Discussing Design

Lead with questionsGet more information to base your feedback on and show an interest in their thinking.Chances are, before being asked for your feedback, the presenter will give a brief explanation of what he has put together so far and how it would work. This gives you some context and understanding of the objectives he has and the elements of th

Members from IT, design, and business might all have different ways of referring to the same thing. By bringing your project team together to critique on a recurring basis, you provide a venue for this shared vocabulary to build up and take hold. As that vocabulary is being built, it’s happening across roles and silos, improving the ability of team

What We Really Need Is Critical ThinkingCritical thinking is the process of taking a statement and determining if it is true or false. When we’re designing something, we’re doing so to meet or achieve some set of objectives. When looking for feedback on our designs, we should be working to understand whether we believe that what has been designed w

Where are you in your process?This question reveals a designer’s intended fidelity of thinking. Everyone’s design process is different, and in many cases they vary from project to project. By understanding where a designer feels like he is in his own journey, I can tailor the language in my feedback to reflect that. Is something about to go to a cl

Central IdeaForming critique is a simple four-step process. What are the design’s objectives? What are the elements of the design related to those objectives? Are those elements effective? Why or why not?

Good critique is comprised of three key elements:It identifies a specific aspect of the idea or a decision in the design being analyzed.It relates that aspect or decision to an objective or best practice.It describes how and why the aspect or decision work to support or not support the objective or best practice.

Are those elements effective in achieving the objective?Now that we are thinking about specific objectives and the aspects of the design related to them, it’s time to ask whether we think those choices will work to achieve the objective. This is the crux of critical thinking.Why or why not?Finally, we need to think about the result that we think th

Another common characteristic of bad critique is feedback that is justified by the giver from purely preferential thinking.

Talk about strengthsCritique isn’t just about what’s not working.We sometimes have a tendency to focus on negatives, the things that cause us problems, get in our way, and that we’d like to see changed. We often take the positive for granted. In our project meetings and design discussions it’s often no different. We spend the vast majority of time