How We Run a Critique Without Bruising Anyone

Most design critiques fail in the first ninety seconds, before anyone has said anything about the design.

They fail because the person presenting does not know what they are asking for, so the room defaults to the only mode it knows: opinions, delivered in order of seniority, about whatever is most visible.

Ask for one thing

We now open every critique with a single sentence from the presenter, in a fixed shape: this is at rough stage, and I need help with the ordering of the second section.

Two pieces of information, and they change everything. The stage tells the room how hard to push. The question tells them where to aim.

Anything outside that scope gets written down and returned later. Not dismissed, deferred, which is a different thing and people can feel the difference.

Describe before you judge

The most valuable ten minutes of any critique we run is the part where nobody is allowed to have an opinion.

The room simply describes what it sees, out loud, in order. My eye goes to the price first. Then the photograph. I did not notice the second button until now.

This is frequently devastating in the most useful way. When four people say they read the page in an order the designer did not intend, that is not a matter of taste and there is nothing to defend. It is just information.

Judgement without description is preference. Description before judgement is research you can do in a meeting room.

Separate the problem from the prescription

The single sentence that improved our critiques most is this: say what is not working before you say what you would do.

"Make the heading bigger" is a solution, and a solution smuggles its diagnosis in where nobody can examine it. "I could not tell what this page was for" is a problem, and it might be solved by the heading, the image, the first sentence, or removing the section above it.

Designers get defensive about prescriptions. They rarely get defensive about problems, because a problem is about the reader, not about them.

Give it a shape

Sixty minutes, three pieces of work, one facilitator who is not presenting. The facilitator's only job is to interrupt prescriptions and to keep the room on the presenter's question.

It is the least glamorous role and it is the one that determines whether the hour was worth anyone's time.

End with the presenter talking

We close each piece by asking the presenter to say what they are taking away, in their own words. Not a plan, just what landed.

It takes two minutes and it catches the failure mode where a room agrees enthusiastically and the designer leaves with an entirely different understanding of what was agreed.