I'm a naturally quiet person. This is neither a good nor a bad thing. My teammates have described me as a calm and concise communicator, an open and empathetic listener, and strategic in my approach to design. I attribute these valuable characteristics in large part to the fact that I often process information internally before verbalizing it. I’m thoughtful and consider alternative perspectives during critiques before defending my decisions.
On the other side, I’ve been in meetings where I may still be considering an earlier comment while more vocal team members have moved on to another point. In an effort to mitigate this kind of disconnect, I’m always thinking of ways to strengthen team communication in order to accommodate a variety of personality types. Design critique is primarily about how we assess and talk about design, so ensuring that stakeholders learn this skill is vital to our success as a team and a company. In order for any designer to be effective at their job, they must build a shared framework with stakeholders to evaluate their work.
In searching for the answer to this question, I stumbled upon research that Google had done around “What makes a team effective?” Google researchers found that it doesn’t really matter who is on the team, but how the team works together. With this in mind, they cited psychological safety as the number one attribute for team effectiveness.
Google defines psychological safety as a state in which “team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.” Team members should feel confident that no one on their team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea. Psychological safety goes both ways in the critique process. Designers should feel safe presenting their work, and stakeholders should feel safe providing feedback.
In Gerren Lamson’s post “Design Critiques Part I: A Culture of Effective Feedback,” he outlined nine effective critique principles, but we’ll focus on the five that include communication with stakeholders:
These five principles align perfectly with Google’s research on psychological safety. Team members must demonstrate engagement, show understanding of one another, and be inclusive in the decision-making process. Each member of the team was hired as an expert, so a shared mutual respect and openness to new perspectives is critical to team effectiveness. So how do we cultivate psychological safety in the critique process?
As Tanner Christensen describes in “Four Things Working at Facebook Has Taught Me About Design Critique,” ineffective critiques often fall into two negative patterns:
Let’s take a look at the first pattern: Designers feel they will be overly criticized when presenting their work. Most designers have gotten feedback like “I don’t like that” while reviewing designs with stakeholders. This type of critique is called reactive feedback, which can be categorized as a visceral, emotional response to a piece of design. When stakeholders give this type of feedback, the designer will likely either get defensive and argue their viewpoint, or ruminate silently and blame themselves for doing something wrong.
Now let’s say that the designer asks the stakeholder, “What don’t you like?” The stakeholder’s response might be, “It’s not what I had in mind,” or worse, “I don’t know.”
This leads to the second pattern: The team doesn’t have a clear understanding of the project objective. At this point in the critique process, animosity is building between the designer and the stakeholder. The designer feels that the stakeholder is not providing constructive feedback and does not value their expertise. Meanwhile, stakeholders feel that the designer does not understand their request and therefore do not value their expertise.
With both patterns, there is no shared language or process for the team to clearly evaluate the design. From a business standpoint, if designers only receive reactive feedback, they may feel pressured to create designs that serve stakeholder approval rather than finding the best solution for the project objective. From a company culture standpoint, when stakeholders and designers feel unsafe taking risks or posing new ideas, both the business and the team suffer.
Effective feedback is not praise or criticism. It is carefully chosen language and actions that propel the learner forward.
— Regie Routman, Read, Write, Lead: Breakthrough Strategies for Schoolwide Literacy Success
It’s important to avoid providing reactive feedback like “I don’t like that” or directive feedback like “Can you make that bigger?” These types of critique do not evaluate the design based on the project objective. Discussing Design defines critique as “a form of analysis that uses critical thinking to determine whether a design is expected to achieve its desired objectives.” Team members must shift away from their own subjectivity and apply critical thinking like “Does the work in its current state achieve its goals? Why or why not?”
Avoid using words like “good” and “bad” or phrases like “I like that” when critiquing. When you avoid words that represent subjectivity, your critique becomes centered on the concrete reasons behind your reaction. Steering away from personal opinions is also important because ultimately, we are not our users. Each team member will have their own tastes and preferences, but we should always refocus our attention on the project’s objective and work toward being an advocate for our users.
Any new ideas should be given as suggestions, not mandates. Before any feedback is rejected, apply the same critical thinking you would to the design being reviewed. It’s also important to trust the designer to explore a new design direction and/or leverage the research team to help find a solution through user testing.
In order to give structure to these guidelines, I’ve developed an acronym to aid in providing feedback. Meet the W.H.Y. Method:
It’s just as valuable to point out what is working as well as what isn’t. You can refer back to the project objective to evaluate if a design element is working in favor of, neutral to, or against the desired goal.
From: “This project is amazing! I can’t think of any way it could be better!”
To: “The visual hierarchy in this layout is great, but it may be beneficial to add more CTAs throughout to align with our goal of ‘increased revenue.’”
Instead of directly criticizing, you can ask questions that lead the designer or other members of the team to consider alternatives or new solutions.
From: “I don’t like that blue button.”
To: “Have you considered another color besides blue for the button that might resonate with our users and lead to higher conversion?”
The emphasis here is to leave the designer with clear, tangible next steps, rather than leaving them with multiple directions and ideas.
From: “Nobody is going to click that, we should do something else.”
To: “Let’s A/B test several buttons options to see what our users respond to best. That would be useful to know for other projects as well.”
By using the W.H.Y. Method, teams can implement a framework and unified language for exchanging feedback. W and H provide guidance for asking questions and talking about the design, whereas Y is aimed at providing actionable next steps. Of course, applying the Socratic method and asking “Why is this design achieving or not achieving our project objective?” is always a valuable way to refocus the team on a collective goal.
Critique is a team effort, not a one-person show. Since developing the W.H.Y. Method, I’ve shared this framework with the design, product, and engineering teams that I work with every day. I hope other designers consider sharing this method with their own teams or find inspiration to develop a new process that works best for them. Critiques truly become valuable when we come together with the intent of understanding the objective, identifying opportunity, exploring multiple solutions, and building up all team members to feel valued and heard.
“Creating a Culture of Effective Design Feedback” | “Design Critiques: Encourage a Positive Culture to Improve Products” | Discussing Design | “Forget The ‘Praise Sandwich’: Five Better Ways To Give Good Feedback” | “Four Things Working at Facebook Has Taught Me About Design Critique” | “GV Guide to Design Critique” | “How to give Powerful Design Critique” | “How To Run a Design Critique” | Project Aristotle | “Practical Design Critique” | UX Design Critique Cheatsheet
Originally published in The Zebra.
