How To Better Receive and Provide Design Feedback

Design critique is fun, right?

Published in

UX Collective

4 min readOct 27, 2019

I have been to a great number of design critique sessions throughout my career, out of which there were sessions that made me experience the mind-blowing aha-moments. And of course, some others that made me realize I can sleep with my eyes open. To make design critique fun, I summarized a list of questions to help fellow designers (or non-designers) better receive and provide feedback.

How Might We Better Receive Feedback?

Leave our egos at the door
Don’t get attached to our designs
Be ready to improve our work and grow as designers

STEP 1 — Get Prepared

Have you addressed feedback from previous sessions? (If applicable)
What is your desired outcome from the design critique session?
Which specific areas do you want to spend the most time discussing during the session?
Do you have an agenda for the design critique session?
Are you prepared to take notes or have you found a volunteer to take notes for you?

STEP 2 — Provide the Context

What type of design are you presenting? (e.g. rapid sketch, wireframes, high-fi prototypes etc.)
What problem is this design solving?
Who are the users? What are their pain points, goals and jobs to be done?
What is your goal?
How will the business, technology, and users be impacted by the design?
What constraints are you working with?
What assumptions are you making?
Which part of the design are you looking for feedback on?
What type of feedback are you looking for?

STEP 3 — Explain Your Process

How did you arrive at this solution?
What are some other solutions you have considered?
Why did you suggest this solution?

STEP 4— Gather Feedback

Shift the room into critique mode

“What do you think of X part of the design and how it achieves X goal …”

Bring the topic back on track

“I hear you. Thanks for the feedback about… What do you think about …”

Differentiate subjective opinions from constructive feedback

Ask why (use the 5-Whys framework) until you reach the factual data or the root of the problem

STEP 5— Reflection

What did you learn about the feedback that you received?
Did you receive the right type of feedback?
Can you prioritize and translate the feedback into actionable items?
What can be done better next time?
What are the next steps? Do you need to book a follow-up session?

Here are two examples,

Presenter A — “This is the design I’ve been working on. Can you give me some feedback?”

:(
1.What is the context of your design??
2. What kind of feedback are you looking for??

Presentor B — “Today, I’m going to present the wireframes to solve the problem of….The user I’m designing for is ….My goal is to come up with a design solution that helps users to……I have looked into XX products, mapped out the IA, user flows and created two other design variations. The reason why I am proposing this solution is because…..Please provide feedback on…….and follow up later on ….. “

:)
1. Provide the context
2. Explain the process
3. Set the expectation

How Might We Better Provide Feedback?

Be precise and constructive
Don’t make assumptions
Provide the type of feedback we would want to receive

STEP 1 — Understand the Context

What phase of the design is being presented?
What is the problem?
What was the process?
What type of feedback is the presenter looking for?

STEP 2 — Prioritize Your Feedback

What is the most helpful feedback to the presenter?
What type of feedback are you providing?
How can you add to the feedback already has already been given?

STEP 3 — Articulate Your Feedback

How can you provide positive feedback first?
Can you specify and rationalize your feedback?
Do you have any evidence to support your feedback? (e.g. research results, factual data, principles, examples)

STEP 4 — Provide Suggestions (NOT Solutions)

Suggest approaches

“ It might be helpful to (e.g conduct user testing, heuristic review, look into XX products etc.) so you can (e.g. gather user data, explore different ideas, get inspired etc.)”

Suggest examples

“ Check out (this example) of how others solve similar problems.”

STEP 5 — Reflection

How do you think your feedback was received by the presenter?
What can be done better next time?

Here are two examples,

Feedback A — “I think this page is not intuitive for the users.”

:(
1. Are you the user??
2. What is “intuitive”??

Feedback B — “There are 3 actions a user can possibly take on this page. However, the UI presents all of them the same way. As a result, it takes more time to read through each option and decide which action to take. Have you tried to create an information architecture map and design the UI to reflect the hierarchy?”

:)
1. State the fact
2. Point out the problem
3. Make actionable suggestions

Thanks for reading! What is the best or worse design critique you’ve experienced? I would love to hear your stories and thoughts. If you want to chat about experience design, or just want to say hello, connect me via LinkedIn.