There’s nothing better than a well-executed design review
Only a small percentage of a design review is actually about the design. It’s up to you to control the flow of conversation, set realistic expectations, and leave your client feeling like they’re in good hands.
Basic design reviews are the iterative meetings that come together in a finished product. It’s rare you’ll go off to a corner with a little bit of guidance, knock out an entire design, and be able to call it done. These basic reviews are often at the center of client / designer collaboration, and it’s your job to make sure they are productive and informative. Fortunately, the quality of this meeting is entirely in your hands, and you only need to do a few things to make sure it’s a resounding success.
Set the scene
It’s unlikely your client has been thinking about your design all day. As a matter of fact, it’s more likely they’re coming from another meeting and haven’t had an opportunity to think about what they want from your meeting at all. When they walk into a design meeting, they start thinking about everything they want from their product, everything they’d like to see, what their preferences are, and — always — that they want to be wowed.
That’s a lot of expectation that has nothing to do with you. Not really.
When the meeting starts, it’s important to lay it all out for them. What are you going to show them today? A brief overview of what you want to cover helps rein in their imaginations and will help keep them focused on the task at hand. If the meeting begins to go off track, you’ve already laid out the agenda and are well within your rights to bring the meeting back in focus with a polite, ‘That’s a great point. Let me get through this and we’ll make sure to come back around to it.’
You’re going to have two types of people in the room. The first is really interested in the process and want this introduction to show you’ve put thought into the meeting ahead of time. The second just want to see the pretty pictures. Keep the intro short enough you don’t lose the second group but still give enough detail to whet the appetite of the first group.
Remember: this is your meeting. It’s completely up to you to drive it and, if you don’t, someone else will.
Isolate the details
Any design review can be derailed by too much information on the screen at once. This is one of the reasons generic placeholder text can be a useful tool; your design meeting won’t be interrupted by a 20-minute conversation about what text should go in which box.
You already know what pieces of your design need approval, and which pieces you still have questions about. Bring those to the forefront right away. Not only does this help you focus the meeting, but it really brings out all those details you’ve been focusing on. Give them the small view to help them hammer out all those tiny details with you. After you’ve reached agreement on those, you can zoom out and show them how all the pieces fit together.
A client doesn’t just need your finished design, they want to know you’ve thought through all the variations floating through their heads as well. Looking at the details is the best time to talk about your process because you can finally give them a glimpse into all the work that came before.
More importantly, you can show them how carefully you paid attention to their requests. There’s almost nothing more effective than saying, ‘last time we met you mentioned… and so I…’ This shows them that you were paying attention, that you took their feedback seriously, and that you acted accordingly. This also gives you room to show them where you deviated from their suggestions, and explain the reasons behind the deviation before they have to ask.
Isolating the details is especially helpful when presenting design systems, typography, and other design elements that are meant to be reusable. Break them apart and show your clients the thought and detail that went into each piece. When you bring them together, they’ll already be comfortable with the tiny details and will be able to enjoy the serenity of all the pieces coming together.
Get buy-in before moving on
Designs are built on hundreds of details coming together in one large statement. If you run through everything before taking a breath (or giving your client room to breathe) you will inevitably find yourself rummaging back through screens to try and ‘go back to that one thing…’
It’s an understandable impulse. You need to show them the details, you want to tell them all about your process, but there’s part of you that’s dying to get to the ‘Well, what do you think?’ part of the meeting. You want to know if they like what they see.
The good news is, you shouldn’t have to do all that work to get to the ‘what do you think.’ Your meeting should be built of many of those moments, all stacking and leading to the end. When you’re presenting your work, break it up into thoughts. It’s not just checking in from page to page, but from element to element or function to function.
Find the natural stopping points in the presentation. If it’s a short enough presentation that you’re just going over something small like a menu, you may not have a natural pause. It’s more likely, though, you’ve had a series of things to review before this meeting. It’s okay to take your client through them one at a time.
After that first stopping point, say something like, ‘Okay, I want to pause here for a minute and check-in. How do you feel about this piece here?’ and, if you’re giving a large presentation, it’s okay to preface it with ‘I know we’ve got a lot to cover today, but I want to make sure this is working so far…’
It can be scary to ask such a direct question about your work, but if it’s not working for them, they’ll be thinking about it the whole time, and everything else you talk about will be lost.
If they love it, great. But if not, this gives you the opportunity to address their concerns head-on before starting on a fresh thought.
Take the feedback in stride
Negative feedback is part of the job. It doesn’t mean your design is bad or they think they can design it better themselves. It just means what you’ve put in front of them today doesn’t fully align with their needs.
Even the most frustrating, design specific, feedback (“I hate that blue. Make it green. I like green.”) is pointing to a need not being met. Your job as a designer is not to follow orders lock-step, but to identify and meet this need. Meetings like this are an opportunity to ask questions about the feedback you’re getting to try and identify that core need.
You don’t have to fix it in the room either. Give the feedback just enough time to breathe, ask good questions to get to the root of the problem. If it’s not a simple fix, offer it up to the future. ‘Okay, I’m going to have to look at that a little more and see how we can make that work. I’ve got the note but I can’t solve it right now. I’ll have that for the next meeting, though. Let’s move on.’
When you take the feedback and work on it, it gives you time to find creative solutions to the problem. Not only that, but it also gives you the opportunity to come back and say ‘I heard you. Here are a couple of suggestions. Which would you prefer?’
Negative feedback in the room is brimming with opportunities. The client feels heard and respected, you’ve had enough time to think and do your work, and at the end of it all — you get a better product.
Keep an eye on the time
No matter if it’s approvals or additional details, you have answers you need to get before you leave this meeting. This is your number one reason for being in this room, and it’s up to you to make sure you get to them.
And the clock is your best friend.
When the meeting starts, a reminder about the time is helpful. It reinforces that you’re running the meeting, and shows you’re being considerate of everyone’s time.
As the meeting continues, it’s up to you to keep an eye on that clock. If you’ve only got a third of your answers, and you’re already two-thirds of the way through your meeting, it’s time to move things along or adjust your plans.
If a conversation is derailing the meeting, a polite, reminder of the clock is all most people need to come back to the focus of the meeting
Finally, when you look at the clock and you’ve only got 10–15 minutes left, it’s time for you to take a bow. Even if you didn’t get everything you needed to cover, it’s your responsibility to let everyone in the room out of the meeting and give them enough time to get ready for their next tasks. Wrap up what you’ve covered so far, give a quick review, and let them know what your takeaways are for next time. It’s like giving them a preview of your next meeting, but it also shows how seriously you’ve taken their feedback. If anyone owes you anything for the next meeting — screenshots, spec documents, etc. — this is the time to remind them.
Give everyone one last opportunity to ask any questions before you end the meeting and, whenever possible, end a few minutes early. It’s so rare that anything will be settled in those last few minutes, and everyone’s grateful for a little breather before they move on to the next thing. Those few minutes are a gift, and it’s up to you to give it to them.
Walk it through before the meeting
No matter how good your design is, your client is going to throw you some curveballs during the meeting. The best way to maintain control is to know exactly where you want to be in the meeting at all times.
This is where your skills as a storyteller can really shine. Before the meeting, think it through first. What are the big beats you want to hit? What are the pieces you absolutely need approval on? What are the easy wins? Most importantly: what’s the logical progression of your conversation for this meeting?
Don’t be afraid to write yourself an outline, or even an entire script, before your meeting. It’s not the type of thing you have to repeat verbatim when you’re in the room, but it will help you focus on the key points while leaving extraneous detail behind.
If you get bored walking through it, your clients will probably get bored too.
Once you’ve got a nice and tight outline of how you want the meeting to go, you can regularly bring the conversation back to it. In the middle of a meeting you should be able to say, ‘I’ve only got two more things to go over…’ because you know exactly what’s next on your agenda.
The big reveal
Most of the meetings you have are these iterative, working-process, style meetings. Every now and then though, you get to do a ‘big reveal’ meeting. Usually, these are with high-level clients after you’ve done months of work. These meetings can be nerve-wracking: high-level clients with high-pressure stakes.
If you’ve had these meetings before, you’ll know that they’re either followed by staring at your design, wondering where it all went wrong, or big-time celebrations of success.
Fortunately, the steps you took to prepare for your smaller meetings work the same way here, just on a different scale.
In these meetings, there’s nothing more important than the story of how you got here. The intro should be more fleshed out than in smaller meetings because you should take these clients on a trip. Include user research, workflows, mood boards, whatever you used to start your process. You started with a blank page and you’ve been working for months to get to this moment. The anticipation is overwhelming. Bring them in on that excitement. Tell them about the process. Give them funny anecdotes about what went wrong along the way. Get them on your side before you show them the fruit of all your labor and all their money.
Isolating the details is a little different here. Make sure to explore those details. You just laid out your journey for them. They’re going to want to see the reveal. Confidently show them the whole picture.
This is where you really need to drive the meeting because it’s not just about the big picture, but that’s where they’re going to want to start. Bring them down into the details before their analysis starts. “Before we get into it, I want to draw your attention to a couple of things…”
Right after the reveal, drop down into the details. Highlight the little doses of brilliance you’ve peppered throughout the design. Reference back to the story you’ve already told them. If they’ve heard about “the great debate between rounded and squared corners” in your intro, make sure to point out those beautifully rounded corners you all settled on.
No one knows the design the way you do. You know its strengths, and this is the perfect time to teach your audience why those choices you made are so right.
After the detail walkthrough, pull back out and give them another look at the whole product. They’ll have a new appreciation for what they’ve already seen, and this is the place where the real conversation can begin.
Remember that this is your show
The most important thing to remember is that you’re the one in charge of this meeting, and no one knows your work as well as you do. You set the tone, the pace, and the objectives. It’s tempting to bring your designs out, talk about them for a minute, and then let the people in the room drive the conversation from there. Unfortunately, this rarely results in final approvals or better designs.
Everyone in that room is trying to make the best product possible. Give them enough rope or control things too much and they’re going to try iterating over your design in their heads. They’re probably not designers, but they’ll be thinking about different colors, sizes, and layouts. Not because your design is bad, but because they haven’t seen all these variations yet.
It’s your job to instill them with confidence in you and bring them along on the journey. Show them you’ve taken a thoughtful approach to your work. Guide the conversation for them, handle the feedback well, and everyone walks out smiling.
