Welcome reader! Thanks for taking the time to look into my blog. Just a small note that this content will be more of a stream of consciousness, with a some references to boost context. So, if you’ve got some time to kill, grab a coffee and find your favourite sofa.

Early on in my journey at Designit, my Lead was keen on the idea of getting design crits running again within the XD team and possibly beyond. They had been previously done within the team but petered out after they stopped showing many visible benefits.

With the slogan, “Ignite shared progress,” that Designit has adopted, it seemed only right to be proactive drive this initiative forward. So, I started looking into the Why’s and the How’s. Design crits are great for boosting collaboration across disciplines by giving an early view of what’s coming up project-wise. This makes resourcingm ore efficient through increased visiblity, but also provides an opportunity to learn from others. Generally, it’s a proponent for a strong culture by showing that design is a facilitator for valuable conversations.

Many companies and organisations approach crits based on their needs. Take GOV.UK for example, they use the standard ‘roundtable’ approach to be able to leverage existing design choices and patterns for other projects, making use of the crits more tangibly. Figma tend to make use of a variety of crit types to be able to cover the changing and fast paced needs of the ‘startup.’

I looked into Figma a little more and really resonated with their approach. There isn’t a one size fits all approach to crits; the very nature of the activity demands variety, diversity and adaptability. Whether it’s through jams/ cray 8s that open up blocked projects, pair design that facilitates direction and narrowing down, or silent crits that promotes clarity and efficiency. It’s all down to the project at hand.

After some direction from my Lead, it was clear that this more diverse approach would work well in our studio. Being an agency, our teams are working on different types of projects all the time. We needed to be able to factor them in, rather than provide a blanket approach that likely stifled value in previous crits. So, we put together a basic set of ‘criteria’ that could be used to set the stage for a crit, and provide needed context.

But, we needed to gauge thoughts and sentiment. So I led a workshop that would cover the criteria in more detail, with the intention to flag up areas for improvement or any concerns. Interestingly, we had a mixture of discplines turn up: service designers, UXers, visual designers, Leads, experience designers. It was a clear indication that the wider studio were on board to initiative from the get go.

Initially, I got participants to engage with the criteria in slince, adding post-its and giving them space to gather their thoughts. Then, we discussed various areas of interest. Some people said that previous crits sacrificed project time and created a backlog of outputs. Others felt ambiguity around how to run the sessions, and how to come prepared. Whilst it seemed that overall sentiment around the criteria was positive, we needed to take great care to not produce more work for our teams.

After the session, I started grouping the feedback into key themes. These being: Coming prepared, running the session, time sacrifice, feedback clarity, adding to criteria. These really helped me to start visualising what we would need to cover to make crits both manageable and valuable. An interesting turn of events happened at this point; a fellow UX designer from our Munich studio was inspired by the workshop and reached out to lend a hand with my efforts. So, we both got to work and spent some calls working through the unearthed themes.

What we quickly realised was that the majority of the themes spoke to the logistics of the sessions. E.g. what if the discussion goes off topic? how do I make it part of my workflow? What tool do I use to faciliate? These some of the many questions that were asked about the logistics. The best solution for this owuld be to simply cover it. Create the outputs necessary for the logistics of the sessions to run smoothly, then tie it all up neatly into a clear journey.

So that’s exactly what we did and are continuing to do. We’ve created what we call a ‘ticket.’ This includes some outputs that teams will need to complete if and when they need throughout a project, in order for a crit to run smoothly and be as valuable as possible. Outputs include the criteria as mentioned above, context-setting and feedback perimiters, and predefined crit formats in Figjam.

This is all wrapped up within a figma “new project” file that will help boost integration. Within these files, there is a dedicated space for crits. At any point, teams can use this space to start putting a crit session together via the above outputs. The ticket is something dynamic, to be worked on, changed, deleted, actioned throughout the project. (thus, preventing extra last minute output).

We’re continuing to work on this initiative; bringing the ‘ticket’ concept to life and iterating the crit criteria to best fit our studio. I’m really optimistic with how far it can go and I’m hoping to communicate it to the Munich studio once it’s up and running here in London. Feel free to reach out to learn more or watch this space for updates!