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A little context goes a long way...
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Christine Røde
Product Designer
9 action items
Get valuable critique on your work
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Schedule a weekly meeting for design
Every company works differently, so you want to adapt your approach accordingly. There are two ways to approach a non-designers’ design critique: As a progress meeting with stakeholders, focused on getting clear consensus and unblocking you, or a looser feedback forum with a wider audience. The former should be smaller and focused, including only key decision makers. The latter can be larger and let you pick the brains of different functions, such as engineering, sales, and marketing. Hell, maybe you want both! The most important part is to ensure this is your meeting to run in its entirety, focused on presenting your ideas and work.... See more
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Set the context for the presentation
Before showing work, remind everyone of what the current problem is, and what the goals you are addressing with your solution. ☞ “As you know, I’ve been working on designs to improve the drop-off rate of our invitation flow. The goals of this solution is to create a simpler flow that is quick to get through, with fewer steps and a smoother user experience.”... See more
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Reiterate prior decisions
☞ “Last week we discussed that it might be too easy for the user to overlook this part. To address it, I’ve updated the view to feel more heavy-weight. Does this address your concern?”
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Scope the conversation
Focus the conversation by stating clearly what feedback you’re looking for. ☞ “The visuals are unfinished, so I am primarily looking for your opinion on which of these interactions work best.”
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Listen for the underlying cause
When you get overly-prescriptive feedback from non-designers, take a step back and try to identify the core problem. “The button needs to be bigger” is rarely helpful feedback, but if you instead interpret it as “I’m concerned about the conversion rate” or “It’s difficult for the user to know how to proceed to the next screen” or even ”The label is hard to read because of low-contrast colors”, I bet you can think of a dozen other ways to address the issue. ☞ “When you say to put the ‘Customer Note’ in a messenger bubble, do you mean it’s not standing out enough from the rest of the info?”... See more
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Stay on track
Looking at design is fun! I’ve often been told that design meetings are highlight of others’ weeks. Seeing ideas and products come to life has a tendency to get people excited, causing irrelevant ideas or suggestions to be made. ☞ “I think that’s a really great suggestion, but let’s not forget that 90% of our users have minimal activity right now, so we need to focus on helping them get started. I’ll make a note of it for when we revisit power user features!"... See more
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Ask tons of questions – and frame them well
Non-designers might need more prompting to judge individual parts of a design. Bringing it back to your previously stated goals, give them a framework to evaluate whether something is successful or not. ☞ “Knowing that many users are concerned about privacy, I added this blurb with reassuring text. What are your thoughts? Does it address the problem, or is it just more text that won’t be read?”... See more
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Compromise on technical challenges
As a designer, it’s your job to adapt your work to the technical realities. Design that disregards tech limitations and is impossible to implement is simply bad design, no matter how smooth or sexy it is. That said, if your team’s tech stack is directly hurting the user experience, it’s time to stand up for the quality of the product. ☞ “At the moment, half our requests are timing out. As long as that’s the case, a more subtle loading state will only disguise the problem, not fix our retention rate.”... See more
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Summarize the take aways
At the end of the meeting, give a quick summary of what you heard, and your action items for next time. ☞ “So to summarize, I’m going to add the legal text to the sign up flow, explore ways of incorporating a product picker, and then work on a more thorough strategy of where and when we send out notifications.”... See more
Being the only designer on a team can be lonely, but don’t let it stop you from getting valuable feedback on your work. It’s true that while designers are well-versed in the art of critique, getting constructive feedback from non-designers does often require a bit more work on your part, but it can also be a great exercise in making sure your work is understood by a broad audience. Here are some tips I’ve found really helpful in keeping design meetings constructive and on-topic.
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