How can your team facilitate honest and effective feedback sessions they’ll actually look forward to? Try a Design Crit!
First thing’s first: What’s a Design Crit?
A Design Crit, short for design critique, is an informal, creative get-together where the team gathers to share and comment on works-in-progress.
Who is this template for?
Design Crit isn't just for marketing assets or product design, although it IS great for user interface and wireframe development, ad and landing page testing, and even finalizing a content calendar. Other departments can use it too, as a valuable tool for improving sales collateral, slide decks, internal resources, customer support materials, and much more. Anyone can seek and provide feedback—no exclusive ‘designer’ pass required!
When do you use this template?
The Design Crit template is most useful for regular (we do bi-weekly) feedback sessions or whenever a team needs to gather diverse perspectives on works-in-progress. It's ideal for early-stage project reviews, where various departments can contribute their insights to refine and improve the project.
So, what’s the easiest way to facilitate an effective and efficient Design Crit? Well, this template provides a great starting point!
How do you use this template?
The process involves a 45-minute session where participants present their work and receive feedback through a flurry of sticky notes, allowing for a wide range of comments and insights. We typically stick to 2-4 presenters for each 45-minute session, depending on the complexity of the projects at hand, but feel free to adjust to suit your team.
Each presenter talks through their work for a few minutes (usually 1-2), followed by a short feedback session with sticky notes (usually between 3-6). After all the sticky notes have been added, the presenter can clarify any of the comments left before everyone moves on to the next presenter.
This method helps in identifying common themes and insights, with sticky notes for the presenter to refer to later. It's important to maintain a judgment-free zone, focus on constructive honesty, and remember that the final decision on incorporating feedback rests with the presenter.
For more information, read our blog about how we use Design Crits at Goosechase.
