Design critiques (crits) are a fundamental part of the design process. When done well, sharing design work with other creatives through healthy crits is the most reliable way to strengthen it between time spent validating with customers. Here's my playbook for creating a healthy design crit environment for your team.
1) Grounded in context - A solid critique session begins with a clear understanding of the challenge the design aims to solve. But there's more to it. Here's a list of things you'll want to provide your design crit members ahead of asking for input:
☑️ Information around what problem you’re solving
☑️ Who the design is for
☑️ Known constraints
☑️ The specific area you’d like feedback on
2) Leaders: Don't hijack the meeting. As a team lead, your role is to help maintain a healthy conversation about the work, rather than imposing your top-down perspective. It is certainly okay to probe and add energy to the venue so that others will do the same, but if you spoke the most in the design review, stop doing that. If you don't, you'll become the central point of failure for a team that is trying to connect with and help one another grow.
3) Lead with questions - This can become challenging as the conversation deepens, but it's incredibly well-mannered to ask, "Did you try this solution using..." rather than "You should change this to use..."
4) Don't design in the meeting - While it’s fine to suggest an alternate approach occasionally, don’t use your design crits to solve big problems. Design work–as with other kinds of critical thinking–is best done by an individual. Identify problems, but leave it up to the owner to determine the solution.
5) Check perspective & bias - Remember that you are not the customer. When giving feedback, remember perspective. When analyzing work, also remember to balance your expertise against your customer's perspective, no matter how hard it proves. Ask yourself: “How am I looking at this?”
