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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Adam Connor
Read between
September 5, 2021 - January 9, 2022
Use a filter
Ask yourself why you’re reacting in that way. Ask the presenters additional questions if necessary to help you understand your reaction. After you understand your reaction and what caused it, think about when
Don’t assume
Making assumptions can be one of the worst things to do during a critique. When we make assumptions we begin to form our thoughts, questions, and statements around them, without ever knowing whether they’re accurate.
Don’t invite yourself
Talk about strengths
Remember that critique is about honest analysis. It should be balanced, focusing on the design and its objectives, regardless of their success.
Think about perspective
As you analyze a design, it’s important for you to try to balance your expertise against the user’s perspective.
Giving good critique is a skill that begins with the right intentions. Help the recipient understand how effective the design is by making sure that you’re avoiding selfish, untimely, incomplete, or preferential feedback and by following best practices.
A Simple Framework for Critique
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 works to support or not support the objective or best practice.
These four questions flow together to generate feedback in the form of critique.
What is the objective of the design?
What elements of the design are related to the objective?
Are those elements effective in achieving the objective?
Why or why not?
Other questions to think about
What new problems, complications, or successes might arise from the choices being proposed?
What other objectives should the designer have been considering, but didn’t?
Forming 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?
Critique Anti-Patterns
Asking for feedback without listening
Asking for feedback for praise or validation
Not asking for feedback at all
Ask for feedback, and when you do, be ready to listen and act on what you learn.
Best Practices for Receiving Critique
Remember the purpose
Listen and think before responding
Return to the foundation
Participate
One of the best things a designer can do during a critique is to become a critic themselves.
Second, one of the common challenges people have with giving critique is a fear of hurting the designer’s feelings. By participating in the analysis and openly talking about the aspects of our design that could be improved upon, we can make others feel more comfortable participating in these discussions.
Critique isn’t about judgment. It’s about analyzing the design so that you can improve it. Participate in that analysis. Listen to the feedback you collect from others and relate it to the objectives of the product you’re designing.
Good critiques—that is, critiques that are productive for the entire team—are the result of dialogue.
In fact, great critiques are often more about questions asked than statements made.
It’s common for designers or teams to send their designs to other members of the team via email and ask for feedback. It’s also common for these kinds of exchanges to become problematic.
Online feedback tools like inVision and others do their best to try to work around this by making it possible for people to comment on specific aspects of a design and keeping those threads together. This works better, but the non-real-time nature can still prove challenging, because in order to give comments, individuals must do so based on assumptions that they haven’t yet been able to validate or eliminate.
When requesting feedback through a mechanism like this, be specific about what you want feedback on in your request. Specify what the objectives for your product or design were.
We do recommend that, when you can, it’s best to use a platform in which everyone can communicate in real time and look at the design together.
Good critique begins with both the giver and recipient having the right intentions: wanting to understand whether the elements of the design will work towards the objectives of the product.
Lead with questions. Get more information to base your feedback on and show an interest in their thinking.
Use a filter. Hold on to your initial reactions, investigate them, and discuss them in the proper context, as appropriate.
Don’t assume. Determine the thinking or constraints behind choices.
Don’t invite yourself. Get in touch and ask to talk about the design.
Talk about strengths. Critique isn’t just about what’s not working.
Think about perspective. From whose “angle” are you analyzing the design?
Remember the purpose. Critique is about understanding and improvement, not judgment.
Listen and think before responding. Do you understand what the critics are saying and why?
Return to the foundation. Use agreed-upon objectives as a tool to make sure feedback stays focused on objectives.
