Goal
Getting good feedback is essential to designing better products. But it’s hard to give and receive feedback without careful consideration around the process. We aimed to improve the work through improving critique practices as our team grew from ~3 designers to 8 over a calendar year.
Existing problems & new requirements
Irrelevant feedback: Lack of context and prescriptive solutions hurt the quality of feedback offered.
Wasted time: Rambling project intros or feedback monologues cut into time for discussion and additional projects.
Low empathy: Projects receiving a flood of feedback left presenters feeling stressed, instead of energized to move forward.
New team dynamics: Aggressive hiring goals meant more designers would need to present at critique, including a remote designer and two part-time contractors.
Role
I spearheaded the discussion, ideation, and feedback gathering around our team’s critique practices.
Outcome
After 2-3 iterations of critique methods and feedback sessions, we landed on a critique that was effective and efficient at helping teammates share and move forward with their work productively.
Feedback was frequently relevant and actionable.
Discussions were more focused. We often finished with time to spare.
Greater empathy. Teammates remembered to give affirmative feedback in addition to critical feedback to guide the designer’s progress constructively.
Written notes helped participants remember and frame comments in the discussion. It also allowed participation from everyone, even if some couldn’t verbally deliver feedback in the meeting.
New hires and guests understood how to participate by reading our shared critique doc ahead of time.
Coworkers from other departments asked about “feedback best practices” after seeing posters displayed.
“Of all the crits I’ve been in at other places, this one feels like the most useful.”
During the process, the team realized that we had been over-relying on critique for all collaboration and communication processes, which wasn’t scaling effectively. So we increased scope and added new team processes like a weekly “Slack standup” for cross-team communication and biweekly “jam session” for more open-ended collaboration around a theme.