Feedback Done Right: My Experience Implementing a Design Critique System

Feedback is crucial for our product design to evolve, especially in the early stage of work (we always want to get it right fast!). But companies still lack tools to give good feedback, one that moves our work forward and makes us energized to show our work more often.

If you don't have a structured system for design feedback, it can result in unproductive, time-consuming discussions that leave designers feeling discouraged to share their work in the future. It can also lead to a lack of consistency in feedback, with some sessions being productive and memorable while others are not.

At Instapage, we had established design team rituals, but we recognized that there was a lot of room for improvement in the way we gave feedback. Our current situation was far from ideal.

Here's a quick rundown of what was happening:

  • Feedback was often given during our twice-weekly design hangout, competing with other agenda items

  • Designers were hesitant to share early-stage designs, resulting in only later-stage designs being presented with limited room for feedback

  • Meetings were unstructured, resulting in single feedback taking up a lot of time and not allowing everyone to share their thoughts

  • Lack of clear goals for feedback. What to expect from my peers?

  • Limited time for designers to prepare designs for feedback sessions

  • Tendency to exaggerate presentations when showing designs to other teams, wasting time and making other teams less comfortable in giving candid feedback

It was clear that something needed to change. So, I partnered with a senior designer to create a structured, weekly workshop aimed at design critique. This was going to be our fixed time just to show work and get feedback, nothing else.

But first things first.

What is a Design Critique?

A Design Critique is a structured process of evaluating and providing feedback on a design. It is a way for designers to get feedback on their work from their peers, clients, and other stakeholders. The goal of a design critique is to improve the design and make it more effective by identifying and addressing any issues, blind spots, or areas for improvement.

What is not a Design Critique:

  • It is not a brainstorming session
  • It is not a status report on the design
  • It is not a time to simply express appreciation for the design without providing specific feedback
  • It is not a session for final approval
  • It is not a design retrospective

With a clear understanding of the purpose of the Design Critique, we set some goals when designing our version:

  • Structuring the conversation to make it productive

  • Guiding and practicing designers on how to give and receive feedback effectively

  • Documenting feedback in an easily accessible way for later consultation

  • Creating a repeatable process that makes it easy for designers to set up feedback sessions

  • Encouraging every designer to share their work, regardless of the design stage

  • Fostering a mentality of constant learning and improvement among the team

  • Achieving better design outcomes by allowing designers to iterate and improve their solutions more frequently and accurately.

After several iterations, we found a structure that would fit our needs. It was a replicable structure, modular, and could be done between 60 to 90 minutes (which was our time slot for the week).

Our Design Critique:

Time

Since we had a slot every week for design work sessions, we would use that time at least twice a month for Design Critiques. We blocked 90 min of our calendar, with is the sweet spot. Sometimes one hour or less could feel we were rushing and 90 minutes give you time to add an extra activity or spend more time on certain feedback, getting deeper into the conversation.

Roles

Since our goal was to reduce the friction in sharing work and giving feedback we keep our roles simple. We avoided the one-man show here, meaning if a designer would present, his only task was going to be presenting and nothing else. Our roles are:

Facilitator

This was my role. As a facilitator, my job was to guide the discussion and ensure that it stays productive and on track. I help to set the agenda, and the goals and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to share their thoughts and feedback. Also, make sure that the process is well-documented, share the doc later with the team, and record the session if needed.

Presenter

In our system the presenter would be responsible to fill the board with all the information necessary before the workshop, setting everything ready for success. During the session, the main task is to present the design, share a link to the prototype (if needed), provide context, and comment on feedback.

Critiquers

The role of the critiquers is to provide constructive, actionable feedback and identify areas for improvement. They should ask questions, practice active listening, and consider multiple perspectives. However, the most important aspect of their role is how they give feedback, which should always be honest, respectful, and professional.

Tools

As a remote and distributed team, we rely on Miro as our go-to for documenting our rituals and keeping everyone on the same page. Our designs and prototypes live on Figma and when we need to record a session, Loom is our tool of choice.

The Design Critique session step by step:

To make the design critique setup easy, we created a framework that reduces friction and allows participants to focus on their main tasks: sharing designs and feedback. We designed a fill-in-the-blank style template on the Miro board for exercises and structure. The presenter's job is to fill it out before the session and read it aloud during the session. This approach helps to avoid rambling presentations and allows critiques to review the presentation on their own time.

Workshop Overview

15 minutes. The first minutes of our Design Critique session is dedicated to onboarding the critiquers to the workshop. We start with a quick 5-minute icebreaker to loosen up and then set the stage for the presentation. We briefly discuss the purpose of the critique, the exercises we will be doing in that session, the desired outcomes, and our workshop principles such as "Be present and actively listen".

  • Icebreaker

  • Why we are here?

  • Activities Outcomes

  • Workshop Principles

Presenting Design

20 min. The next 20 minutes are dedicated to the presenter's presentation. They start by giving an overview of the challenge and problem statement, explaining the goals of the project, such as "How to encourage users to go with AI-recommended experiments?" The presenter also reads out loud the basic overview session, then moves on to the designs and begins the presentation.

  • What’s being presented

  • Problem Statement

  • Goals

  • What we’re trying to learn

  • What level of detail do we want to discuss

  • Were we in the project

Design Feedback Canvas

20 min. As the presenter presents the designs, the critiquers take notes and practice active listening, with everyone on mute. After the presentation, each critiquer fills out the feedback quadrant with their inputs. They have 5 minutes for each section. The "Challenge" section is for observations and concerns related to the design's complexity, the "Questions" section is for doubts or clarification on the presentation or design, the "Ideas" section is for insights on how to improve the design, and the "Likes" section is for positive elements of the presentation.

  • Challenges

  • Question

  • Ideas

  • Likes

20 min. This last part is dedicated to reviewing the feedback, the facilitator reads it out loud and asks the presenter if there is any comment on the feedback received. This is an opportunity for the critiquers to open their microphone and participate in the conversation, providing additional information or building on top of the feedback. This part of the session can take from 15 to 30 minutes. Depends if there is an extra activity in the workshop

Workshop Feedback

5 min. Finally, we have a space for feedback on the Design Critique system, what we should continue doing, and what should we stop. A great way to collect feedback and make our ritual better.

After the Design Critique

After the session is over, we share the recording and the Miro board link in our Slack channel for later reference. This allows us to continue the conversation about the topic and feedback in our Design Hangouts or the slack channel.

Takeaways:

Looking back, it's clear that implementing a design critique system has had a significant impact on our product design team. We've been able to move away from informal, unproductive feedback and replace it with a system that is easy to set up, provides a safe space for sharing and receiving feedback, and promotes a culture of learning and growth.

In just our first three months, we conducted nine deep feedback sessions on key features such as onboarding, experiment creation, design system, AI content generator, and CMS.

This has been a huge leap forward for our team. They are more comfortable sharing their work, other designers feel more involved with the product as a whole, we increased collaboration and we've all gotten better at giving actionable feedback. On the product side, we've seen an improvement in design quality, more accuracy in design decisions, and faster iterations.

Overall, the implementation of a system of design critique has been a positive change for our team and has led to improved product design.