Running Better Design Critiques

Design critique is one of the most valuable and most mismanaged activities in a design practice. Done well, it sharpens work and builds judgment. Done poorly, it's either empty validation or ego combat. I've been on both sides of this and I've worked hard to build a critique practice that actually improves the work.

Separate Description from Evaluation

The most useful discipline in critique is separating what you see from what you think about what you see. "The headline is large and centered, set in a geometric sans, with the supporting text below in a significantly smaller size" is description. "The headline feels overpowering" is evaluation. Both are useful, but they're different activities and need to be separated.

Description first. What is actually there? Then evaluation: does what's there serve the work's purpose?

This discipline prevents the common failure of critique where evaluation is stated as description: "the hierarchy is broken" is an evaluation presented as a fact. Is it? Let's describe what's actually happening first and then evaluate whether it's working.

Criteria-Based Feedback

The most useful feedback connects observations to criteria. Not "I don't like that color" but "that color feels too close in value to the background, which might create legibility problems at smaller sizes."

The criteria come from the brief. What is the design trying to do? Every piece of feedback should connect to the work's purpose. "This is too complicated" isn't actionable. "This is too complicated for the reading time available to someone walking past it" is.

The Designer's Role in Critique

The designer being critiqued has a responsibility too: to present work clearly, to articulate the decisions they made, and to receive feedback without defensiveness. The feedback is about the work, not about them.

I ask designers to present their work with brief rationale: what were you trying to achieve, and what decisions did you make in service of that? This context makes the feedback more useful and prevents critiques that miss the intent entirely.

When Feedback Conflicts

In group critiques, feedback sometimes conflicts: one person says the color is too cold, another says it's appropriately restrained. The designer's job isn't to average these responses — it's to evaluate them against the criteria and make a judgment.

Conflicting feedback is information. It usually means an element is doing something ambiguous or unresolved. Understanding why two people read it differently often points toward what needs to change.

What Good Critique Produces

A good critique session produces: a clearer understanding of what's working and why, specific identified problems and the reasoning behind them, and possible directions rather than prescriptive solutions. The designer leaves knowing what to address; they retain agency over how to address it.

If a critique produces a list of specific changes to implement, it's been done wrong. The designer should be doing design, not executing committee feedback.