This article is in part a reaction to one written by Boris Müller, a professor for Interaction Design at FH Potsdam, titled “Design critique culture”, in which he argues that professional design teams should continue doing design critiques in the workplace as a way to share valuable feedback and make a project better. Although I empathize with this intention and I do agree that designers, in general, need to do a better job at asking for feedback often, early, and in a structured manner, I don’t think the design critique is the right tool for the job. I’ve experienced this a few times in my career and it was never of real value… so yes, I got triggered and decided to write this rebuttal😅.

What gives you the right to speak?

Before people start throwing their digital eggs and tomatoes at me, let me state my disclaimer. I’m a self-educated designer. I never went to design school (and I’m self-conscious about it). My diploma keeps telling me I’m an economist, but we disagree. I think it’s too generous with that term. I don’t dare to put myself in the same bucket as people like Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell. However, I’ve had similar experiences in college when presenting essays to my classmates and engaging in a Q&A afterward. I also have 7+ years of work experience in various design roles and team sizes. I’ve been a single designer working directly with company founders, as well as working with a larger team of designers that used to do design critiques. I’ve also discussed this with other experienced colleagues to round out my understanding of how college-educated designers use the design critique in the workplace. That being said, I’m human and I reserve the right to change my mind on a dime anytime if I come to a realization. Take this argument with the proverbial grain of salt.

What’s wrong with it?

There’s nothing wrong with the design critique itself. It’s a tool, like any other. However, I’d argue it’s a tool for education, not design collaboration in a professional setting. The main issue is that of context. In the classroom, design critiques are usually done by presenting a home assignment and receiving feedback from your peers and teacher. All classmates have worked on the same (or similar) assignment, so they’re familiar with the specifics of the challenge. The teacher, being the one who gave the assignment and having seen similar work done by countless students before, also has plenty of context which helps make an educated assessment of the work being presented and share useful, actionable, and thought-provoking feedback. The entire experience helps both the presenter and the audience to improve their craft by seeing how others approach a problem, how they apply different design principles, what references they use as inspiration, and noticing things they might’ve missed. All this makes it a teachable moment. The feedback shared is around things such as best practices, design inconsistencies or mistakes, and tangent ideas worth exploring. It can also serve as the starting point for a somewhat philosophical discussion about the principles and ethos of design. That’s all great… for the classroom.

In a professional setting, little or none of what I described above is useful, assuming the goal of the critique is to improve the design, not to educate the designer. It’s a different ballgame, on a different playing field. The work being presented is generally the result of a deep process of iteration and debate with other stakeholders involved in the project — project managers, designers, developers, clients, subject matter experts, etc. — in which all constraints are considered — technical, logistic, business or otherwise. It’s also the result of a professional designer that has already mastered the basics and is well aware of design patterns, common mental models, best practices, and heuristics. In such a situation, presenting the work to an audience of peers that has little-to-no insight into the lengthy discussions that went into making the design decisions, limits them to sharing superficial feedback based on best practices, which as I pointed out before, a professional designer is already well aware of. Another reason against it is that feedback given off-the-cuff, on the spot, without any preparation, is rarely insightful enough or well thought through. In my experience, I have to run through a design several times and sometimes do some research before I can make valid and actionable comments. As you can imagine, there’s no time for all this in a 30–45 min. design critique. In the end, the best result one can hope for is to come away from such a meeting with a list of surface-level improvements based on heuristics, or a few new ideas that might be worth exploring if the project timeline allows it. In my opinion, a 45-min. meeting with 4+ participants is a price too high for so little value, not to mention the fact that this opens up the door to having the critique degenerate into a situation where others express personal opinions, try to sound smart without saying anything of value, and making the presenter defensive.

In light of this, I think it’s safe to say design critiques become obsolete in a professional environment, even if they’re well organized and all participants behave professionally. This is not to say there’s no need for feedback and alignment, but there are better ways to do so. This brings me to my next point.

What to replace design critiques with?

Great design is a team sport, so feedback plays an essential role. It needs to be baked into the design process and provided early and often. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for organizing feedback. It depends on the company structure, internal processes, and social dynamics of the team. There are many tools and processes out there that I won’t go into in this article. There are some best practices to generate high-quality feedback, which I’ll go deeper into in another article, but until then, here’s a shortlist of tips to make feedback more efficient:

• Organize the company in squads (small, multi-disciplinary teams) that take on a specific project. This gives the designer an inner circle of people that are intimately familiar with the limitations and quirks of each project that can provide relevant feedback.
• Avoid putting people on the spot by asking them for instant feedback in a meeting. Instead, send a recorded demo to show the progress made so far, and explain the rationale.
• State in the video demo and in a written summary the scope of the feedback you’re looking for so people know what to focus on. Ask clear, pointed questions throughout the demo and recap them at the end. This keeps the conversation focused and helps avoid wasting time on going over feedback for things that you know are not ready for review.
• Ask people to provide feedback in writing first and clearly state the medium they should use (Slack, Figma comments, email, etc). This allows them to think twice about what they want to say, and how to word it properly. Writing is a great way to curate one's thoughts.
• After everyone has reviewed the demo and made initial comments, if the conversation is too complex for async written feedback, schedule a meeting to ask follow-up questions and clarifications.