what is one goal of a critique presentation

Tips for a Productive Design Critique

Design critiques are a key part of the product design process that encourage collaboration and improve ideas. This guide will help designers conduct productive, efficient critiques for actionable feedback.

By Alexandre Brito

Alexandre is a UX designer and strategist with 10+ years of experience working for companies like Deutsche Bank, Philips, and Vodafone. 

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A design critique is performed in order to evaluate a design and provide feedback on whether or not it meets business objectives and user needs. Design critiques encourage collaboration within teams and provide a boost to positive team culture toward improving design ideas. The feedback received during design critiques helps designers think outside of the box, often leading to better, more innovative choices throughout the design process.

Conducting a productive design critique session can be challenging. Designers often forget that not everyone understands the finer points of the design process, the language of design criticism, and the rules of a design critique.

Without adequate planning, the design presentation may confuse participants, or the critique discussion wanders hopelessly off topic, leaving you frustrated that you’re not getting the actionable feedback you were expecting before needing to move the design process forward. In this case, what can you do? Let’s look at a straightforward approach on how to plan and run a successful design critique.

This guide should help you:

• Share design work successfully with your team and stakeholders, encouraging and improving collaboration between all members of the team.
• Get design feedback that is actionable and in line with business and customer goals that will give you ideas on how to improve designs .

What makes a critique different from a critical design review is we are not there to find flaws. We’re there to learn from the design and to explore where it works well and where it could be improved. – Jared M. Spool, Moving from Critical Review to Critique

For the success of any design critique discussion, it’s important that all participants understand their role and what’s expected of them before, during, and after the critique. Dividing these responsibilities encourages engaged participation, facilitates the conversation, and will make the entire session more efficient and effective. Ideally, a critique session would include the following roles:

This is the primary designer who created and will be presenting the design work on behalf of the design team. This person is responsible not only for showing the latest stage in the design process but also for providing all necessary context and content for the critique. For example, they would likely be responsible for providing the research and impetus for the design decisions made at this stage.

Facilitator

The facilitator is there to help enforce the rules and ensure all participants follow the design critique rules (see below). They are responsible for keeping the discussion on topic, on track, and on time. It is the facilitator’s job to remind everyone of the central question to be answered during the critique, and if the conversation begins to stray from the focus of the discussion, intervene to sideboard tangential topics.

The note-taker is responsible for capturing important insights and questions that come up, including anything that is off-topic that needs to be discussed later. They take notes on relevant points mentioned during the session, collect feedback, and document questions or concerns raised by the group. If sketching happens during the critique, they should take a shot. Afterward, the note-taker helps summarize and share findings with the team.

Note: Depending on the size of the team and critique format, these roles may need to be doubled up. For example, on a smaller team, one person may have to be facilitator as well as note-taker. Just be certain to define these duties in advance so that no one is ill-prepared.

Critiquers will be the primary audience of the critique session. A critique group should include 5-7 other team members ( designers , developers , copywriters, product managers, etc.) and relevant business stakeholders. The primary responsibility of the critiquers is to provide feedback on the design while following the rules and to help improve the presented solution.

Including as many diverse perspectives as possible will ensure the design critique session addresses the concerns and primary goals of multiple facets of the process. For example, feedback from a fellow designer will offer a different point of view than feedback from a product manager or developer. It is also important to include product , UX , UI , visual designers , etc. who may be working on different phases and fidelities of the design, even if they’re not involved in delivery of the presentation.

Before the Design Critique Session

The designer should schedule a design critique when feedback is needed to validate design choices or overcome one or more specific obstacles. The designer needs to have a clear idea about the following:

• What to present. What’s the level of fidelity to be presented? Will it be a desktop or mobile experience? What use-case scenarios should be covered? Is there any previous work that should be shared beforehand to provide context?
• Who to invite. Who are the most relevant team members and business stakeholders? How many perspectives need to be included in order to get a full critique of the design?
• Who will fulfill the key roles. Who will take on the responsibilities of presenter, facilitator, and note-taker? How will the results of the critique session be captured and shared with the rest of the team after the session?

Send the meeting invite well in advance and try to keep the invited participants to a reasonable number. For example, with a large team, it may be most effective to invite a maximum of 5-7 participants to act as critiquers. More than that could potentially hinder the facilitation of a productive design critique.

The next step is to draft an email that succinctly covers the following items:

• The goal of the design critique session, especially specific questions or concerns the design is attempting to resolve
• An agenda outlining what will be presented (providing links to designs/prototypes) to help participants prepare
• Any user research or feedback that was captured previously
• Information to let participants know how important it is to attend and why

On the day of the design critique, make sure to arrive a few minutes early to test the display system in the room and hook up your laptop, or to fix the designs on the wall. Also make sure to have plenty of post-it notes, pens and pencils on hand—this will save precious time later. Depending on the length of the session, don’t forget to provide snacks and refreshments for participants.

If you are conducting a remote critique session, be sure that everyone has enough time to connect to the group presentation. Decide in advance on a whiteboard or sketch-sharing platform to which everyone has access. It may also be helpful to record the session for participants who are unable to connect.

Introduction to the Design Critique

Welcome all participants and quickly go through what a design critique is, what is expected from them, how to give design feedback, and how long the session will take. This way, new and old team members and stakeholders will be reminded of the rules and what is expected of them.

Hand out Post-it notes, pads and pencils to everyone and encourage participants to write down their feedback while the designs are being presented. Remind them not to interrupt until the presenter finishes showing the designs.

Before showing the work, it’s a good idea for the presenter to set up the context around what specific problems are being solved by the designs.

• Review business goals. Make sure the business goals are clear and understood. What problem is the business trying to solve with these designs?
• Review customer goals. Frame the customer goal using the job to be done statement : “As a type of user , I want some goal so that some reason .”
• Review constraints. What timeframe, development or business limitations were taken into consideration when creating the designs?
• Review schedule. Make sure the team understands the project scope and timeline.
• Set fidelity expectations. Make sure the levels of fidelity are clear; (e.g., are we looking at wireframes or visual designs?)

Design Critique Rules

The presenter and/or facilitator should remind the participants of the design critique guidelines and rules. The list below includes do’s and don’ts for a successful session. They will help participants better frame their questions and offer feedback.

Be prepared. Reading the supplied information makes feedback more actionable.

• Don’t say: “I’m not sure about this logo.”
• Do say: “Legal wants us to use the logo like you said previously—have you explored grouping it with others in the footer?”

Problems first, solutions after. Take a step back and discuss concerns and questions around the current design. It’s up to the designer to come up with solutions.

• Don’t say: “Put the call to action above the banner—that way it will always be visible.”
• Do say: “What’s the priority of the elements that need to be above the fold?”

Be specific. Organize feedback to be as clear as possible; explain what’s working and what isn’t.

• Don’t say: “I like Google fonts, they always look nice.”
• Do say: “I like the font combination. It looks clean, but I didn’t notice the hyperlinks—do you think its color provides enough contrast?”

Be straightforward. Say what you think about the design. Being vague or overly sensitive does not help.

• Don’t say: “I guess it looks OK.”
• Do say: “The overall mobile layout is looking clean and balanced, what do you think?”

Link feedback to goals. It’s not about personal preferences. Keep it objective. How does the design meet (or miss) the customer and business goals?

• Don’t say: “The call to action button must be green.”
• Do say: “In order to increase conversions, do you think the call to action is clear enough?”

Offer suggestions, not demands. Trust the designer to explore new solutions and make their own call.

• Don’t say: “Have you seen how I did this? A two-column layout is better.”
• Do say: “Do you think a less busy grid could work in this project?”

Walk Participants Through Use Case Scenarios

Now that all participants understand the context of the design and the design critique guidelines, in order to show how the goals are achieved, the designer should demonstrate one or more use case scenarios end-to-end.

The presenter should be mindful that not everyone is a designer, so designs should be prepared in a clear and logical way with annotations if necessary. The designer shouldn’t be afraid to explain and define design terminology. They should focus on what is most relevant and highlight where they’d like to receive feedback.

During the session, mobiles phones and laptops shouldn’t be used (unless the session is conducted remotely). Focusing on what is being presented is critical to providing meaningful feedback, and Slack interruptions can stymie a valuable idea.

Capture Feedback and Discuss

It’s important to set the stage for how the presenter would like to receive feedback. This is especially important if the critique group is large. It’s easy to get sidetracked with a 1-on-1 discussion that moves away from the session’s objective. Off-topic discussions can be tabled for a separate meeting.

Promote equal participation.

It’s a good idea to go around the group and give equal opportunity to all the participants to raise their voice and go through their feedback. Some participants are less forward than others. Be mindful of this as their feedback is also valuable.

Direct the feedback.

The presenter should make sure that all the feedback is in line with the context described previously, and follows the rules set in the beginning. If it deviates or contradicts, the facilitator should remind the critiquer of this, and help rephrase the question in a way that links back to the specific design context.

Take notes.

Critiquers should be encouraged to post their ideas on the wall next to the design for which they are providing feedback. If the critiquers don’t do this, the presenter should take notes.

Keep an eye on time.

It’s easy for comments to be quite extensive and run on. Make sure you timebox each participant. This way, they’ll know they have a limited time to provide feedback and focus on the comments they think are the most relevant and give the biggest impact.

Posing thoughts as questions allows the designer to express their reasoning instead of being defensive. If they hadn’t considered a particular angle, they can make a note and address it in the next iteration. – Judy Reeves, Writing Alone, Writing Together; A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups

After the session and depending on the objectives of the meeting, the presenter should have a list of specific actions to be taken next. They should then create a summary of the feedback and actions and share it with the group. This helps all attendees (and team members that couldn’t attend) to understand the output of the session, making sure everyone is kept in the loop and potentially allowing for feedback post-meeting.

Design critiques are an indispensable exercise that, if used properly, will help you and your team to improve the design quality of your products and services. Introducing a culture of positive criticism and collaboration makes the critique become an essential part of the design process, like research, prototyping, and usability testing.

Just as with any other part of the design collaboration process, test new ideas and be open to learning from them. Take the guidelines presented in this article as a base and apply them to your own environment. Find the platform that works best for you, and you’ll be surprised how beneficial this may be in the long run.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• Stay Cool: How to Take Design Feedback Strategically
• How to Give Professional Design Feedback
• Presentation Design and the Art of Visual Storytelling
• Collaborative Design: A Guide to Successful Enterprise Product Design
• Presenting Design Work: The Right Way

Understanding the basics

What is a design critique.

A design critique is a presentation given by a designer or team. It is an essential part of the design process that encourages collaborative teams to give feedback on and make improvements to design solutions.

How do you critique someone?

Critiquing someone’s designs is an important responsibility for product team members and other stakeholders. Giving critiques should be done with an understanding of the core user or business problem to solve and how the design is meant to meet that need.

What does it mean to critique?

Critique in the design world context refers to a meeting or presentation setting in which a designer or design team shares their work and asks for feedback, either to validate design assumptions or encourage better solutions to a design problem.

Why is it important to provide feedback?

It is important for teams and stakeholders to provide feedback so that the designer or design team can validate their design solutions and/or better understand what problems to solve next. It helps to get diverse perspectives from members of the team who may have different, non-design points of view.

How do you write a critique?

Writing a critique involves understanding the context in which the design is being presented and the problem the design is meant to solve. The writer must then gather and organize the feedback into actionable next steps for the designer or design team to move forward.

What is meant by constructive criticism?

Constructive criticism is criticism that is clear, concise, and helps the designer or design team to improve upon a design solution. Constructive criticism isn’t personal and should ideally be oriented to the overall user or business problem to solve, not just personal likes or dislikes.

What is destructive feedback?

Destructive feedback is any feedback that does not help the designer or design team to move the design forward. Personal criticism or vague or irrelevant feedback can be destructive to the critique.

• Product Design

Alexandre Brito

Culemborg, Netherlands

Member since October 18, 2016

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How to run an effective design critique

Katrina dargel, design advocate.

December 1, 2021

“A design critique refers to analyzing a design and giving feedback on whether it meets its objectives. A design critique usually manifests as a group conversation with the ultimate goal of improving a design. It does not mean simply judging a design.” – NNG

Why do we do it?

Critiques are really valuable if you’re running them at regular intervals and inviting people to share work at all stages of the design process of the product lifecycle. The feedback and iteration loop in a design critique helps you avoid getting attached to your design and focus on what is best for the business, users, and stakeholders. Within a critique, the discussion is moved away from the way you feel about it and focused more on the effectiveness of the design and actionable items.

Ultimately, running critiques maintains quality and consistency in the different features or improvements the design team is developing. Not only by gathering feedback and making your designs better but also by improving communication skills — both in communicating your design and providing feedback and building team culture by meeting up and talking!

What kinds of design critiques can you run?

Depending on the session’s goal, typically, there are two ways to run a critique, one is usually open to the wider organization, stakeholders, and clients (if you are agency side) and the other is usually a design-team-only ritual. There’s value in both, but I would argue that they are two different rituals (but more on that later).

Design Team Rituals

These meetings occur only within design and product teams. They tend to be more informal since the team works together and has a consistent communication cadence. In an ideal situation, if a team member is stuck on a problem, asking for feedback on the fly from several team members would be easier, because they usually have the product knowledge and context already, compared to colleagues outside of the team. This eliminates the need to create a formal meeting to present designs and explain the context to new people, ultimately saving time and quickly progressing design.

To invite stakeholders or not to invite stakeholders?

Inviting stakeholders to your critique may feel like a way to kill two birds with one stone. You can give them visibility of your projects, provide critique within the design team and get feedback from the people who matter. However, it doesn’t always work like that. To begin with, you are inviting an uneven power dynamic within the group that is almost impossible to get around. Unless stakeholders are coming to a critique willing to follow the critique charter, the value will likely be very low. It’s often best to split up the stakeholder feedback sessions and critiques into two separate rituals.

Planning a Design Critique

How you plan your critique depends entirely on how you’re running them. If, as mentioned before, these are regular critiques that are almost exclusively for your design team, keeping them informal can be best. People can present their work without preparing a presentation and dial-up or down the level of context depending on the familiarity of the project with the rest of the team. However, if you’re presenting the work to stakeholders or senior leadership, the best thing to do is create a short presentation that includes a high-level overview of the research and or conclusions drawn that led to the design ( here’s a template we’ve created). This way, you can explain the context, making it easier for the participants to understand how and why you came up with the design. It eliminates questions and guides the discussion based on which goals you want to achieve in the session.

Either way, the most important thing is that when inviting critique, you are providing the right context and being specific about the type of feedback you are seeking.

What you should consider:

• Whom are you presenting to?
• What are the outcomes you want out of this session?
• What information do they need to know?
• How do you tell the story?

How to present in a critique

Whether you create a presentation or not, here is a list of things you could cover off in your critique:

• Short introduction with a project brief (if you have one).
• Give the audience the context of the work and restate the project goals.
• Explain who the solution is for (keep the user at the center).
• Tell them the stage at which the work is done (i.e., this is an early stage mid-fidelity design showcasing X).
• Communicate the session’s goals. You could even write them down on a board or in the presentation. This helps to keep the discussion focused on what you want to get out of it.
• Include some brief research conclusions that helped support the design decisions.
• Showcase the design without explaining everything. You want the participants to make their own judgments without your input. Let the participants observe the designs based on the objectives you have shared.
• Allow time for feedback and discussion.

Give time for the design review

It should go without saying, but always allow time for others to review the designs and digest them. Also, be aware of who is in the room with you. If you are the most senior person in the room, allow others to go first; otherwise, you risk drowning out other people’s opinions because you are the one who has the most power. Similarly, make sure you’re encouraging diverse voices in critiques. It’s easy to fall into a trap of the privileged few having the loudest voices. Having diverse opinions in your design team will make sure that your end solutions are as inclusive as possible and have a much broader impact.

Before the critique, remember:

• Take notes or have someone else dedicated to taking them.
• Ask questions to clarify something if you are unsure of it.
• Giving and receiving feedback takes work, time, and practice.
• Through design critique each session, you’ll be on both ends of the spectrum: giving feedback to your team and receiving it for your own work.
• Try not to let your emotions get in the way or take it personally. The goal is to improve the design; it is not an insult to the work that is being shown.
• Before the session, it is important to release any emotional attachment to your work.
• Listen. Don’t just wait for others to stop talking, really listen. You’re more likely to be listened to if you’ve listened well yourself.
• Try not to argue, defend yourself against the feedback or bring hostility into the conversation. Design critiques are usually filled with negative and positive feedback. The environment is created to encourage constructive criticism.
• Practice gratitude, be grateful that someone is taking the time to review, and provide a different perspective from your own.

The difference between Criticism vs Critique

A lot of people don’t understand that there’s a difference between critique and criticism. This is especially common if you’ve invited stakeholders or non-design folks into the room. It’s always worth writing your own ‘critique charter’ that outlines the rules of engagement and any important design principles before starting any form of regular critique and sharing it with all the parties who are getting involved.

Indicators of Critiques

• Focuses on the structure of the design or product. How it works to solve a problem or get the message across, figure out what makes sense, what is working, and what isn’t.
• Asks for clarification about the intentions of the design. They are trying to understand what the designer was attempting to create.
• The message is delivered with a positive outlook that creates a space for encouragement and pragmatism for moving forward.
• The feedback is concrete and specific, so the team understands what direction they need to go next.
• Asking questions is often a better approach than making statement judgments. This invites response and clarification instead of providing closed feedback.

Examples could be:

“I wonder if the placement of the title going to could be confusing to users?”

“Is this solving the original problem we are addressing?”

“Will this interaction have any knock-on affect the usability of this feature?”

“Are we ok with this design causing the user more friction?”

Indicators of Criticism

• People look for faults within the design rather than focusing on the objectives.
• It condemns what it does not understand, which could cause a feeling of culpability or stress.
• Feedback can be vague and sometimes too general, which could delay the project if the team is confused about which direction to go.
• Criticism focuses on what is lacking in the design instead of what the current design is solving.

“I don’t like the shape of the button.”

“This doesn’t feel like it’s the right color.”

“Why are we doing this?”

“I don’t think it looks good enough.”

Setting the tone

Some product and design teams have a set of principles they like to stick to help guide the discussion and prevent negative energy throughout the session.

Tips for a good design critique

Finally, here are some unstructured tips that may help you in our next critique:

Descriptive and constructive: Talk about the actual design and avoid generalizations.

Make it about the design: Be objective and focus on the work.

They are Actionable: Offer ideas (if you have them), but don’t be prescriptive.

Do not make it about yourself: It’s not about being right or showing off — it’s about helping your teammates get better and pushing their designs along. It’s better to understand and have empathy than to be right.

Do not design during the session: Do not design or redesign during the critique session. This may put pressure on you and the team and does not allow for time to analyze and absorb the feedback.

Strong opinions weakly held : Having strong opinions is great. It shows conviction and knowledge. Being belligerent and unmoving with those opinions is not great. Remember, your perspective is just one perspective.

What happens in critique stays in critique : If you are running critiques as a design team-only ritual, try and instigate a ‘Chatham house rules’ style approach, where you leave the disagreements in critique in the room. Similarly, when a decision has been made, except that the decision has been made and move on. We’re all hired by our companies for a reason and need to trust in our teams.

Leave the room with actions: Documenting your discussions and decisions is the only way you’ll actually make changes, and more importantly, documenting the actions that are needed as a result of your discussions and decisions

Design Critique: Rules of Engagement

As you prepare for this session, a great tool to use is a design critique template. This helps focus the discussion and fosters achieving your goals objectives. Check out the template to help you with framing your design critiques.

Design Critique helps improve product design processes

Running Design Critique often can significantly improve the quality you’re outputting, and speed up the design process. With critiques, you also benefit from having a regular (or semi-regular) ritual within your design team where you encourage people to share their work early, provide each other feedback and peer review, and generally build an accepting, open culture within your design team. If you keep your critique structured and focused, everyone will feel better about the outcome. Taking the critique seriously shows that you are taking design seriously. That reflects well on you, your design team and will ultimately be good for the product!

I could not have written this article without a few resources. I used my experience (and my colleagues’ experiences) with some informative articles to help me to write this: Sarah Gibbons Design Critiques: Encourage a Positive Culture to Improve Products Jake Knapp 9 Rules For Running A Productive Design Critique and Scott Berkun How To Run a Design Critique . If you’re looking for more tips and materials on the subjects, there’s a lot of resources there. Good luck!

Katrina is a UX Designer extraordinaire. Otherwise, you can find her biking around London, hanging out with friends, writing, cooking, and planning new adventures around the world ✈️

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Critiques Explained

tl;dr: Critiques are often use in creative fields like art, architecture and design. They're a facilitated review of projects where you get feedback on your work from peers and instructors alike.

What is critique?

A critique session is an in-depth review of one or more creative projects. It typically involves multiple people (either experts or non-experts) who will examine and respond to the work. It’s a dialog that takes place between a presenter and a set of critics about the project. The goal of a critique is to generate thoughtful reflection on the direction, implementation and success of a project through this conversation.

Critiques can follow many formats. They’re wide and varied; there’s no set format or timescale for a critique. Some may be very informal while some can be highlight moderated. Some can be 10-15 minutes while others can last for hours.

Sidebar: You’ll experience a few different ways of doing crits in this class!

Regardless of the format,

The purpose is to make your outcomes better

This is important to remember this. At times it can feel harsh, embarrassing, stressful and many other things to present and get feedback on your work as part of a critique. But everyone’s goal is to help you make better work.

So, what takes place

• Normally the creator of the project (the presenter) will give an introduction or presentation of their work
• Then they’ll step back and invite comments
• The comments could be from anyone in the room - instructors, guests, other students; everyone is an equal participant and everyone’s opinion is equally valued.
• The comments culd be specific or open ended. Comments might pose questions about the work, tackle shortcomings, or offer suggestions.
• The presenter will then have a conversation with the critic. Sometimes this is short (a quick response) or it can be a back and forth.

Generally speaking, there’s a lot of thinking out loud.

Being a presenter

For someone not familiar with critique, this is really tough. It’s asking you to be vunerable and present your work (probably early stage) to a room of people. This isn’t an easy thing to do.

To get the most from your critique:

• Present your project as clearly and succinctly as possible. Be quick too, value the time of people giving feedback;
• Take ownership of the feedback. Close your summary of the project by acknowledging what you want feedback on or what you don’t want to spend time on too.
• Ask the questions you want answers to. Prime your critics and define how you’d like them to review the work.
• Be direct and direct action (e.g. it’s perfectly ok to say ‘actually I’d like to talk more about…’ )
• Be polite - thank the critics for their feedback;
• Avoid being defensive. It’s easy when your project is being picked apart to loose sight that people in the room are generally trying to help you. If that happens, take a breath!
• Listen - even if you don’t agree with the point being made, hear the critic out and don’t dismiss it!
• Most of all be forgiving . It’s raw, rapid, and people are responding to your work on the spot. You mightn’t get the most focused or well conceived feedback. People might misunderstand your project. All sorts of things can happen. It’s not your critics fault!

… And don’t forget to take notes! Not only is it useful for later but it shows the critics you’re prepared and engaged with what they have to say.

Being a critic

Above all else your goal is to give constructive feedback. This means being thoughtful in your remarks and reflecting on the project. Avoid harsh critism, hostility, and all that bad stuff.

Here’s some tips:

• Try to identify some strengths of the project before you highlight weaknesses. What have they done well and what are their successes? Acknowledge them.
• Make shortcomings actionable. While big audacious next steps and potential directions are great, it’s much more helpful to have a suggestion for something concrete that could be implemented in a next revision of the work. If you call out weaknesses, you should try to offer ways to quickly overcome or solve them. Explain how your suggestion would improve the outcome and why its important to do.
• Match intent: Make sure your feedback and criticisms match up with the goals of the project. Have you spent the time listening to the creator and what their goals are or have you dug into the project text to find out what they are articulating as their project’s goals? Think about how strengths, shortcoming, and next steps relate to the intentions behind the work - are they connected or peripheral?
• Share what you know. Point out connections to work they might not know about that relates to their project. Are their relationships to ideas, theories, technologies that they might have missed? What examples might help them focus their direction or goals?
• Be professional. Above everything else, this is key. Remember the critic is vulnerable when getting feedback. Make sure you’re being helpful not harsh. It’s OK to be critical - this helps the work get better and us to learn - but there is a line. You don’t want to be hostile, argumentative, or aggressive. In other words, make your point but don’t force it!
• Be forgiving: Sometimes the person getting the critique won’t hear you or fully understand what you’ve said. Be patient! They’re fielding a lot of feedback and sometimes things slip through the net.

An Excerpt from ‘ The 4 essentials of a design critique ’

Design critiques are guided group discussions used to elicit useful feedback.

Soliciting Feedback. How to manage the feedback loop to best advantage

Here are the four essential steps and key questions to consider in a design critique:

• Initial reactions: What is your first impression of the design?
• Content: Is everything present that should be included in the design?
• Aesthetics: What is the total overall effect? Does it feel right?
• Style: Does the design style seem appropriate for the stated goal or purpose?
• Layout: Does everything seem to be in the right place?
• Flow: Does the content appear in a natural and logical progression?
• Usability: Is it easy to use or interact with the design solution?
• Typography: Does the type feel appropriate in tone?
• Color: How is color used? What effect does it have in terms of conveying the desired message?
• Completeness: Is anything missing? Conversely, is anything there that shouldn’t be?
• Interpretation
• Audience: How do you think the target audience will respond to this solution? Why? Why not?
• Details: Is the use of these particular graphic elements consistent with the goals of the project? Why? Why not?
• Problem areas: What things in this solution are not as effective as they could be? Why do you think that?
• Appeal: Is this an effective and appealing design for the context it will live in? Why? Why not?
• Brief: Does this design fulfill the creative brief. If not, why not?
• Judgment: Given the answers to the above, does this design work?

How to Critique

Scott Berkun’s essay #35 – How to give and receive criticism - a highly recommended read which covers exactly what you need to know to be a great critic / presenter! Summarised as follows:

How to give critical feedback : a) Before you speak, know the goals; b) Good and bad, is not the same as what you like or don’t like; c) Talk as much about what it is, as what it isn’t. d) Try the PNP sandwich (positive negative positive)

Receiving critical feedback : a) Shut up. Just shut up and listen; b) Ask clarifying questions. c) Refer back to the goals. d) Ask for what changes you can make that will satisfy the criticism.

Also great Scott’s #23 – How to run a design critique

Learning Environments Lab in the School of Design has a number of resources and worksheets which can help you prepare for a design critique

Other articles

• Steve Fisher offers some tips for giving and receiving criticism on your work
• ZURB has a briefing on Critiquing from a UX perspective
• Boundless Communications has two articles on Techniques for Accepting Criticism and Giving Effective Criticism which are pretty good.
• Teaching Students to Critique provides a sample set of focus questions for an art critique related to four major areas of art criticism. This PDF has a much more detailed guide.
• And have a look at these two perspectives on surviving an art critique

Related Posts

Grading, feedback and policies 22 aug 2016, absenses and attendance. 22 aug 2016, preparing documentation 12 aug 2016.

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How to Run a Successful Design Critique

What is a Design Critique?

What’s required to conduct a session, what is considered to be a good outcome.

• Useful feedback which helps improve the design;
• Motivation for designers to improve the design—designers should feel positive and excited after the session, even when they know that they’ll have a lot more work to do.

Things to do Before the Session

Establish a clear criteria of design evaluation, assign roles to session participant’s.

• Presenter - the designer(s) who created the work;
• Facilitator - a person who controls discussion flow and enables the presenter to have a successful critique;
• Critiquers - other designers, developers, product managers, or stakeholders that provide feedback on the design.

The Presenter’s Role

1. provide context.

• Identify the end user—describe user personas and demonstrate the way a persona interacts with a product, sell critiques on the way the average user would look, and how the product would integrate into their daily routine;
• Share user journeys—when you present your work, don’t just show a few screens of a product that are supposed to represent some operations, share a whole user journey instead. Designers have a powerful tool in their toolkit that helps achieve this goal—storyboards, a storyboard can tie a user persona together with a design.

2. Share Your Goals for the Critique Session

3. use dynamic design for your presentation, 4. ask specific questions to collect specific feedback, 5. take notes while receiving feedback, the facilitator’s role, 1. the facilitator and the presenter shouldn’t be the same person, 2. clearly define the rules.

• Describe roles - make it clear for everyone in the room what’s expected from them, defining the critics’ role is crucial, set the right tone for critique, preferably by example;
• Describe the criteria for design evaluation - while the criteria should be established before the session, it’s vital to remind participators about the criteria.

3. Promote Equal Participation

4. keep an eye on time, 5. block irrelevant discussions, the critiquers’ role, 1. empathize with the presenter.

• Be positive - nobody likes toxic people, never say you hate a design;
• Identify presenters needs - when you’re giving feedback, you need to know what the presenter wants to reach, get a sense of what the objective is;
• Listen before speaking - if you take a moment to listen and understand before voicing an opinion, there’s a better chance that your feedback will be valuable;
• Offer direction, not prescription - don’t tell the designer how to fix the design, keep in mind that it’s up to the presenter to come up with a solution, you just help steer them in the right direction.

2. Be Specific When Giving Your Opinion

3. don’t bring personal taste into it, 4. ask clarifying questions, 5. provide more feedback after the session, nick babich, popular posts, 15 best new fonts, may 2024, 3 essential design trends, june 2024, how to reduce the carbon footprint of your website, exciting new tools for designers, june 2024, 20 best new websites, may 2024, has ai killed user testing, exciting new tools for designers, may 2024, using ai to predict design trends, 15 best new fonts, april 2024, 3 essential design trends, may 2024, how to write world-beating web content, 20 best new websites, april 2024.

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8.1: What’s a Critique and Why Does it Matter?

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• Steven D. Krause
• Eastern Michigan University

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Critiques evaluate and analyze a wide variety of things (texts, images, performances, etc.) based on reasons or criteria. Sometimes, people equate the notion of “critique” to “criticism,” which usually suggests a negative interpretation. These terms are easy to confuse, but I want to be clear that critique and criticize don’t mean the same thing. A negative critique might be said to be “criticism” in the way we often understand the term “to criticize,” but critiques can be positive too.

We’re all familiar with one of the most basic forms of critique: reviews (film reviews, music reviews, art reviews, book reviews, etc.). Critiques in the form of reviews tend to have a fairly simple and particular point: whether or not something is “good” or “bad.”

Academic critiques are similar to the reviews we see in popular sources in that critique writers are trying to make a particular point about whatever it is that they are critiquing. But there are some differences between the sorts of critiques we read in academic sources versus the ones we read in popular sources.

• The subjects of academic critiques tend to be other academic writings and they frequently appear in scholarly journals.
• Academic critiques frequently go further in making an argument beyond a simple assessment of the quality of a particular book, film, performance, or work of art. Academic critique writers will often compare and discuss several works that are similar to each other to make some larger point. In other words, instead of simply commenting on whether something was good or bad, academic critiques tend to explore issues and ideas in ways that are more complicated than merely “good” or “bad.”

The main focus of this chapter is the value of writing critiques as a part of the research writing process. Critiquing writing is important because in order to write a good critique you need to critically read : that is, you need to closely read and understand whatever it is you are critiquing, you need to apply appropriate criteria in order evaluate it, you need to summarize it, and to ultimately make some sort of point about the text you are critiquing.

These skills-- critically and closely reading, summarizing, creating and applying criteria, and then making an evaluation-- are key to The Process of Research Writing, and they should help you as you work through the process of research writing.

In this chapter, I’ve provided a “step-by-step” process for making a critique. I would encourage you to quickly read or skim through this chapter first, and then go back and work through the steps and exercises describe.

Selecting the right text to critique

The first step in writing a critique is selecting a text to critique. For the purposes of this writing exercise, you should check with your teacher for guidelines on what text to pick. If you are doing an annotated bibliography as part of your research project (see chapter 6, “The Annotated Bibliography Exercise”), then you are might find more materials that will work well for this project as you continuously research.

Short and simple newspaper articles, while useful as part of the research process, can be difficult to critique since they don’t have the sort of detail that easily allows for a critical reading. On the other hand, critiquing an entire book is probably a more ambitious task than you are likely to have time or energy for with this exercise. Instead, consider critiquing one of the more fully developed texts you’ve come across in your research: an in-depth examination from a news magazine, a chapter from a scholarly book, a report on a research study or experiment, or an analysis published in an academic journal. These more complex essays usually present more opportunities for issues to critique.

Depending on your teacher’s assignment, the “text” you critique might include something that isn’t in writing: a movie, a music CD, a multimedia presentation, a computer game, a painting, etc. As is the case with more traditional writings, you want to select a text that has enough substance to it so that it stands up to a critical reading.

Exercise 7.1

Pick out at least three different possibilities for texts that you could critique for this exercise. If you’ve already started work on your research and an annotated bibliography for your research topic, you should consider those pieces of research as possibilities. Working alone or in small groups, consider the potential of each text. Here are some questions to think about:

• Does the text provide in-depth information? How long is it? Does it include a “works cited” or bibliography section?
• What is the source of the text? Does it come from an academic, professional, or scholarly publication?
• Does the text advocate a particular position? What is it, and do you agree or disagree with the text?

How to conduct a design critique - Tips & tricks

What is a design critique?

A design critique is a method of assessing and commenting on a particular design or prototype. It can be used at any stage in the design process and involves examining the visual presentation, messaging, and overall usability (if applicable) to identify ways to improve it. Critiques can range from informal conversations with colleagues to presentations in front of large teams, such as team members, sample groups, and/or other stakeholders.

Critiquing a design is not about ""nitpicking"" the work of others without offering potential solutions or feedback. In a design critique, each participant should actively participate in identifying problems (what could be improved), generating ideas (possible solutions that can address those problems), and providing meaningful feedback (ideas for improvement that can help move the project forward). Design critiques should prioritize positive reinforcement and constructive criticism to foster an environment of learning, innovation, and creative collaboration.

A well-run critique should have the following elements:

• A clear purpose : Establish the focus and goals for the team that everyone can agree on before beginning.
• An agenda : Set guidelines for what will be discussed, who will lead discussions, and how long each section should take.
• Participant preparation : Ensure that all participants review prototypes, supporting documentation, and relevant research before beginning.
• Discussion Prompt : Provide related questions to avoid unnecessary detours when diving into the discussion.
• Defined outcomes : Have objectives that spell out what feedback needs to be shared and how it might be used in future versions of designs.
• An open yet guided structure : Make sure all members feel heard while still ensuring that discussions move forward in a productive manner
• Future action plans : Develop steps to solving critical challenges so that members know how they fit into the process of design improvement in the future.

Why conduct a design critique?

A design critique is an essential part of any design process, helping to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a design and improve it for the better. A successful review requires both sides to be honest, open-minded, and willing to listen.

Conducting a critique has numerous benefits. It allows the designer to get feedback directly from users on how they feel about the design. It encourages solutions-focused discussion by encouraging all participants to explain why they suggested a specific solution or action. It also helps designers practice collaboration, which is key to successful problem-solving abilities. Finally, it strengthens relationships between those involved in a project by enabling team members to express their ideas and feelings in a safe environment.

Effective critiques are conducted with respect, positivity, and meaningful dialogue between participants, bringing unique perspectives and expertise to the table. Design critiques allow natural collaboration, leading to constructive criticism and significant improvement suggestions that help make well-rounded designs that genuinely satisfy user needs. Before conducting your evaluation, ensure everyone involved understands what asking for feedback entails; this will help maximize potential output from the process.

How to conduct a design critique

A design critique is a valuable tool for designers who want to get constructive feedback and reach their design goals. It involves examining a design from both the designer's and the user's perspectives, discussing weaknesses and strengths, and making detailed recommendations for improvement. But as helpful as design critiques can be, it's also important to conduct them respectfully, encouraging constructive dialogue and generating meaningful outcomes.

Here are some tips on how to conduct effective design critiques:

• Establish ground rules : Set expectations at the beginning of your critique, establish objectives and a timeline, decide who is responsible for what duties, and ensure everyone understands their role in the discussion.
• Give time for preparation : Allow people time to review designs ahead of time so they can be better prepared to give meaningful feedback during the meeting.
• Gather data : Review user research data such as surveys, studies, or observations so you can discuss areas for improvement in the designed product or service.
• Ask open-ended questions : Try not to make assumptions about solutions during your conversation; instead, use open-ended questions such as ""What could we do differently?"" or ""What changes can we make?"" to stimulate creative conversations
• Be respectful and objective : Critiques should be conducted with respect - try not to assign blame but be honest with feedback while still keeping a positive attitude; Be aware of how you phrase criticism - aiming for an objective discussion rather than an emotional one; Stick with valuable suggestions that add value; Explain why specific ideas could be improved upon
• Wrap up & follow up : At the end of your critique, ask if anyone has any additional topics to raise; Schedule follow-ups if necessary; Assign specific tasks where possible or discuss further developments or refinements needed.

Follow up and implement received feedback

When you receive a design critique, it can be challenging to know what to do next. The first step is to take action back and assess the situation. You will want to consider the following questions:

• What was the purpose of the critique?
• What were the main points that were raised?
• How can I incorporate feedback into my design?
• Who do I need to follow up with?
• When should I follow up?
• What is my next action item?

If you are satisfied with the responses that you have received, move on to the next step in your design process. However, if there are still some unresolved issues, it is essential to follow up with the appropriate people to clarify your problems. When following up, aim for an open-ended conversation so that new ideas can be generated.

Here are the next steps you need to follow after a design critique:

• Thank everyone for their participation: Be sure to express your appreciation for everyone'severyone's time and effort in the critique.
• Summarize the main points of discussion: This will help ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands what needs to be done moving forward.
• Evaluate the critique's results and decide what changes should be made to the design based on the feedback given.
• Make a plan to implement those changes and track their progress over time.
• Follow up with your team regularly to ensure that everyone is still on track and that the objectives of the critique are being met.
• Adjust your plan as needed based on new insights or feedback that you receive.
• Celebrate your successes and learn from your failures!

Tips for successful design critiques

It's essential to keep an open mind and stay focused during design critiques to ensure they are successful. Here are some tips for facilitating effective design critiques:

• Provide clear expectations : Make sure everyone knows what the goals of the critique will be and how specific design elements or approaches should be discussed.
• Emphasize honesty over politeness : Ensure designers and feedback providers don't feel obligated to hold back their criticism for fear of hurting the designer's feelings. Instead, they should always strive towards constructive dialogue so all participants can benefit from each other's insight or ideas.
• Encourage participation from everyone : Involve everyone in the meeting by actively engaging each member throughout the discussion, listening carefully to their feedback, and taking notes when necessary.
• Designate one person as a facilitator : Their primary purpose is to keep the conversation on track and ensure that criticism stays focused on course objectives rather than personal opinions or preferences.
• Request periodic ""reality checks"" : Here is where everyone provides a short summary of their thoughts during specific points of the critique process to make sure everyone is entirely on board with any changes that may arise from it
• Follow up and thank your participants : Before ending the critique session, ensure you have assigned tasks for everyone so that improvements can be implemented appropriately as soon as possible.
• Keep your participants updated : Make sure the design changes made from the feedback received are conveyed to participants. This helps improve engagement in future critiques and build an overall positive experience for everyone involved.

Common critique pitfalls

If design critiques are conducted improperly, they can be unproductive and/or discouraging for the participants and designers. Here are some common pitfalls when conducting design critique sessions:

• Not having a clear purpose or goal for the critique : Establishing a clear plan for a critique session before it begins helps guide the conversation, keeps participants focused, and establishes realistic expectations.
• Failing to invite all relevant stakeholders : Involving only one department or subset of individuals is likely to result in incomplete feedback and resentment from people excluded from the process. Furthermore, input from outside perspectives may provide critical insights not available inside the team.
• Starting with general comments instead of specifics : Begin by focusing on fundamental aspects of specific designs so they can be discussed constructively and quickly before moving onto abstract concepts like "quality" or "overall mood." These discussions meander off track and waste time that could be spent polishing an effective design solution instead.
• Conversations turn into personal attacks : Critiques should be focused on giving individualized feedback on designs instead of biased criticism of the designers themselves. Try redirecting conversations back towards questioning designs instead of characterizing people negatively.
• Failing to implement change due to lack of follow-through : Without proper follow-up after critiques, some good points made during reviews may go unheard. Any changes suggested by participants may not manifest in later iterations due to a lack of accountability after completing the critique.
• Timing : Be mindful of the time allotted for a critique as well as when it's taking place relative to other deadlines — if designers are feeling rushed, they may not be able to effectively process feedback, and if it's scheduled too far in advance, important details may have changed by the time the critique rolls around.
• Allowing anyone to speak without first clarifying what they're critiquing : Not all stakeholders will have equal expertise or knowledge about design. Before allowing them to voice their opinion, gently guide them towards specifying what part of the design they're critiquing and why they feel that way.
• Not having a clear goal or focus for the critique : A successful design critique should have a specific purpose or intent. Otherwise, it risks devolving into a general discussion about likes/dislikes with no actionable feedback to show for it.
• Not recording or documenting the critique : It can be helpful to have a written record of the critique, either in the form of meeting minutes or an audio/video recording, so that designers can refer back to specific comments later on. This also allows people who weren'tweren't able to attend the critique in person to catch up on what was discussed.
• Not thanking and/or following up after the critique : Some good points made during critiques may need proper follow-up after reviews. Any changes suggested by participants may not manifest in later iterations due to a lack of accountability after completing the analysis.

Final analysis of the design critique cycle

Regarding design critiques, focus on more than just the positives or negatives of a particular project. Instead, examine the full context of the feedback received, what feedback was implemented, and if the process led to a positive outcome.

Try answering the following questions to get an overall idea of the design critique.

• What methods were used (prototyping, testing, etc.)?
• What resources were available?
• What user goals were identified?
• What type of feedback was gathered?
• And what elements are incorporated into the final product?

By assessing the answers to these questions, you can evaluate the effectiveness of a project and determine whether any changes need to be made to improve it. Additionally, analyzing the overall design review can allow you to identify and discuss potential solutions you could employ in future projects and/or subsequent iterations of the same design.

A design critique is a handy tool for designers. It helps improve your skills and also exposes you to the different perspectives of others. Preparing for a challenge like this can make or break your confidence, so prepare well. You've practiced it once, and nothing will stop you from doing it again! After all, getting feedback is the best way to improve your work. So practice early and often!

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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Discussing Design by Adam Connor, Aaron Irizarry

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Chapter 4. Making Critique a Part of Your Process

Creating opportunities for critique.

Critique is an analysis tool that we use for the purposes of evolving and improving something. At any point during our projects—when we’re looking to take what we have created so far and analyze it in order to make it better by revising choices we might have made—we have an opportunity for critique.

As Aaron and I have worked with organizations to see how they are or aren’t using critique, we’ve found three common points in processes during which feedback is often collected. These points offer some interesting opportunities and considerations for critique.

Meetings or discussions held for the sole purposed of critiquing something

Events in which multiple people work together simultaneously to solve a specific challenge

A common event in organizations’ project and design processes

Things to Keep in Mind

We’ll discuss each of the above forms in more depth later in this chapter, but before we do, it’s important to call out some considerations that you should keep in mind as any team works to incorporate critique into their process or improve upon the way you might already be using critique.

Start Small

The number of people involved has a direct effect on how much effort it takes to manage a conversation, both from a facilitation standpoint as well as an individual participant’s ability to follow along.

When introducing critique or working on improving an organization’s skills with it, it’s good to keep the number of people involved to fewer at first, maybe just pairs. This minimizes the mental acrobatics that participants need to do to keep track of everyone’s feedback and gives them the ability to focus a bit more on the critique itself and their own skills within it. As people grow more comfortable, you can introduce increasingly larger groups.

Think Before You Speak

Listening plays a huge role in critique, for both recipients and those giving the feedback. It’s been beaten into many of us that there is a difference between listening and hearing. That difference can become very clear in conversations, particularly discussions that include or are focused on feedback.

Hearing is a passive act. It’s something that we just do. And even though it takes no real effort for us “hear” something, it can still produce a response. At any given moment, we’re likely to be hearing a variety of things, some influencing our actions and some not, all with little to no conscious recognition of what we’re hearing actually is or means. We still react to what we hear, but these reactions are typically impulsive and automatic. Does that sound like anything we’ve already discussed?

Listening, on the other hand, requires focus. When we listen, we take in information through what we’re hearing and consciously interpret it to form an understanding that directs how we behave. This process is a deliberate one that we’re aware of as it is happening. We’re conscious of the questions being asked in our brain to make sense of what we’ve heard and we’re focusing our energy on getting to that interpretation.

Although both hearing and listening can lead to changes in action and both rely on some form of attention, it’s this deliberate focus and conscious awareness that separates listening from hearing. To make sure our feedback discussions stay focused on pertinent, useful feedback, we need to ensure that we’ve actually listened to and understood what has been said before we say something in response. Whether you are giving or receiving critique, listening plays a critical role.

Think About Who to Include

When working on an organization’s critique skills, it’s important to give some consideration to which individuals you bring into the conversations, given that each participant can either help or hinder the others. This in no way means that we should start excluding everyone who might be struggling. It’s more that we need to think about how and why we put people together in critiques whose purpose is to maximize the potential for improving the skills of the group overall.

OK. With all that now out of the way, let’s talk about process. Or, more specifically, the ways critique can fit into it.

Regardless of how and when you incorporate critique, be intentional. Think about who should be included. Keep groups small when first introducing critique. And always, listen and think before you speak.

Standalone Critiques

Standalone critiques are nothing more than meetings or discussions with the single purpose of critiquing a creation so that it can be iterated upon further. This form makes it possible for us to critique pretty much anything we need analysis on, at any time. Because of that flexibility they often provide us with the ability to gather more targeted and focused feedback on specific areas of our designs than we would if we wait and try to incorporate feedback into other project meetings.

At a previous job, my director and I would chat at the end of every day to discuss the work we did, how we felt about it, and provide each other with feedback. On one particular project, we had a tight deadline and a lot of ambiguity surrounding the website we needed to design. Because we met at the end of each day for critique, we were able to talk through our design decisions and help each other measure those decisions against our goals. The more we met, the better we became at asking questions about each other’s work as well as uncovering questions to ask the product team so we could get the information we felt was lost in ambiguity. After the project, we continued meeting at the end of each day, and once or twice a week, we included a product manager to help build a shared understanding. This was very helpful to both of us because we became very comfortable giving and receiving feedback and it also helped us improve our presentation and communication skills when discussing designs. It also didn’t hurt that a nice cold beer often accompanied these standalone critiques. — AARON

Standalone critiques are also very effective when we’re introducing critique to someone who isn’t familiar with the process or when a team is working to practice and improve its critique skills. Because the entire purpose of these meetings is to critique something, we can organize them so that they provide a safe, controlled place in which participants can share and analyze work while getting comfortable with giving and receiving feedback. This is especially helpful when we’re working with teammates who might be intimidated by receiving or giving feedback, possibly because they have had negative experiences with it in the past. It truly is awesome to watch someone come out of his shell as he improves his ability to communicate ideas and designs to others, receive feedback on his work, and use that feedback to strengthen his creations.

Russ Unger, Director, Experience Design Center of Excellence at 18F

“Team critique” likely sets a nice visual—a lot of people gathered in a semicircle around a wall adorned with beautiful designs. Inevitably, someone is pointing at a particular design, while others hover back a bit with furrowed brows and questions on the tips of their tongues. It looks like a fun scenario to get to be a part of!

The reality that I’ve seen has been just a little bit different. I’ve frequently worked on distributed teams across multiple time zones and locations. The physicality of gathering together isn’t always feasible for a variety of reasons. Factor in multiple projects and timelines, other administrative and work-related tasks and meetings, and it’s easy to see that getting everyone together at the same time can be really challenging.

The other reality is that I’ve witnessed design teams who really desire for critique to be ingrained into their process, and they want to hear and learn from their teammates. I’ve always felt that time zones shouldn’t be a debilitating constraint—technology, along with a little bit of flexibility from a team, can be useful in getting past many of the obstacles that distributed teams face.

In light of the fact that many of us can’t be in the same place to have that glorious-seeming ideal critique scenario, here’s an approach I’ve worked with to get started with a distributed, fairly continuous critique system:

The good news is that you’ve got a great book in your possession that provides you with all of the information that you need to do this.

If you have a team of five people or fewer, you can lead the team in one-on-one critique sessions. If your team comprises six or more, you can share those duties with another member of your team. Consider rotating the role of the person leading critique sessions with some regularity to give everyone an opportunity. It’s great to choose teams where people don’t work on the same projects or products (if possible) and are in different physical locations.

This can be really simple—30-minute meetings, once a week, with a variety of approaches that can extend that into something more broad to help vary the types of critique you’re receiving. Here are some examples of how a 12-week cycle might operate:

One-on-one meetings: 30-minute meetings between the critique leader and other members of the team.

Group critique meetings: Erica Deahl ( www.ericadeahl.com ) suggested that one-on-one critique sessions could be improved by adding group critique sessions, as well. Try rotating weeks between one-on-one meetings and group critique meetings to get the benefit from both types of sessions.

All design team meetings: In addition to the group critique meetings and the one-on-one meetings, consider a regular meeting with everyone across all teams. Allow team members to sign up to receive critique, and let everyone participate across your entire design practice. Youi could also expand this to include developers and/or other disciplines as it makes sense.

Your mileage may vary, of course, and you might (and I might, too!) find that a different approach works as you implement and gain feedback for your team. Use this framework as a way to kick off continuous critique for your team, and see where it leads.

By implementing continuous critique with the teams I’ve worked with (a relatively small investment, likely less than five percent of a team’s utilization), I’ve seen several benefits, including:

Identifies leaders and leadership in the team; everyone gets an opportunity to participate, lead, and offer improvements.

Uncovers growth and training / learning needs; discussions across multiple projects and products help identify areas of growth needs for the team.

Strengthens critique abilities across the team; it’s being put into practice regularly and becomes embedded in the design culture.

Increases distributed team communication, interaction, and engagement; team members who might not normally have reasons to interact get to spend time working together.

Improves facilitation and presentation skills; the more we practice, the better we get at framing the scope of discussions and presenting our work.

Improves design across the team; critique gives us opportunities to hear and learn from different perspectives and take action that makes our designs better.

Formal and Informal Critiques

Standalone critiques themselves can take two forms: they can be formal, such as a scheduled meeting with a time, place, invites, and the whole 9 yards, or they can be as simple as asking someone for 10 minutes of her time to look over what we are working on—maybe chatting with someone over lunch, coffee, or drinks as we share our work and what we are trying to accomplish, and asking for her feedback.

Both formal and informal critiques are helpful. To ensure that we get the most out of them we need to consider the right type of critique setting for the situation.

Formal critiques provide a dedicated, predictable time, and as such, they typically give us an opportunity to collect a wider range of perspectives because we can gather more people.

Informal critiques provide designers with a way to quickly collect feedback and get answers to pressing questions so that they can continue working on their solutions instead of waiting for a scheduled meeting.

Organizations that have done well at integrating critique use both approaches and have constructed an environment in which both are not only accepted by team members, but expected.

Pixar, the animation powerhouse, uses a formal critique process as a way to analyze and strengthen works in progress while building collaboration. The practice, called “Dailies,” is commonly used in television and film and is based on reviewing a previous day’s footage to determine if reshoots and adjustments are needed. Seeing the potential and utility of this process, though, Pixar has adapted it such that it can improve and iterate on work at any stage, not just captured footage.

On a daily basis, Pixar staff from a variety of roles—whether it’s writers, storyboard artists, character designers, directors, or whatever—will convene to examine and critique a work in progress. Making critique such a routine part of Pixar’s process makes it possible for team members to build habits and “muscle memory” around productive conversations about their work. It also breaks down silos and provides a consistent opportunity to gain insights and perspectives about creations, allowing for continuous improvement. It’s safe to assume that these Dailies are a contributing factor to the great work the Pixar team produces.

Whichever approach you choose, it is important to remember that the more you participate, the stronger your critique skills will become. As we said in Chapter 3 , practice , practice , practice !

When Should You Critique?

A question that comes up often in our presentations and workshops is, “When should we be critiquing?”

Any time you’re looking to take something you’ve done or created and improve upon it, you have an opportunity for critique. Although that’s true in general, when we’re talking about the practicalities and logistics of team collaboration and project timelines, the real answer becomes a bit more nuanced.

When thinking about what needs to be in place to critique an idea in a useful manner with respect to the idea itself, two very important considerations come up:

We need to be able to clearly communicate the idea to others.

We need to have the time to process the feedback we receive from the critique and use it to iterate on our idea.

Taking these things into consideration, we can place two points related to these considerations on a timeline that represents the life or “baked-ness” of a design, as illustrated in Figure 4-1 .

Early critique

The leftmost end of the timeline represents the very first spark of an idea. At this point, things are very abstract and our own brains are still trying to make sense of the connections between aspects of the ideas that are coagulating in our minds. Think of it as the early embryonic stage of a baby’s development (note I didn’t say what kind of baby). It’s just a lump. We still don’t really know what it might be. Maybe it will have two arms, maybe eight. Or maybe it will have wings, and fangs, and shoot laser beams from its eyes and... well, you get the idea.

The gist is that at this early stage, we still need to develop our thoughts around the solution a bit more. If we tried to share them with others so that we could get their critique, we’d likely confuse the heck out of them because the idea itself isn’t clear enough even to ourselves at this point. As soon as the first person asked us to clarify things, all we would be able to answer with is “I don’t know.”

To be able to critique, we first need to have enough of our own clarity around the idea so that we can clearly communicate it to others. This marks the first point that we can plot on the timeline, as depicted in Figure 4-2 . Before it, critique is premature. It doesn’t mean that we must wait until we’ve figured out every single detail and can thoroughly answer any question asked. In fact, at this early stage, there will still be a lot of details left to figure out and questions whose answers aren’t known. That’s alright.

Later critique

The rightmost side of the timeline represents the fully developed, or “fully baked,” solution. At this point, whatever is going to be created has been. It’s done. It’s out in the world and it is what it is. Nothing more can be done to change it.

Those of us who work in digital products or services or who have any understanding of design philosophy recognize that this state is considered a fallacy. We can always learn from what we’ve created, iterate on our ideas, and release a New! Improved! Design !

Thinking in practical terms, specifically those of the design and production processes, we know that there is a point at which we have to let something go and allow it to be built with whatever details specified at that point in time. Then, we wait for the chance to work on it again and take it further—the next iteration or phase, if you will. There are processes and methodologies such as Lean and Agile that work to minimize the time between and maximize the frequency of iterations. But that point, that “time to let it go, even if just for a bit” is always there.

That point is the second point on the timeline (see Figure 4-3 ); it’s the point at which we need to stop iterating for whatever amount of time, so that something can actually be produced. Often this point coincides with sign-offs, approvals, and design reviews (which we’ll talk about in a bit).

Finding the sweet spot

The space between the two points in Figure 4-3 is where critique is most immediately useful. Yes, it can be argued that we can still critique in the time to the right of the second point (we just need to wait until things circle back again before we can do something with the feedback). But here we’re thinking about critique that is immediately useful; that is to say, the designer can walk away, think about the insights that were shared, and right away begin to iterate on the solution.

Now, the amount of time on either side of and between these two points will be highly dependent on any number of factors: the scale of the problems you’re trying to solve, the scale of the idea itself, your team, your process and methods, and so on. We can’t say that the first point comes exactly two days after the idea begins to form and then there’s three weeks between when critique is useful and then another four days when it isn’t.

Often these points are described in terms of percentages. For example, the best time to critique a solution is after it is 20 percent baked but before it’s 80 percent baked. These kinds of labels can be useful in helping us to think and talk about when critique is useful, but they still have the possibility of being taken a bit too literally for our comfort. Instead, we think it’s best to understand the dynamics and criteria we’ve described here and then use your judgment. In some cases, you’ll get to that 20 percent mark very fast—maybe a matter of minutes or even seconds. Sometimes, it can take longer.

Jeff Gothelf, Principal, Neo

Within the cyclical, rapid pace of Agile projects, designs (and designers) can often become lost in the race to continue “feeding the Agile beast.” This makes thoughtful reflection on the design even more difficult to achieve. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is exactly in these iterative environments that critique is most needed. In a recent engagement, we were helping an enterprise client conceive and then launch a new digital subscription business. In the conceptual stages of the project, designs were rough—often produced on nothing more than Sharpies and A4 paper—in an effort to bring alignment and team cohesion to the new product vision. Critique was rare; most conversations focused on workflow, customer needs, and integration into existing client and customer workflows.

With continued experimentation and testing, the team gained more certainty about the product’s direction. With increased certainty comes increased fidelity. Our designer (the only one on the team at the time) was tasked with daily refinements of the interaction design as well as an ever-improving visual design. Week-long iterations, filled with continuous customer feedback and cadenced client reviews, allowed little time for design reflection of critique. Making things more challenging was the small size of our team: just four people made up of a product manager, two developers, and the designer. Our build/measure/learn cycle was the main source of design input.

Although the product features and workflow were improving on a weekly basis, there was a strong sense from the team that the design was stagnating. With engineers writing and refining features, the product manager liaising with client and customers, and the client scrambling to provide content on a timely basis, the challenge became pausing long enough for insightful design reflection to take place. In addition, we had the incremental challenge of integrating this new product into a suite of services and offerings of a client brand that had been around for decades. The design couldn’t fall short.

Twelve weeks into this cycle the team realized that without meaningful design conversation, the product’s success would be limited to early adopters and brand loyalists, not the broader new audience the client was seeking. With constant urging from the designer at first and the broader team second, the client finally agreed to add a designer. With the addition of this new team member, design responsibilities were now split between two people, making conversation possible at a tactical level between the two practitioners. In addition, this gave both designers the time they needed to be more thoughtful in their work and to seek out feedback both internally and from the client.

One of the first things to fall by the wayside in Lean validation work is design critique. This is natural because the refinement of the design is not essential if the product ideas are wrong. However, when product ideas, customer needs, and solution approaches gain traction, it’s important to remember that great design differentiates products and focus needs to be shifted to this work. Adequately integrating critique into a Lean or Agile environment requires a few things:

Tasking one designer with interaction design, visual design, content, research, and frontend coding limits that person’s ability to seek out and incorporate meaningful feedback into their design work. It’s important to add designers on to the team to help distribute workload, provide practitioner-level critique, and ensure design details aren’t being missed.

There is a tough balance to maintain between clients who love seeing (and can easily react to) design work and the need to validate early product ideas. Set client expectations that design critique meetings will begin at some point during the project and will become increasingly frequent as features mature and customer feedback increases.

Design critique sessions early in the Lean validation process can sometimes prove too tactical yet need to be brought back in as soon as product ideas reach a threshold of market validation. Keep critique sessions focused starting initially with a style guide–level critique targeting product-wide elements and then digging into tactical critiques that look at unique elements and implementations across the product suite.

Agile processes are iterative. Design processes are also iterative. Their natural integration is not only inevitable, it’s tailor-made. Just as code is reviewed regularly in these processes, design critique must also become commonplace. The techniques shared provide a framework for starting the Agile critique initiative. As with any process, the recommendations are just that, starting points. Pay attention to the unique needs of your organization and adjust these frameworks to reflect your industry and culture’s unique needs.

How Often Should You Critique?

Early on in our exploration into critique, Aaron and I were asked by an audience member at one of our talks if there is such a thing as “too much critique.”

I (Adam), in a bit of zealotry and over-enthusiasm replied, “No. Not at all!” And then I went on and on about how critique was the best thing to ever happen to modern civilization. Well, not really... but you get the picture.

We wish we could find that audience member and apologize.

Having had much more time to work with different teams and organizations as well as listen to the experiences of many, many people, we agree that yes, there is absolutely such a thing as too much critique. As with timing though, there isn’t a specific number or formula that indicates exactly how much is too much. Instead, it’s an innate sense or sensitivity that a team or individuals develop over time as their skills and comfort with critique improve. It’s the sense that critiques are no longer helping or contributing to the momentum of the solution or the project; instead, they are possibly inhibiting it.

There might be too much critique when the team begins to sense that the amount of advancement between critiques is so small that it makes it feel as though progress has stalled. Or, perhaps when critiques are just talking in circles and the changes being made as a result of the insights collected in those discussions aren’t doing anything to advance the design, it might be the case that there is too much critique or it is happening too often.

Or relatedly, if members of the team feel that critique—more specifically formal critiques—are being required so frequently that they can’t push the design forward enough between them, there might be too much critique.

Additionally, if critiques begin to be seen or used by team members as a validation mechanism because there isn’t enough confidence in their ideas either by the team or the designer themselves, there might be too much critique.

Answering the question of how often to critique is too nebulous to take on. Your needs will be different depending on the individuals and team. Given the scale of what you’re looking for feedback on, sometimes you’ll want critique very frequently, sometimes not so much. With practice, you’ll know when the time is appropriate.

The key is honing that sense of when it’s right and when it’s too much, and that only comes with practice. Be flexible. As you try incorporating critique at various points and times and frequencies, think about whether it feels like too much or too little. Talk with other members of the team and get their perspectives. Adjust your timing and try some more.

What Should You Critique?

Another common question that Aaron and I hear is, “What should we be critiquing? Sketches? Wireframes? Visual Design Comps? Prototypes?”

The answer is, yes, all those and more.

Anything you want to improve can be critiqued. The documents listed above (sketches, wireframes, and so on) are all representations of a solution. The form of documentation doesn’t matter. If you’re looking to iterate and improve the solution, critique it. Going further, it isn’t just the design we create for our project that we can critique. We can critique any and all of the artifacts we create: personas, scenarios, journey maps, whatever. We can critique the tools, methodologies, processes, and so on that we use. We can critique it all. We really can... Critique. All. The. Things.

But what changes when you go from critiquing a wireframe to a visual design mockup? Or how about design principles? What’s different when you’re critiquing those?

No matter what you’re critiquing, the framework stays the same. What are the objectives? What elements or aspects of the product relate to those objectives? Are those aspects or elements effective? Why or why not?

What changes when critiquing different artifacts or design elements are the objectives against which you’re analyzing. The objectives for the product will carry through in critiques of any and all aspects of the design, but some will be more pertinent at times, depending on what you’re analyzing. For example, the color pallet you choose might or might not be relevant to a goal of increasing authenticated visits to your website or reducing calls to the support desk.

Different aspects of the design can also have their own unique objectives. Often, we see these in the form of principles and best practices. A team might establish principles that are specific to interaction design or some specific to visual design. Each of these, in turn, has its own best practices that should be considered.

This extends beyond the design to anything else you might critique, too. For example, if a team is working on establishing design principles, what it comes up with could (and should) be critiqued against best practices for creating design principles.

So, regardless of what’s being critiqued, the structure of the conversation doesn’t really change. What does change is that against which the object being critiqued is being analyzed.

Standalone critiques, whether they’re formal meetings or casual discussions, are a great way to incorporate critique because of the flexibility they offer around when and how teams can use them.

Collaborative Activities

As design practices mature within individuals and organizations, collaborative activities are playing a larger role in the process. Often referred to as workshops or working sessions, these activities pull together multiple people to work on solving a problem simultaneously and collectively.

Because of their usefulness as both an iteration driver and as a consensus builder (see Chapter 1 ), critique can be a powerful activity to incorporate into collaborative activities.

Enter the Brainstorm

One of the most common “activities” in a workshop is the brainstorm . The idea behind brainstorms is that, as a group, people can come up with more potential solutions to a challenge than if they worked individually.

Although it’s a nice idea, we can’t say that we’ve often seen it work out that way. Instead, what we commonly see in brainstorms, following a presentation of the challenge to be solved, is a period of silence. Then, one person proposes an idea. Other participants then begin to analyze the idea and discuss why it might or might not work, while the remainder of the team is trying to come up with their own ideas. Then, someone else proposes a second idea. That idea might be completely new, but it’s more than likely that it’s a variation on the previous idea. The discussion picks up again, now analyzing both presented ideas, and this pattern repeats one or two more times. It’s rare that we’ve seen brainstorms executed this way produce more than a handful of unique ideas.

The problems with brainstorms as they’re commonly executed are many.

Brainstorms lack focus

In many of the brainstorms we’ve observed the challenge to be solved has not been adequately defined or broken apart to allow people to come up with ideas. Often it can feel like someone on the team encountered a problem, determined she couldn’t or shouldn’t solve it on her own, and so dropped everything to call everyone together in the hopes that magically after a few hours they’d have a solution.

Brainstorms lack structure and facilitation

Coordinating the mental processes of a group of individuals isn’t easy, but it’s essential to productive collaborative activities. When everyone is working in different directions, it can be impossible to resolve questions and find agreements.

Brainstorms devolve quickly into design-by-committee

Often, because of the limited ideas, lack of structure, and pressure to have a solution at the end of the session, brainstorms often shift to a goal of getting everyone in a room to say yes to a solution without much regard as to whether it’s the right solution.

Now, this doesn’t mean that brainstorms are bad and should be avoided. Harnessing the power of a group and the fact that you have many minds working on a challenge in order to find as many solutions as possible is a worthy and righteous goal. A good idea can come from anywhere and the best way to find great ideas is to have lots of ideas.

However, we need to put some thought into how we go about planning and running brainstorms. Let’s take a look at a very simple framework that can instantly improve the quantity and quality of ideas your team conceives.

Building Better Brainstorms

Let’s think about the objectives of the average brainstorm. Of course, the primary objective is to come up with lots of ideas—as many as possible. But more often than not, we also have the objective of figuring out which one of the ideas the team should pursue. And if we’re doing things right that idea should be the one the team feels most works toward the goals we’re trying to achieve.

With those objectives in mind, let’s take them one by one.

Generate as many ideas as possible

Why is it that brainstorms often struggle to generate more than a handful of ideas? The answer is simple, and it’s a phrase we’ve used quite a few times already, though not in reference to an obstacle: critical thinking.

Critical thinking is the nemesis of creative or generative thinking. With critical thinking we’re trying to determine if an idea will or won’t do what we want it to. The problem with most brainstorms is that we’re not doing anything to prevent participants from thinking critically. So, not only are some participants spending their time and energy thinking about the ideas that have been presented—meaning they aren’t coming up with more ideas—but other participants who might be coming up with ideas aren’t sharing them because as they’re coming up with them, they’re analyzing them prematurely. Thus the group that’s formulating new ideas determines that they aren’t worth mentioning and keeps those ideas to themselves. This is exactly what we don’t want to happen!

Additionally challenging to coming up with lots of ideas in a brainstorm is the way in which participants are pushed to interact and discuss things almost immediately after being presented with the challenge to be solved. This means that before an individual is even able to form his own perspective on the challenge and possible solutions, he’s forced to listen to, make sense of, and discuss the perspectives of others. It’s pretty hard to come up with ideas when all that’s going on.

To generate lots of ideas, we need to utilize activities that minimize or remove the opportunity for critical thinking and give individual participants an opportunity to form their own perspective. These kinds of activities are called divergent thinking activities . These are activities that push participants to consider lots of possibilities without consideration of their validity. How do they remove or minimize critical thinking? Well, sometimes it’s just a matter of a good facilitator watching out for it, but more often than not, these activities involve some kind of time limit and a challenge. For example: sketch six to eight ideas for this interface in five minutes.

OK. On to our second objective.

Determine which idea to pursue

This one isn’t so difficult. As we mentioned, most brainstorms do already do this, just badly. If we began our brainstorm with divergent thinking activities, the activities we want to do here are convergent thinking activities. These are activities that push participants to compare, contrast, consolidate, and eliminate ideas. This is where participants come together to discuss ideas and collaboratively determine what to do with them. At the end of this process, by virtue of consolidating and eliminating ideas, we’re left with far fewer solutions than we started with.

Which leads us to the final objective.

Ensure that the idea(s) you’re left with are the strongest ones

Consolidating similar ideas only goes so far in shrinking our pool of possible solutions. Elimination, or more specifically, deciding which ideas not to pursue, is really the key to figuring out what we’re going to pursue. Some ideas will be easy to eliminate; they might be cost or time prohibitive, or maybe they involve acquiring the magical horn of the last purple unicorn from the far-away land of Trilandia. But what about the rest?

Voting is a common mechanism used to determine which ideas should stay in the fight. Participants vote on the idea or ideas they think are strongest. But it’s more than likely that the criteria each participant is using for making that decision varies and might or might not have much to do with the goals of the project.

Enter critique

By incorporating critique as a precursor to voting or a voting-like activity, we prime the pump, so to speak. We get participants thinking about the ideas that have been presented through the lens of the agreed-upon objectives for the product. By way of conversation, we’ve likely already begun to see where consensus lies with regard to which ideas are strongest relative to the objectives, even before the vote takes place.

Taken all together, these considerations give us a very simple framework for our brainstorms, which you can see in Figure 4-5 :

Divide your time into two main phases.

In the first phase, utilize divergent thinking activities with which you can generate a large number of possible solutions without concern about their validity or quality.

In the second phase, plan for convergent activities that push participants to examine the proposed ideas, looking for ways to categorize, consolidate, and eliminate ideas.

Incorporate critique as part of the second phase to ensure that ideas are being kept or eliminated based on their strengths with respect to the product’s objectives.

Critique provides a powerful mechanism to help teams make choices that are focused on product objectives during collaborative activities such as brainstorms.

An Example: Design Studio

Adam and I are big fans of the Design Studio methodology. Design Studio is a perfect example of the framework we just mentioned in action. The technique itself is based upon architecture, industrial design, and some art schools where “studio” is the core component of the curriculum. Studio classes follow a basic iterative structure in which students are presented with a challenge, asked to generate a number of possible solutions, and then present those solutions to the instructor and class for critique. Based on that critique, the students then go back and refine a subset of their ideas, to be presented and critiqued again. This pattern repeats until an end solution is determined and continually refined.

The methodology was adapted to digital design practices and popularized by Todd Zaki Warfel in many presentations; it is noted in his book, Prototyping: A Practitioner’s Guide (Rosenfeld Media, 2009).

Although there are many variations on the methodology, there are a few core criteria that remain consistent:

The order of activities within one phase, called a charrette , of a studio is always sketch > present > critique.

There are at least two charrettes. Three is a more commonly used number.

The first charrette is always individuals sketching their own ideas for the given challenge.

Adam and I have been using Design Studio with our teams and clients for years now and have had a lot success using it to get teams to collaboratively work to define interfaces for apps, websites, and other products. What follows is the setup we’ve developed and refined over the years.

We use a three-charrette model. Each charrette has a set time that allows for sketching concepts, presenting them to other participants, and receiving critique. Participants are broken up into teams of no more than six individuals. If there are not six participants to a team that is OK. Ideally, three to six participants works well for the exercises. Teams are constructed so that to the degree possible they are cross-functional; that is, we don’t have one team comprised completely of designers and one entirely of developers. A facilitator (or two) helps keep time for the exercises, ensures the meeting stays on track, and remains available for questions.

Preparation

Participants should be equipped with the problem statement for the product they’ll be designing. They should also be given the product’s business goals, scenarios, personas, and any other previously agreed-upon artifacts that will provide the context needed for their designs. It is very helpful to the participants if they aren’t seeing these items for the first time, so we work to get them distributed before the session.

It’s also important to have the right tools ready. You can find almost all of these tools at an office supply store and they are relatively inexpensive. Here’s what we typically use (see also Figure 4-6 ):

A timer for time-boxing each charrette. Time-boxing is nothing more than putting a limit on the amount of time for an activity.

Paper for sketching. We use two kinds, 6-ups and 1-ups. Don’t get put off by the names; it’s just grid paper. 6-ups are pages broken down into six small grids, and 1-ups are one large grid. Really, any paper will do, but we use these because the smaller spaces on 6-ups used in early charrettes restrict participants from including too much detail.

Black markers for sketching. We don’t let participants use pencil—having the ability to erase can slow people down. Also, because markers draw thicker lines, they prevent people from getting too detailed.

Red and green pens for the critique sessions. During critique, you can use green pens to mark the elements of a design that are considered particularly strong, or those that could be strong with more work. Use the red pens to mark elements that are considered ineffective or provide little value toward the product’s objectives.

Painters tape to post sketches to the wall during critiques. Posting to the wall requires the designer to stand with his team. At times, we’ve noticed that in presentations designers will hold up their sketches and stand behind them as if they’re some sort of barrier between themselves and the rest of the team. Taping things up to the wall eliminates this.

The activity

The format of charrettes is as follows (see also Figure 4-7 ):

Participants are given eight minutes to sketch as many concepts as they can come up with using the 6-up paper.

The goal of this round is for the participants to generate as many ideas as possible without over thinking things. Often, we’ll challenge participants to see if they can come up with at least five ideas.

When the time is up, participants post their sketches on the wall, present their ideas to their teammates (three minutes), and receive critique on them (four to five minutes).

Participants take the feedback they heard during their critiques as well as the ideas and feedback that they heard their teammates present and receive and revisit their sketches. The participants now have eight minutes to iterate on their previous sketches and come up with a singular concept, again using 6-up paper. This allows individuals to form their own conclusions based on the strongest ideas that came up during the critiques as well as go a bit deeper into details.

When the eight minutes are up, the team tapes their sketches to the wall and again presents their concepts and receives critique. Just like in the first round, the participants get three minutes to present their sketches and receive critique from their team for four to five minutes.

Participants are given 20 minutes to work collaboratively within their teams to come up with a singular design concept based on the critique they received in the last two rounds. By doing this, the teams work together to get a better understanding of how groups compromise and where consensus has been achieved.

When the time is up, teams present their concepts to the other teams to receive critique. The teams each have three minutes to present their ideas and seven minutes to receive critique from the other teams.

The aftermath

With the studio just about complete, we now have multiple concepts that are based on the ideas, critique, and compromise of each team. We next have participants talk about any common themes or patterns that emerged, making sure to document and share any open questions or assumptions that need to be validated.

It’s important to note that for most situations, we do not recommend using a studio to generate a single ultimate solution. In many cases, it’s unlikely that all of the considerations that need to be taken into account to determine a single solution can be addressed in the time constraints of a studio activity. Instead, as we use it, following the studio, the design team takes the ideas from the final charrette and works to create a single solution taking into account further analysis, critique, and other considerations and dependencies.

When Not to Use Design Studio

Design Studio is a great technique for quick collaboration, helping a team find consensus, and begin to see the direction that their design will take. But like any tool, it isn’t the best fit for every situation. Depending on your circumstances your project may not yet be in a position to utilize Design Studio or there may be circumstances that require you to rethink aspects of Design Studio or pursue a different approach all together. For example:

The problem hasn’t been framed adequately

If the problem hasn’t been adequately framed, there isn’t enough context and definition to guide the team in generating ideas. Participants are left to generate ideas based on their individual understanding of the problem that is being solved. And they may struggle to generate any ideas because the lack of framing leaves the problem too nebulous with too many potential solutions to explore.

The problem has been framed, but there is no agreement on the framing

In some cases, we find that a portion of the team, perhaps the designers or researchers, has worked to frame the problem, but that framing hasn’t yet been shared, understood and agreed upon by the team. This can often derail a Design Studio because, rather than generate ideas, the group will instead become mired in discussion and debate about what the framing should be. This is of course, an important discussion to be had, but if this discussion starts when you’re trying to kick off a Design Studio, it means that the group isn’t ready and you should have had this conversation earlier.

Alternatively, if you are able to get participants into the sketching phase of a studio without agreed upon framing, participants will generate ideas based on their own opinion of what the problem is, rather than a shared framing. This causes complications during the critiques and iterations in a studio because people are analyzing and judging the value of ideas on different sets of criteria.

A concept already exists from which the team can’t or won’t stray

Design Studio pushes participants to consider as many possibilities as they can come up with. This means that the ideas that emerge at the end of a studio may look very different than an existing design or product that the team already has. In order for Design Studios to be effective, the participants (and leadership) need to be OK with that. If the team has been instructed to make minimal changes to an existing design, then chances are they’ll struggle throughout a studio activity and with determining what to do with the ideas that arise from it.

The team is not open to using Design Studio

Design Studios require active participation. Everyone involved will be sketching, presenting and sharing their ideas. As such, participants need to approach the activity with attitudes that support it.

Some people just won’t have an attitude that fits. Some will hate the idea of having to share their ideas. Some will hate the pressure of being asked to come up with solutions. Some just won’t want to participate at all. In these situations it’s worth it to at least try to get people involved, but if they repeatedly resist, it is not worth forcing the issue.

Overly complicated remote situations

Design Studio is best executed in person; for this activity, there is nothing like collaborating and working together face to face. With that said, remote Design Studio can work (we both do them regularly with our teams) as long as expectations are clear from the beginning, teams are equipped with tools like document cameras, and a solid Internet connection is available. Things get difficult when participants experience connection issues, or when a participant is working from an environment with lots of background activity and distractions.

Another instance in which you might want to consider alternative techniques, is when you have unbalanced remote distribution of your participants. For example, if all but one person is located in one place, so everyone is working face to face except for the sole remote participant, it can become a bit difficult to work, particularly with respect to the group components of a studio. Or, if all your designers are in one location and your developers in another, it can be difficult because you don’t want your teams to be constructed entirely of people within the same role. The key is to think through how you’ll form your teams and how the people on those teams will interact and contribute. If you can figure out something that will work, you can probably pull off a remote studio. One common fall back for situations like this is to, regardless of who happens to be in the same location, have everyone participate virtually.

Conducting Design Reviews

Whereas standalone critiques and collaborative activities are great and recommended ways to incorporate critique into the design process, design reviews are a bit different.

Design reviews are a common type of meeting that we find in projects in most organizations. Sometimes they have different names. To clarify what we’re referring to, these meetings share the following characteristics:

They are generally meetings held toward the end of the design phase.

They include a goal of collecting approval from someone on the design thus far so that efforts can shift to some new focus—the design of a different set of functionality, a shift in process to development, and so on.

If approval is not captured, these meetings focus on identifying the changes that need to be made to obtain approval in the future.

Regardless of what they’re called, these meetings can be seen as a form of “gate,” something that the design and team needs to pass through in order to proceed to something else.

Because a design—and changes to it—is being discussed in these sessions, they are often where teams we’ve worked with expect critique to be happening. However, even though feedback is a part of design reviews, they are not the same as critiques. The goals and logistics of these sessions in many cases make design reviews challenging for critique.

The Challenges Design Reviews Pose to Critique

Their intended outcome is approval.

As previously mentioned, these sessions are typically held for the purpose of getting an approval or sign-off of some kind, an agreement that it’s OK to shift the focus of work onto something else.

Even though their main activity is discussion of the design, the objective of these discussions is very different from those of a critique. Critiques are held with the intention of iterating on the design. It is understood and expected by all those involved that the design will be worked on further. The critique discussion is a tool used to inform where and how it might be iterated upon.

Specific changes are given as feedback

Because of this difference in objectives, in instances where approval isn’t received in design reviews, the feedback collected is often in the form of a list of what needs to change or be improved in the design. The thinking here is along the lines of, “It isn’t ready yet, but if you do these things and show it to us again, we’ll give you the OK.”

As we’ve shared in earlier chapters, though, critique isn’t about problem solving and specifying solutions. This is directive feedback and it is problematic to critique for a number of reasons.

Too many people and people with the wrong intentions are involved

The majority of the people we find in these meetings are there to ensure that their own list of interests and requirements are present in the final design, not necessarily comparing the design to its objectives to determine what might or might not be effective. When this is the setting, motives are skewed and goals are much different than in a normal critique session.

Additionally, because design reviews are usually to get approval, the group in the meeting is often too large to have productive conversations. Adam was once involved in a design review with more than 70 people in attendance, most by phone. How is it possible to have a productive, coherent conversation with that many people all trying to make sure their voice is heard?

Design review timing is determined by the project’s timeline

The timing of design reviews is usually determined by a project’s timeline and often held toward the end of a design phase or release cycle. Not only does this timing impede a team’s ability to collect and make use of critique because there isn’t enough time following the review to fully utilize it, but it is completely disjointed from when a team might actually need critique.

We should be able to conduct critiques whenever it’s useful for designers to understand the impact or effect of the choices they’ve made so far in order to iterate further on their creations. This typically means that effective critiques can begin fairly early in the design process and are held numerous times throughout.

Addressing the Challenges of Design Reviews

None of this is to say that design reviews aren’t a necessity. For some organizations, the need to gather everyone and collect approvals or sign-off is going to be essential. And, even though the intention behind critique differs from design reviews, the utility of the techniques we share in this book is to make feedback more useful in informing design decisions. If you’ve found these meetings and the feedback collected from them to be challenging, using techniques for gathering and facilitating critique can go a long way to making them better.

Specifically, to address the challenges design reviews present, we recommend the following to help prepare and get the most out of them.

Take control of the review

This doesn’t mean that you need to hijack the meeting, per se, but try to get into as much of a lead role as possible. If you can be the one to set up and organize the meeting, do it. If you can be the one to lead and facilitate the meeting, do it. This way you have an opportunity to work toward steering discussions so that they focus on comparing the design to its objectives, not just whether it has approval. This will give you the opportunity to measure the feedback against the goals and the intended outcomes, and in so doing, help in getting actionable feedback.

Recap the objectives

To the degree you’re able to, remind people of the agreed upon objectives for the design. If you’re leading or facilitating the meeting, review these at the beginning of the session. If not, when you have a chance to speak try to bring them up. By reminding the team of the objectives for the project, you can inform their thinking so that it stays closer to the intent of critique.

Use the techniques we suggest for dealing with difficult people

In Chapter 6 , we cover techniques for handling situations that involve people behaving in a difficult manner during a critique. It’s inevitable that you’ll encounter them. In many situations, the behaviors exhibited by participants in a design review are very similar to those situations. Techniques such as direct inquiry and laddering as well as strong facilitation skills go a long way toward getting better, more useful feedback out of design reviews.

Do not rely on design reviews for critique

We should not rely on design reviews as the only form of critique. If we are regularly critiquing before and leading up to a design review, the review can serve its purpose. It can act as a focused forum for approval of designs. Additionally, the team will have established a shared understanding about the goals and progress of the designs leading to a more focused review with fewer personal agendas.

Design reviews present challenges to the core intention of critique: continuous improvement. But, because the techniques used in critique work to make feedback more useful in the design process, they can be used to improve feedback gathered during design reviews.

Wrapping Up

Critique’s primary utility is as an iteration driver. There are many, many opportunities for it to occur within our practice. Whenever we are looking to improve or iterate on an idea or process, or almost anything, we have an opportunity for critique.

There are three points within the design process that present opportunities for incorporating critique.

Standalone critiques (both formal and informal or ad hoc):  These are meetings or discussions with the solitary purpose of critiquing a creation so that it can be iterated upon further.

Collaborative activities:  Activities that bring team members together to work on idea generation and selection. Including critique in these activities helps teams identify where there is consensus around ideas with the most value to the product’s objectives.

Design reviews:  Meetings that include some intention to collect sign-off or approval on a design. Although we recommend that these be handled separate from critiques, as feedback is collected during reviews, we can use many of the tools and techniques for critique to make the feedback collected as useful as possible.

No matter how you incorporate critique it’s important to remember the following:

Start small.  The more people involved in a conversation, the more difficult it is to manage. When introducing or practicing critique, start with small groups or just pairs and build from there.

Think before you speak.  Listening is paramount. How can you offer good feedback or act on the feedback you’ve received if you don’t accurately understand what you’re being told?

Choose participants carefully.  Critique is not for everyone. Some people struggle more than others. To the degree you can, think about how you put people together to best improve their skills and comfort level.

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• Audience awareness: As previously noted, oral reports are all about audiences, and about how you can best convey the results of your research in an intellectually substantive and engaging way. Your first question as a helpful observer, then, is: how well did this presenter convey the results of his or her research? In what sense was it engaging or intellectually substantive?
• Introduction: Did you and the audience clearly understand the basics (the who, what, when and where) of your presenter’s project? How well did the introduction work, both in terms of information presented and in terms of how it drew in the audience members and kept their attention?
• The researched writer: What did you learn about your presenter’s subject as a writer? Did he or she adequately explain important characteristics of this person as a writer, and how this writer typically proceeds from blank page to finished draft? How well did he or she describe the “big picture” that is, all of the myriad sorts of writing his or her subject accomplishes regularly? Did the presenter explain the writing samples and analytical concepts that he or she would like to focus on in enough detail?
• Ideas and analysis: This is our intellectual common ground, so your presenters should have touched on at least two of these areas. Briefly summarize what the presenter you are critiquing said about these areas. Then offer any further thoughts you might have for areas or ideas the presenter could also think about. To remind you, these areas included:

* Technology usage and collaborative work methods: John Seely Brown

* Socio-economic class and communication styles: bell hooks

* Race, gender, and other forms of privilege: Peggy McIntosh * Literary versus professional writing styles: Tom McKeown

• More general considerations: Did your presenter explicitly discuss his or her analytical thinking, however tentative it might be at this point? Which areas seem to have more significance for the writer under discussion? In what ways?  How well did your presenter present evidence? Did he or she include in any way effective examples of some of the different kinds of information we have been gathering (observations, interviews, close examinations of texts, and articles found through bibliographic research)? Which of these seemed to be most effectively presented, and which would you say needs further work to be effective in the final report?
• Q & A: Finally, conclude your critique with some thoughts about the conversation or discussion that followed the presentation (and, perhaps, took place during it). How well did your presenter handle questions? Did he or she seem to be able to provide answers, and were these answers ones that seemed to keep the conversation going? Did the presenter also have some good questions to ask the audience?

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Charlotte's Liel Abada bags his 2nd goal of the game to grab a 3-1 lead over Atlanta United

Charlotte's liel abada bagged his 2nd goal of the game to grab a 3-1 lead over atlanta united. .

Portugal's Bruno Fernandes bags a brace in 4-2 victory vs. Finland | Fox Soccer

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Josep Jr stars as Italy make winning start

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Goals from Josep Junior Gentilin, Emmanuele Zurlo and Marco Giordani earned Italy a 3-1 victory over USA in their UAE 2024 Dubai opener.

USA 1-3 Italy USA 1-3 Italy

USA goals: Rezende Italy goals: Josep Jr, Zurlo, Giordani Player of the Match: Josep Junior (ITA) The Italy players proudly belted out Il Canto degli Italiani , and then proceeded to blast aside USA at the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup UAE Dubai 2024™. Marco Giordani, the MVP at last year’s Euro Beach Soccer League, got the pick of the goals with a thunderous free-kick, while the Italians worked tirelessly to nullify the threat of adventurous American goalkeeper Chris Toth. Alessandro Remedi was sent off late on, but USA couldn't capitalise. The teams return to action on Saturday, with Italy facing Egypt and USA up against United Arab Emirates.

BEACH SOCCER WORLD CUP NEWS BEACH SOCCER WORLD CUP NEWS

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How Real Madrid beat Dortmund 2-0 in Champions League final on Carvajal, Vinicius Jr goals

Champions League result — Dortmund 0-2 Real Madrid

Ruthless Real Madrid rode their luck against Borussia Dortmund at Wembley Stadium before striking twice late on to claim a fifteenth Champions League crown.

Dortmund dominated an exciting opening half, with Karim Adeyemi missing two fine chances and striker Niclas Fullkrug then hitting the post .

And the German side were made to pay when Real came out on top late on. Dani Carvajal broke the deadlock with a header before the impressive Vinicius Junior scored to secure a 2-0 victory.

Victory sealed a record-extending fifth Champions League title for coach Carlo Ancelotti , his third with Real Madrid.

Subscribe to The Athletic using our latest discount code .

The Briefing: How will next season’s Champions League work?

Big changes coming to the Champions League next season. The number of teams competing will increase from 32 to 36, meaning there will be 189 matches instead of 125, and the group stage will be replaced by a league phase — otherwise known as the “Swiss model”.

Each team will be guaranteed to play eight matches in the league phase of which they will play half at home and half away.

The top eight sides in the league will qualify for the knockout stage. Those finishing in ninth to 24th will compete in two-legged play-offs to determine who joins the top eight in the last-16.

You can read more about it here .

Champions League final analysis: Dortmund 0 Real Madrid 2 – Carvajal, Vinicius Jr and pitch invaders

The Briefing: Have Dortmund played like this all season?

Getty Images

Where has this Borussia Dortmund been? At their worst during the Bundesliga season, they were almost unwatchable. But the word most often used to describe them? Boring — and historically that is something that Dortmund have never been, whatever their limitations.

The tenor of their performance at Wembley was completely different. In fact, the biggest compliment Edin Terzic’s side could be paid is that, for that first 45 minutes they played with the heart of a Jurgen Klopp team.

It’s not original to contrast Dortmund’s domestic and European form, but this was a level beyond anything they had produced before. It was football of a quality befitting the occasion. Football that nobody thought BVB to be capable of.

Follow the link below to read on.

The Briefing: How did Vinicius Jr prove his worth?

For a long time on Saturday night it seemed like Vinicius Junior’s biggest moments were without the ball amid a frustrating first half.

But Vinicius Jr is made of stern stuff, and soon turned things around, both for himself and the team. Two Champions League finals, two victories, and two goals for Vini now.

His night did not start that great, but it ended in triumph. In the end, none of Dortmund’s pressure or the chances they created will matter. Nobody recalls any of the other teams that Real have upended, do they?

The Briefing: Did Dortmund waste their dominance?

If you looked at any prediction models or betting odds, you would have seen that Real Madrid were the obvious favourites — not just to win the final but to be the dominant side across the game.

But just as Borussia Dortmund have done in Europe all season, they ensured that the narrative did not follow the direction that many expected during the first half of Wembley’s final.

Dortmund’s performance was strong — arguably their strongest of the season — but Madrid have a narrative of their own. One that sees them regularly underperform but still come out on top as the final reflected their whole European campaign.

The Briefing: How unlikely a hero is Carvajal?

Dani Carvajal was the unlikely hero. He was a surprise scorer, but maybe should not have been. Finally free of injuries which have dogged him through recent seasons, Carvajal already had five goals and five assists in all competitions this season.

He is also a hugely important character in the dressing room, setting standards and demanding intensity, along with fellow long-serving home-grown players Nacho and Lucas Vazquez.

That historic moment came more than two decades after, as a 10-year-old, he was selected to join Alfredo Di Stefano in laying the first stone at the club’s Valdebebas training facility. As he won his sixth Champions League medal, Carvajal confirmed his place alongside Di Stefano as a Blancos legend.

The Briefing: Are Real Madrid inevitable?

We had all seen this movie before: Real Madrid pitch up in a Champions League final, stumble out of the blocks, seem to be there for the taking, ride their luck … but still prevail.

It happened against Atletico Madrid in 2014 and Liverpool 2022 and to a lesser extent in 2018. As one Dortmund chance after another went begging in the first half, you just knew how this was going to end.

The Briefing: Why was the match delayed?

The final, the showpiece of the European club game, was the biggest men’s match at the national stadium since England’s penalty shootout defeat against Italy that turned into a “day of national shame” with 19 police officers injured and more than 50 arrests.

The opening of the game was deeply embarrassing for the organisers as three separate pitch invasions by individuals delayed the start. A fourth attempted to join the three on the field but was stopped by stewards. The match was then restarted after a short disruption of around two minutes.

Champions League final talking points

Real Madrid won a 15th Champions League title after withstanding a hugely impressive Borussia Dortmund performance to triumph at Wembley thanks to late goals from Dani Carvajal and Vinicius Junior.

Here, The Athletic ’s writers analyse the game.

Click below for the full piece, but we'll also bring you all the instant reaction and analysis from our writers in this live blog.

Carlo Ancelotti: This club is 'a footballing family'

Victorious manager Carlo Ancelotti spoke about the departing Toni Kroos in his post-match press conference, saying: "I’m really grateful to him. He has finished at the very top. There’s no way of finishing in a higher position than this. He had the balls to finish it.

"He is a legend in this club and all the Real Madrid fans are grateful for him for what he has done – not only for his game but his attitude, his professionalism. Never missed a single day. I’ve said to him, we’re waiting. If you change your mind, we’re here waiting for you.

"My son (Davide) is my assistant coach, we're a family, Real Madrid is a family. It’s a footballing family, a very healthy, clean atmosphere, it’s fantastic for the structure. Working in a family is better than working in an industry.

"Every day at Valdebebas, with my son next to me, that helps me because he can tell me things that other people wouldn’t be able to tell me."

Dani Carvajal: 'Inside I had some anger'

Real Madrid goalscorer Dani Carvajal, speaking post-match about his reaction when he scored, said: "Well, I just ran to celebrate. Inside I had some anger really — just saying 'Here I am.'

"It’s not all about height. You need to be there, jump for the ball, show determination. Sometimes the shortest players can score headers too.

"The goal just says how confident I was really. When I heard the final whistle I was really emotional. I arrived here being a kid. I'm still here now with children.

"Over 20 years defending the colours of Real Madrid and making history with this team. It’s a fantastic feeling. We want to celebrate today and enjoy it because we deserved it."

Dortmund came so close

Another gutting defeat for Borussia Dortmund.

They were excellent in the first half, but two familiar problems – set-piece defending and sloppy passing across the defence – cost them.

It feels like they lost it more than Real Madrid won it.

Dortmund played the Champions League final like favourites but lost in sadly predictable circumstances

Carvajal: 'It seemed impossible to win six European Cups'

Speaking after the final, Dani Carvajal addressed joining the ultra-exclusive club of six-time winners of this tournament: "Well I’m very happy joining this select club of players that have won six European Cups. Every time we get one it’s harder to take it away from us. I’m really happy because I played all six in the starting XI in the team of my life. It’s a dream for me.

"If I could speak to Paco Gento, I would say it seemed impossible to join this club of six European Cups when I started out."

Record trophy hauls

A quick round-up of some of the milestone numbers reached tonight, because they bear repeating:

• Real Madrid have won the European Cup/Champions League final for the 15th time (against just three losses), more than double every other team in history.
• Carlo Ancelotti has won the competition for the fifth time as a manager, which is at least twice more than anyone else.
• Dani Carvajal, Toni Kroos, Luka Modric and Nacho Fernandez have won it for the sixth time, tying Paco Gento for the most all-time.

Terzic on Sancho: 'We don’t know yet what the future will bring'

One more from the Dortmund boss, because the questions now start to gain traction over the future of their on-loan winger Jadon Sancho and his Manchester United future. Here's what Edin Terzic said tonight:

💬 "The last six months, Jadon has been brilliant for us. He didn’t only improve his game, but improved all the players around him.

"I didn’t speak about the future because we’ve been talking about the present: playing in this final in his home town; a really special moment for him.

"You can feel the joy he receives and brings to the dressing room. I’m very happy to work with J. We don’t know yet what the future will bring, but it will bring for him another Champions League final."

Terzic told Jude 'the same thing I said to Erling'

Jude Bellingham caught the attention of European football while at Borussia Dortmund. Now he's a Champions League winner with Real Madrid.

That will benefit Dortmund financially, but what did Dortmund head coach Edin Terzic say to his former midfielder on the Wembley turf at full-time? Here's Terzic speaking to TNT Sports just now:

💬 "When he left us, I said the same thing I said to Erling Haaland, that I was proud to be their manager…and I was there when they won their first cup, but that I was pretty sure I wouldn't be around when they won their first Champions League. Erling did it last season, and unfortunately I was here when Jude did it, even though we tried to avoid this.

"It’s a very proud moment for him, so congratulations to the whole family. I know what (dad) Mark, (mum) Denise and (brother) Jobe are doing to get this success in the family, and big congratulations to them all."

Valverde: 'We really suffered in the first half'

Federico Valverde spoke to Movistar TV after the final: "We really suffered, particularly throughout the first half, because Dortmund really played well. They were so quick on their counters and they had some clear chances. I'm happy to congratulate our rival for how they played, but I'm happier that we won.

"The boss made little alterations to try and change the balance. He called me over quite a few times, but I understood what he wanted more or less, and when we changed to a 4-3-3, that helped, it gave us equilibrium.

"Tomorrow we'll celebrate, a real party. But tomorrow, too, we'll be telling each other how important it is to win this again next year."

Terzic hopes more will come for Dortmund

Borussia Dortmund head coach Edin Terzic was at his eloquent best, speaking to TNT Sports just now:

💬 "We gave them a really good game and showed everyone we were here to win, not just to play. We were very close and only small things were missing, but congratulations to them to keep this hunger to win it again. You see why they are the true champions.

"My first feeling is pride. We brought nearly 100,000 people from Dortmund to London and we all had belief. It was a fantastic journey for this campaign. But it is also a bit empty inside because it was a great opportunity, and unfortunately we didn’t make it.

"But I saw what we did every day to get here. How much desire, pain and hard work was left on the training ground for 333 days in 214 sessions. The biggest challenge we face now is to keep our belief high, because everything in life starts with belief."

Report: Some Madrid players 'very angry' with UEFA

Movistar TV reporter Sergio Sanchez has reported from Wembley that some Real Madrid players were very angry at UEFA, as family members who had bracelets (allowing them onto the pitch) were initially not allowed down to celebrate with them.

This was as the images showed Bellingham with his family members on the pitch, showing off his medal.

Courtois: 'A very long, very difficult year'

Thibaut Courtois, who kept another clean sheet in a Champions League final today, admitted to Movistar TV after the match that he struggled this season due to his long absence through injury.

He said: "It was a very long, very difficult year, with lots of support from my team-mates, medical staff and fans. I am happy to end it like this, with a clean sheet.

"I was relaxed. The mister (Ancelotti) knows me, Andriy (Lunin) had a good year, and we have to thank him. I knew I was ready, from the games I played, and training at a high level.

"You'd have to ask the boss what would have happened if Lunin had not been sick. He has a lot of confidence in me and I am happy to be able to return that confidence."

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