Summary
In the last 20 years as a Designer/Researcher, Joe Meersman has learned a thing or two about quality and scale. Join him for a presentation that outlines tactics for delivering quality outcomes, regardless of team size, by practicing critiques. One part Design Ops, one part Design School, Joe will provide actionable tips for facilitating critiques that will improve User Experiences.
Key Insights
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Critiques help break down silos by encouraging transparent collaboration among designers working on overlapping problems.
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Effective critiques rely on behavioral habits: humility, active listening, gratitude, owning blind spots, and constructive acknowledgment.
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There are three main types of critiques: ad hoc (quick, peer-to-peer), informal (regular but flexible), and formal (leadership-driven and structured).
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Ad hoc critiques are valuable for rapid feedback when designers feel stuck, but require clear context-setting to avoid confusion.
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Leaders play a crucial role in fostering and supporting critiques to identify individual potential and team capability gaps.
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Informal critiques benefit from a facilitator to keep discussions focused and productive, even if attendance varies.
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Formal critiques often become tense and unproductive if participants focus on people instead of work and lack preparation.
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Design shares and playbacks differ from critiques; they focus on outcomes and stakeholder buy-in rather than iterative feedback.
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Observing critiques as a third party sharpens intellectual curiosity and exposes designers to diverse approaches and reasoning.
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Asynchronous critiques are essential for distributed teams, and success requires experimenting with different tools and methods.
Notable Quotes
"Critique is a way to maintain focus on the quality of our outcomes and sweat every pixel we put into the hands of our users."
"We had great people individually dedicated to their craft but working seven feet apart without truly collaborating."
"Being humbled and recognizing that modesty is really a virtue we have to embrace creates psychological safety for sharing."
"Active listening means stopping to think about what you’re going to say and really processing what you’re hearing."
"Thank others for their input especially when it hurts because that is when we learn the most."
"Ad hoc critiques work well because the guard is down and they’re time sensitive, providing input when it genuinely matters."
"The ACD’s feedback was subjective and indirect, reflecting relationship over objective critique, which is an anti-pattern."
"Formal critiques become tense when feedback focuses on people rather than the work or misses constructive intent."
"Critiques prepare us for design shares and playbacks but serve different goals: iteration versus presentation."
"Critiques are something designers are uniquely entitled to do, and many feel jealous about this opportunity to improve craft."
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