01 / UNDERSTAND
What is a design critique?
A design critique examines a piece of work against its intended objectives. Participants identify strengths, concerns and questions, then connect them to possible revisions or further investigation. Feedback needs a reason tied to the goal. A preference for a colour, layout or interaction becomes useful only when its consequence can be explained.
Why use Design Critique?
Designers become familiar with their own assumptions. A critique introduces other perspectives while the work can still change. It is particularly useful for exposing conflicting interpretations of a goal or a constraint. The discussion helps the designer make a considered next move; agreement in the room does not establish usability or customer demand.
When to use it
USE IT WHEN
A draft is concrete enough to inspect and still open to change.
You need perspectives from design, content, engineering or service delivery.
Feedback has become a list of preferences without a clear relationship to the objective.
When to choose another method
Use Usability Testing to observe how people actually use a design.
Use How Might We when the underlying design question is still unclear.
Use Impact / Effort Matrix after concerns have been investigated and you need to compare proposed work.
What you’ll need
Bring a specific version, a short statement of the intended audience and task, relevant evidence and known constraints. Tell participants which decisions are open and which are outside the discussion. Assign a facilitator and someone to capture comments. Identify who will decide what changes after the critique. If the meeting is an approval gate, name that explicitly rather than presenting it as an open exploration.
What a critique needs
Keep the elements that help answer your question and support a decision.
The particular proposal being discussed.
The task or outcome the design should support.
The decisions open to feedback and the constraints.
An observation, its consequence and supporting rationale.
A question that discussion alone cannot resolve.
A decision, owner and next review point.
02 / PUT IT INTO PRACTICE
How to run a design critique
Keep evidence and assumptions distinct. Revisit your work when new information changes your understanding.
01
Set the question
Choose the aspect of the work that needs feedback.
Does the booking review help a learner notice and correct the selected date?
02
Share the context
Present the goal, constraints and the version without defending every decision.
Show the flow leading to review and explain what information can still be changed.
03
Inspect independently
Allow a short quiet look before discussion so the first comment does not set every agenda.
Ask each reviewer to note a strength, a concern and a question with a location in the design.
04
Discuss the reasoning
Connect observations to the objective. Ask for the consequence before jumping to a solution.
The edit link is distant from the date; a reviewer is concerned that the correction route is unclear.
05
Separate claims from decisions
Distinguish an observable property, an interpretation and evidence that is still missing.
The link's position is visible. Whether learners miss it remains a question for testing.
06
Close with disposition
Record what will change, what will be tested and what is deferred, with reasons and owners.
The designer tries a date summary with an adjacent edit action and prepares a correction task for a usability session.
Example: reviewing a booking summary
Illustrative scenario, not research findings. A team reviews a course booking summary before development. The goal is to help a learner check the date and change it if necessary. One reviewer prefers a larger button; another points out that the edit link sits below unrelated content.
The facilitator brings both comments back to the correction task. The team records a concern about the relationship between the date and its edit action, then explores a version that places them together. They retain the existing confirmation summary because it supports checking the booking. The change becomes a proposal to test, with a named owner and a record of the question that remains unresolved.
03 / BELOW THE SURFACE
Below the surface: agreement is not evidence
A room can agree on a change because people share the same assumption, or because one person has authority. Neither condition tells you whether the change supports the intended task.
01 / OBSERVATION
What can we point to?
Locate the property of the design under discussion.
02 / INTERPRETATION
What consequence do we expect?
State the reasoning and uncertainty.
03 / FOLLOW THROUGH
How will we decide?
Record the next check, owner and disposition.
Keep the confidence of the room separate from the basis of the claim. For the booking example, the position of a link is inspectable, the predicted difficulty is an interpretation and actual difficulty would need observation. Recording these separately prevents a forceful comment from becoming a research finding.
When two concerns conflict, ask what different evidence would change each person's view. If no plausible observation could change a position, it may be a preference or an organisational constraint to name explicitly. This is a practical editorial discipline for the critique, not a scoring system for design quality.
Design Critique working canvas
Use page one to establish the objective and capture comments with their consequences and evidence. Page two records disagreements, decisions and follow through. The two page PDF contains 12 editable fields. Open it in a PDF reader that supports forms and save a working copy.
Practical tips
Capture the location and rationale of a comment, not just its suggested solution.
Include strengths that should survive the next revision.
Return to deferred questions when the scope changes.
Common mistakes
Turning feedback on the work into judgement of its creator.
Letting seniority determine the apparent strength of evidence.
Leaving with a comment log but no decisions or owners.
What you’ll get
A concise record of strengths to preserve, revisions to explore and questions to test. Record the rationale for accepting or deferring feedback so the next review starts from an informed version of the work.