Running effective remote design critiques

Part 2: Key learnings and principles for better remote collaboration

This article follows on from Part 1: The problem with design critiques, where Jess Pang talks about the challenges of running design critiques remotely.

Collaborating over Zoom calls is challenging, even for the most tightly-knit design teams.

During the COVID-19 pandemic I helped my design team improve our design huddles, using simple adjustments to make them more effective in a remote working environment.

Here are our key findings, which can be summed up by five key principles:

1. Establish context as clearly as possible

Body language, gestures and glances help streamline the flow of communication through dialogue. Presentations over video need to be as clear and concise as possible to make up for their lack of these subtle conversation cues.

Consider kicking off presentations with a simple visual template that delivers context consistently and efficiently.

1. Explain the business and user problems.
2. Explain the user’s goal.
3. Indicate the design’s stage (30/60/90% complete).
4. Explain the type of feedback required.

Have this filled out and shown by each designer who presents. Designers of all confidence levels will start their presentations off on the right foot, and breed better feedback and discussion

2. Group the group’s questions before giving feedback

People often had the same questions and areas of confusion when digesting new designs. The team addressed this by engaging in a round of questioning before launching into feedback.

This became a key part of a four-stage design critique:

1. Context setting
2. Design presentation
3. Round of questions
4. Feedback

Common questions were answered promptly and often sparked more interesting questions. The group asked more questions in less time, and questions were of higher quality and specificity. As a result, everyone understood designs much better and gave more helpful feedback.

Importantly, the group also had a clearer understanding of what should be said and when, making it much easier to jump in or contribute to the discussion without fear of interrupting.

3. Put things down for all to see

Remote design critiques benefit from everyone having access to a shared visual space such as FigJam or Miro. Making the group’s thoughts visible opens up several new possibilities.

• Broader feedback overall.
  Often people have the same feedback to give. Allowing for +1’s not only saves time but allows the group to go broader on their feedback.
• Presenters being freed from taking notes.
  Scribing is essentially crowdsourced.
• Plenty of smaller, leave-behind feedback.
  Some feedback is minor and doesn’t need to be discussed or raised verbally. Allowing for this saves time and increases value for presenters, while reducing the friction of giving positive comments and kudos.

4. Have a pushy timekeeper

It’s tough keeping design critiques on schedule and even tougher when they’re done remotely. The stress of being a timekeeper is heightened in a remote meeting, and it’s important to set expectations for everyone for that role.

• Declare who is the timekeeper for a session.
• Make it clear they not only have the power, but the duty to keep things on time. Give them permission to ping time warnings into the chat, verbally interrupt or even play ‘wrap it up’ music.
• Have this role rotate around the team if appropriate.

5. Allow presenters to get creative

Having everyone on a shared FigJam or Miro board opens up the possibilities for visual workshopping and group activities. Getting the most out of design critiques in itself can be a creative challenge and allowing presenters to innovate on the format can be rewarding and illuminating for the entire team.

Our design team experimented with different methods such as walking through storyboards to set context, mini redesign challenges, Crazy 8’s and other workshop activities as a way of critiquing or improving on designs.

Remote design critiques are better when they are structured, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be imaginative. So long as it’s structured into purposeful stages (and this is outlined to the audience), the format can be wildly different to suit the presenter’s

In summary – follow these principles to boost the effectiveness of your remote design critiques.

• Streamline context-setting using a template
• Group the group’s questions before giving feedback
• Put everything down on a shared visual board
• Set expectations for a pushy timekeeper
• Allow presenters to get creative with different formats

This will ensure your design critiques are well-adapted to a remote working world.