Design critique lessons from studying Facebook designers

Red flags and suggested solutions from a researcher that studied Facebook’s design teams.

Caitria O'Neill

Published in

UX Collective

5 min readJan 23, 2018

It isn’t hard to spot a product designer in their natural habitat at Facebook headquarters.

Venture just a few steps into the wilderness of MPK 20 and you’ll spot a few milling around the watering hole (St. Frank Coffee). Product designers are visually identifiable by their impeccable shoes and unbranded-yet-expensive looking watches.

I know how to spot a designer because for a little while at Facebook, this was part of my job.

I spent a year performing research on designers and design teams across Facebook for the internal Design Tools team. The team was responsible for exploring ways to improve collaboration and efficiency in design processes across the company.

From this research I learned designers disproportionately prefer art in their coffee. And that the following true at startups and one of the biggest companies in the world.

Dysfunctional design critiques can lead to broken teams and bad product.

A design critique is a regular meeting of designers and supporting team, where designers present their unfinished work. The goal is to create a space for designers to seek feedback and review whether or not the proposed design fulfills its objectives.

“Critique” is a holdover from art school — questionable word choice for a meeting meant to support designers.

Don’t get me wrong: some of the design critiques I’ve encountered feel like facing a firing squad. But some are warm, educational hangouts that make the product better. We can get there.

Spotting Common Problems

Facebook’s product teams are largely de-centralized. That means each product team is like an independent little startup in charge of choosing the routines and structures that work best. With some of the best design managers and designers in the world, there was a lot of great stuff to emulate.

At same time I was documenting best-practices, I was realizing the problems that arise across the dysfunctional critiques are remarkably consistent:

1. Designers aren’t comfortable

If a designer is uncomfortable sharing their work early and often to seek advice — your design critique is broken. The cause of this problem can range from the format of the review to the facilitator’s style, but the results are the same.

They share too late — The most powerful time to catch a design flaw or suggest an opportunity is at the early stage. If a designer expects criticism instead of help, they delay sharing until they are confident in their design. That means, your team doesn’t see the design until hours of work have already gone into refining it.
They don’t reveal questions/insecurities — The goal of a design critique is to help the designer solve the problems they’re grappling with. They need outside perspective and feedback on the most difficult/murky aspects of their work. NOT a round of applause for the parts that look best. If a designer isn’t comfortable, this opportunity for help is lost.
They don’t critique their colleague’s work — If a designer is uncomfortable asking for feedback in your current critique, chances are they don’t feel comfortable speaking up to critique the designs of their colleagues. That’s a loss for the company — one of the strengths of a design team is unleashing many brains on a single problem.

2. Unhelpful Feedback

This is a problem I’ve experienced frequently among startups and young teams. Perhaps because this is a common issue, I found a variety of best-practices already in play among Facebook design teams. A design critique is the time/space for feedback — make sure it counts.

Feedback isn’t relevant — A designer seeking feedback on early concept directions won’t need suggestions about button color for weeks. Process can help connect designers with appropriate feedback: things like assigning roles and presenters sharing the types of feedback they’re looking for. Check out this article full of suggestions by Facebook Designer Tanner Christensen.
Feedback isn’t actionable— The outliers here are mean or entirely subjective comments about design. The bulk of the bad feedback is actually pretty smart commentary — the problem is when that chatter doesn’t help the designer improve or move past their current design. What throws a red flag? Why? What can be tried next?
Best ‘design’ vs. right decision for user — It doesn’t matter if your whole team hates teal if that is what works best for your user. Small process tweaks in your critique can reign in teams that tend into personal preference over user needs. For example, framing suggestions from the perspective of “changes that might help the user accomplish their task”.

3. Going in Circles

Haven’t we been here before? Design critiques are a chance to teach and enforce design best practices. Sharing the reasoning behind product decisions back with designers provides an opportunity to learn a lesson for the next assignment.

Not answering questions — If the team can’t help a designer choose between options, consider doing a little research. A “design audit”, or reviewing industry standards for a specific interaction, or a little user research with your target demographic is worth the investment. The lessons you learn can shortcut future design.
Not following up— Though design teams help critique work, they aren’t always treated to the “punchline” — what decision was made? Reporting back on final design and decision making is a valuable way to spread best-practices in design for your particular user/scenario. For example — if “bright green” counterintuitively performs worse than “orange” for financial transactions, your whole design team should know.
Not recording history —As people join and leave your design team, you start missing those voices in the room who could chime in with “Yeah, Mika tried that and it ended terribly.” All of your design decision matrixes come to points at decisions that are “best for the product/company.” Collectively these decisions can help new designers refer to “how we do things.”

Do you have any tips for spotting problems with a design critique? Ideas for improving a so-so one? Please put it in comments!

Check in soon for a follow-up article on design critique best practices. An “all problem” article feels gloomy, so I’m following up with the brilliant/above-and-beyond things I’ve seen across critiques.