Why I Critique the Way I Do
Over the last 18 months we’ve talked a lot about design critiques and the value the practice serves our design process. Alastair has continued to beat the the drum on the value of our fundamentals, a culture of tinkering, and so many more variables to shift our cultural focus and craft overall. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on our crit processes and how we might continue to improve them to grow one another and the quality of our work. I wanted to share more about how I think about Crit and share more directly why I show up the way I do during crit.
Firstly, I believe design critique is about diving deep into your ideas and really examining them. It's not comfortable, but that's part of the process of putting ideas in the arena for feedback. It’s a space where everyone must assume good intent, maintain focus on the work, and never venture towards personal conflict at the individual level.
The goal is to exchange ideas and see what resonates. It's like iterating on a recipe – you adjust, refine, and improve until it's just right. You might start with a design or idea that's okay, but after a good critique session, you should end up with motivation, feedback, and inspiration about how to deliver something even better.
A bit of background
In full candor I’ve been told I can be very blunt and sometimes intimidating while participating in design critiques. Creating fear is the last outcome I’d hope for and I often forget that my role as a Director shapes the way my words carry added weight in a room full of designers.
For some background, I grew up in a house with parents who directly told my brothers and I when we could have done something better. “That hockey game could have gone better, it looks like you lost focus in the 3rd period, what happened?” was a typical conversation on the drive home. It was never malicious, sometimes it was painful, to feel like I let someone down, but over time I learned a lot about what it meant to learn from mistakes and find my internal motivation.
In college I attended a traditional art school. As you may know, the process of critique in art school is a common practice and hasn’t always carried the ‘safe space’ label in history. Art school teachers are notorious for tearing work off the wall and telling students to do it again. Tough love to say the least. While I didn’t experience that style of pain, I did mature as a maker in an environment that valued absolute candor. Students would pin work to the wall and walk up and down the wall voting on what worked and what didn’t. We’d have multi-hour discussions breaking apart every single project in the class down to the most minute details.
I learned very quickly that as creatives, we all associate some part of our identities with the work we produce. It makes sense that we’d would feel an emotional connection to the outcomes of our minds and hands. However, over the years I learned to build a thicker skin, to realize that every statement from a peer might ache in the moment but was a chance to get better. I built my mindset to always aim to make something better than the last thing I made.
Getting the most out of crit
When I say be "direct," I don't mean being harsh. It's more like, "The color scheme feels off to me. The blue and orange are clashing – what if we tried a more complementary pair?" It's about being honest, but not unkind. Trust is crucial here. You need to know that your team wants you to succeed.
Mistakes aren't just acceptable; they're necessary. I once worked on an app design and was proud of its sleek, minimalist design. During the critique, someone pointed out that while it looked great I had hidden some critical context and it wasn't very intuitive for new users. That feedback led to us adding subtle guidance elements that significantly improved the user experience. I pride myself on visual craft (art school background, agency life, etc), so getting feedback in that area is always tough but it also felt like correcting my own mistakes in a great way.
It's important to remember that critique isn't always comfortable. Being vulnerable with things we've personally created can be challenging. But just as honing stone into sculpture is hard work, so is refining our designs and ideas through critique. Critique is like a workout for your creativity. It stretches you, pushes you to think in new ways. And like exercise, it becomes easier and more rewarding with time.
You're not aiming for perfection here. It's about finding the balance between what's ideal and what's achievable. Maybe you can't implement every feature you want due to constraints, but critique helps you determine which ones are essential and which can be set aside.
One particular item I think is important to emphasize is that crit feedback is not about performance feedback. The work you bring to crit starts messy and improves over time, that’s the purpose. Performance feedback is aimed to ensure you deliver at your level and grow beyond it. The only time performance is ever effected by the critique process is visibility into work never getting better, not improving fast enough, and so on. Crit itself is a process to improve work and the outcomes of that process along with the way you work ultimately drives performance.
I think it’s important to emphasize because bringing sketchy ideas and work that is far from good is part of the process. We as leads are not judging your abilities as a designer based on every screen you create and share, but rather aiming to help drive your work towards the best outcomes for customers.
Ultimately, critique is about growth. It's about examining your work through fresh perspectives and asking, "How can I elevate this?" It's not always easy, but it's invaluable. Each time you open yourself to critique, you're enhancing your skills and pushing your boundaries. And isn't that what we're all striving for in our careers?
✨ P.S. Here are a few quotes that inspire me and why:
Don’t linger on past mistakes. Each rising sun offers an opportunity to have a good day.
The Taoists have another saying that is also well worth considering. ‘Love,’ they say, ‘is creating without owning.’
If you truly love your work, you must learn to create it without owning it. You must learn not to confuse your preoccupation with bringing it to life and the natural ripening process of the creation itself.
— Kent Nerburn, Dancing With The Gods
We’re creators for people who use our products. We’re listeners of feedback and critique from our peers, leads, and users. To love the work is to love making, and the evolving nature of the work we make. It’s not meant to be permanent, it’s meant to be created and solve problems.
It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that in the afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Everything good takes time. Learning and developing taste, excellence in craft, building wonderful projects, etc all take significant time to achieve maturity and mastery.
