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Design Crits
Table of contents
What is Design Crits?
Design Crits is a card from the Team Tactics deck by Pip Decks.
Design critiques should motivate, not intimidate. They should be something the whole team looks forward to. Be sure to do Retros on your crits sessions regularly to understand how they are working for your team.
Set Team Values to help create a safe space. Use Productivity Blueprint to include crits in your process. Try Shift Left Lenses to get people involved earlier.
When to use Design Crits
- Designs not meeting business objectives
- Lack of cross-disciplinary collaboration
- Frequent design revisions without improvement
- Team demotivation due to unclear feedback
- Difficulty in aligning design with customer needs
- Product launch delays due to design issues
- Need for innovative design solutions
How to use Design Crits
- Invite people from different disciplines to gain a wide range of perspectives.
- Tell the group what you would like feedback on, and what you would not like feedback on. For example: improving sign-ups, but not colours, logo size, photos.
- Point out any constraints. For example: things that can’t be changed, such as third-party plugins.
- Show the design. Include where you are in the process, business and customer goals and constraints in context. Reiterate the goal or objective for the work.
- Get the feedback. Ask each person to share one or two bits of feedback. Don’t defend the work, instead use Research Questions to learn.
- Collect the feedback. Use Agile Comms to share outcomes.
Tips:
- Invite as many people as you’d be happy to have at a dinner party. Bigger groups can be hard to manage.
- For larger groups, do a silent crit by sharing designs digitally.
- To delve deeper into a problem, use a smaller group of two or three.
- Use your Design Principles to help guide the conversation.
- Consider setting Team Values around feedback.
