other’s work, learn from other’s findings, explore craft and make better solutions for our customers.
The day before the critique, we have a quick roundtable of who wants to share what and how much time they want, and we invite our cross-functional peers.
How we give feedback
In the past, when people give feedback, it often sounds like directives, instead of the suggestions or customer-fuelled insights that they are.
In order to give each designer ownership of their work and to have richer conversations, we use the Squack feedback methodology, which a dear friend shared from Capital One’s Seattle team. It was created by Julie Jensen, who has used the framework at Amazon, Microsoft, and of course, Capital One.
Context setting
Half the challenge of getting good feedback is being really specific and thoughtful on how we set context. It’s frustrating to be given pivot-changing feedback when you’re one day from shipping. To avoid that, we take the time to set the stage for everyone in the room.
- Who are the users that you are solving for?
- What customer empathy data do you have?
- What are the user’s jobs to be done?
- What constraints are you working within?
- What is the maturity of the design?
It’s super important that we talk about the maturity of our designs.
Set quick context by using this metaphor:
Is your design in child stage? Is it in its genesis and open to completely changing tactics? Would you like high level feedback?
Is it a teenager? Open to pivoting but will need strong opinions to change, perhaps there’s a workflow it doesn’t know about?
Adult? You’re fairly confident in your design, you’ve spent alot of time on it, and are looking to see the little things that it’s missing, but it’s also open to a pivot if it’s really alluring.
Is it much older and you’re really confident in the work? Really what you’re looking for is minor improvements one can make.
Taking the time to set the context of which stage your design is in will save you a bunch of frustration and result in more meaningful conversations that’s a better use of everyone’s time.
Agenda for each session
- Someone volunteers as time checker
- Context setting: The presenter states how much time they will take for feedback, the users they are solving for, the job to be done, the constraints you are working within and the maturity of the design
- The presenter does a first pass of the walkthrough
- Constructive feedback: team shares feedback and insights using the Squack framework. Assume best intent and play the straight bat
- Presenter takes notes and move onto the next project. It’s on the presenter to what feedback they act on.
- Rinse and repeat
- Congratulations! We have a group hug, knowing that we’re elevating our designs to a whole other level of customer empathy, rigour and speed
How to add this to your next design critique
We’ve found that there’s real power in handing (or emailing) a physical card over as a reminder of the framework. It’s especially powerful at stopping criticism without context. This is what works for us, change it to what works for you.
Finally, and it is always is worth repeating, there is no such idea as a bad idea. Design critiques are there so that we can dream big and build on the shoulders of our wonderful peers and team mates.
The very first design critique I attended taught me that you have to tear down other’s ideas before the CEO does, I mistook being brutal with being kind. I’ve learnt that it doesn’t have to be that way.
Once you shift from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance, one from fixed to always learning, you can be your best self in design critiques, you can lift others and yourself up, by clearly giving the final decision to the designer presenting the work and providing a framework for anyone to give constructive feedback.
Reuse and give it a right royal go.
Let’s build on each other’s ideas in a constructive way.
