The Art of Critique

adapted from lecture by Chris Conley, Professor of Product Design @ IIT Institute of Design – Chicago, USA

Judging the quality of your own ideas is one of the core problems of design. One of the best strategies for dealing with that difficulty is the Critique. The simple ritual: one person or group presents their work to another for feedback. The constructive act of Critique is not to be confused with mere criticism which seeks to point out flaws in an idea. Critique is a creative exploration aimed at making ideas better. Anyone should be able to do it because the goal is to see issues and ideas more clearly.
The essence of the practice is an event called a critique session, or “crit” for short.

This simple script is the backbone of a successful critque:

“Hi, thanks for coming to the critique for…” (share name of project)
“One of the issues we discovered is…” (describe design issue)
“One way of dealing with that is…”(explain design direction/concept)
“So this is…”(show your prototype/idea)
“Does this work?”(accept critique)
“Thanks!”(go improve it!)

Crits can be big or small, but they all have a few things in common, and there are a few tips that can help make them more productive. To make it simple, they are divided into one set of tips for the Critiquee (the person seeking feedback) and the Critiquer (the person giving feedback).

For the Critiquee

1. Don’t caveat the problems. Just pitch the idea.
2. Accept every comment, and ask for more.
3. Try “What if…” statements to test improvements.
4. Encourage diverse viewpoints, even contradictory ones.
5. Say “thankyou” for great feedback.
6. Honor the feedback by taking it and making your work better.

For the Critiquer

1. Work on their idea, not your own.
2. Highlight both what works and what does not.
3. Help the group see it differently, don’t just repeat what was already said.
4. Build on others’ observations
5. Thank the critiquee for their work.

Good luck and remember: Failure is not an option; it is a requirement.

instant documentation = workshop luxury

Here at 2nd Road, we create documentation of our facilitated conversations that we call Talkbooks. They consist mainly of annotated whiteboard printouts, text and diagrams. We give them to each of the workshop participants to help make the conversation (and decisions made therein) more tangible. Since conversation is our key tool for tapping into the intuition of a company’s leadership and making strategic decisions, we need everyone to be engaged, not taking notes frantically of all of the important things being said. The conversation is important because the groups talk about their situation and build an argument to get them where they want to go. However, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with this experience, can tend to wear off with the adrenaline, and the reality of the decisions sets in. At that point, helps to have the Talkbook to remind you of the decisions the team made.

In service design, this kind of thing is called an artifact of the service, and it is crucial to the client not just as tool for after the conversation, but the knowledge that it is being created is a luxury that helps participants let go of their desire to document all day, get out of their heads and contribute to the conversation. Knowing that a clear, useful document is being created is kind of like the happy feeling that I get in a hotel, knowing that someone else will be making the bed and ensuring that I have clean towels.

In my rambles, I found this other example of the instant documentation of another event. It is from the Lift conference and seems to have been published twice a day during a recent iteration of the gathering. It has very little of the synthesis of ideas in a Talkbook, but the use full color images provide visual synthesis in a potentially more engaging way than diagrams can. Add the use of big quotes, a fun font and even the naming, “Fanzine,”  and this is a pretty engaging artifact.

yoga ball fun in the am.

I am staying busy until classes start tomorrow. The yoga ball is my new exercise when it is too cold to go outside. The goal is just to stay on it while changing position.