Help users run effective design reviews and critiques. Use when someone is giving design feedback, establishing design review processes, struggling to evaluate designs, or wants to improve how their team discusses design work.
Help the user run effective design reviews and critiques using frameworks from 8 product leaders.
When the user asks for help with design reviews:
Julie Zhuo: "The first thing that's most important to address is, well, is this thing actually valuable, is this solving the problem? Then once we do that, then let's focus on the next layer which I think about as ease of use... And then finally... delight." Disregard feedback about aesthetics until the core value proposition is validated.
Karri Saarinen: "We are basically the sponsors for the projects. So then we are responsible reviewing the work. And so we might just have a meeting where we go through, okay..." Assign a founder or senior leader as a sponsor for every major project to oversee quality through live demos rather than static slide decks.
Dmitry Zlokazov: "Founders of the company, they still review a hundred percent of screens that are being shipped and everything that you will see in the app pass this review." Maintain a high quality bar by having senior leaders review every user-facing screen before shipping.
Geoff Charles: "Any large rock that we have on the roadmap needs to be brought into the product review process... but it needs to be structured in a way where you are asking specifically for what type of feedback you want." Only bring high-risk decisions to formal reviews and require presenters to specify exactly what feedback they need.
Jessica Hische: "Always think big picture before you think minutiae, because sometimes people think that... They'll throw a bunch of minutiae stuff at me, but it's because they don't know what's really bugging them." Ask "What is the overall thing that's bothering me?" before commenting on specific elements.
Jessica Hische: "Use 'blurred eyes' to look at a brand's overall cohesiveness rather than focusing on individual pixels." Step back from details to assess whether the overall design holds together.
For all 10 insights from 8 guests, see references/guest-insights.md